Hi all,
I think it should be made internationally known (in the Wiki community, that is - currently it's restricted to people who know Romanian) that there is currently a problem between the Moldovan (mo:) and Romanian (ro:) Wikipedias.
According to the Academy of Sciences in Moldova, the two languages are identical. The Moldovan government says the languages are separate, and about 1/3rd of the Moldovan population claimed on the last census that they speak "Moldovan" rather than "Romanian".
For a long time there had been a possible pending addition of a redirect to mo:.
But there is another issue here: 10% of Moldovan people, and 1% of Moldovan and Romanian people combined, use the Cyrillic alphabet to write their language.
Cyrillic was the official alphabet in Moldova during the USSR, but after independence the official script was changed to be identical to Romanian with a few notable differences, mostly in spelling (the most important one is that â and î in Romania are both î in Moldova).
To add to the confusion, Cyrillic is still the official script for the language in the de-facto independent nation of Transnistria, where Moldovans are a minority. However, Transnistria is not recognised as a sovreign nation by the UN or any of its members (and the government of Taiwan), so it isn't generally considered on the same level in such problems since it doesn't have de jure independence.
Cyrillic was in fact the first script ever used to transcribe the Romanian language, and only in the past couple of centuries has that changed mostly to Latin for largely political regions, and now Cyrillic is seen by many Romanians and Moldovans as a "communist" alphabet.
000---------------->The conflict is:
mo: has existed for a really long time, but until recently it had no content whatsoever except a message in the Latin alphabet directing users to ro:. I added the Cyrillic version of the message, but then there was a small controversy between myself, OldakQuill, and Danutz (from ro.wiki) over the situation and the message was first changed and then deleted, as actual content was added to the Wiki in both scripts.
However, after the joining of a second Cyrillic-capable user, it was decided at mo: to get rid of all Latin-alphabet content since it was identical to the same articles at ro:. The mainpage was moved to a Cyrillic title, and a language list and welcome message in Cyrillic were added. Existing Latin articles were changed to interwiki redirects.
A few months later, I got a private message from Ronline (from ro.wiki), who seemed to me much more logical and reasonable than Danutz. I thought we would soon achieve consensus but there is one sticking point.
Since the official alphabet of the "Moldovan language" is Latin, and the majority of Moldovans use that alphabet, Ronline says that either mo.wiki should be bi-scriptal, or a separate domain entirely should be created like "mo-cyr:" or "mo-cyrillic:" for the minority Cyrillic script.
My position was that since the Moldovan and Romanian languages are identical, the Moldovan Wikipedia should only have Cyrillic content since all Latin content would be a duplication of ro.wiki content.
A prominent message on the mo.wiki mainpage, in the Latin alphabet, states "If you prefer to view content in the Latin alphabet, please click here" (with a link to ro.wiki). Ronline says this is unacceptable as it implies that Latin is a second-choice or minority script for the language, while I say that a great deal of people desiring separate "Moldovan" content would be searching for Cyrillic.
It is my belief that a seperate subdomain is not only inconvenient, but also unnessecary because the current solution provides for all visitors to mo.wiki - if they want to read content in Cyrillic, they continue, and if they don't, they click a link.
There was some discussion of a biscriptal solution.
I am in favor of a biscriptal solution, if it is implemented on ro:. At the same time as many of his Romanian compatriots insist that Romanian and Moldovan are the same language (which I must say, I largely agree with), he suggests that mo: host entire articles in the "Moldovan language" written in the Latin alphabet. I suggest that, due to the near-identicality of "Moldovan" and "Romanian", a biscriptal solution should only be on ro: (remember, 1% of speakers of the Moldovan/Romanian language[s] use Cyrillic, and some of them call the language "Romanian") to avoid duplication of content. However, according to Ronline this is unacceptable because "Nobody writes Romanian in the Cyrillic script". Most of the other people at ro: will agree: many will say (although Ronline has not, Danutz did) at the same time that Moldovan and Romanian are one language called Romanian, that some people write "Moldovan" in Cyrillic, but that nobody writes Romanian in Cyrillic. Also, anti-Russian/anti-Communist feelings would make it hard for Cyrillic to coexist on ro:, and there is some chance that the existance of a Cyrillic version would drive potential Wikipedians away.
As it is now, only myself and two others have made significant content contributions to mo:, most of it has been in Cyrillic, and what was in Latin was just identical to the article text on ro.wiki.
Mark
This is familiar kind of problem, remember the quite recent controversy with Serbocrotian on the one, and Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak on the other. I, as a Western European, could easily dismiss claims on speaking a separate language as politically inspired nonsense, but in countries like these with a heavily charged recent past, questions like these are controversial. On the other hand, this discussion is also current in Moldovia itself, I heard. I propose that you allow Latin script Moldavian on ro: only, and that you look for five enthousiasts (including you yourself, of course) for the Moldovian-only Cyrillic version, not to be allowed on ro:, since virtually no Romanians can read it. The rest of the procedure must be familiar to you, I suppose. This leaves only the question of the name: ro-cy or mol-cy. Do you consider this an appropriate solution?
Wouter
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I personally don't consider it appropriate, but it's very confusing.
Mo.wiki already exists and is being used for Cyrillic already, but Ronline wants the Cyrillic content to either be moved to mo-cyr:, or have mo: in both alphabets.
This situation is different from Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian for one reason especially. Linguists and scientists from these countries (Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia) like to make all sorts of claims about the distinctness of their respective languages, while in Moldova, the official Academy of Science declares on its website even that Moldovan and Romanian are identical, and a man who published a "Romanian-Moldovan dictionary" was mocked on national television. What I mean is, only 30% of Moldovans claim they speak the "Moldovan language", and that is possibly a question of naming - even less would tell you "Moldovan" and "Romanian" are different languages.
What you say about not having Cyrillic content at ro: is totally missing my point there. I personally believe that Romanian and Moldovan are close enough that in most pages on Wikipedia, there would only be differences in spelling with a few minor differences in terminology (Moldovan also has a tendency to use less French and Italian words). Most people who speak Moldovan or Romanian agree that they are identical.
I am claiming a double standard on the part of some main anti-Cyrillic people such as Danutz, who say "Moldovan and Romanian are the same thing. All Moldovans speak Romanian. There is no such language as Moldovan. Anybody who says they speak Moldovan must be a communist", then "Indeed 10% of speakers of "Moldovan" use Cyrillic" and then "Nobody who speaks Romanian uses Cyrillic". If Moldovan _is_ Romanian, then some speakers of Romanian use Cyrillic.
And it should be emphasised that this is not merely a question of nationality - plenty of Moldovans (the majority, in fact) claim to speak "Romanian". This includes the majority of users of the Cyrillic script, who also call it "Romanian" (probably a little less than half of Cyrillic users - I don't mean "enthusiasts" who want to restore a dead script, I mean people who learnt this as their first alphabet in school, and still prefer to use it today and often do - call it "Moldovan").
This means that some people who visit a "Romanian Wikipedia" might prefer to read content in Cyrillic - after all, 1% of all speakers of Romanian/Moldavian combined prefer the Cyrillic script to the Roman script - and I believe that is significant enough that we should provide content for them.
So the way I see it is: It is preferable that ro.wiki is bi-scriptal, but of course this will not happen in a million years because of such contradictory beliefs as illustrated above (it should be noted that Ronline believes - at least it would seem he does - that Romanian and Moldovan are truly separate languages), so we can just stick to the status quo which is changing the letter infront to an "m" if you want Cyrillic, and if you end up at mo: wanting Latin content, you click in to get it immediately.
I do not appreciate the involvement of Ronline, Danutz, and other ro.wikipedians in what I see as a relatively petty issue. As you can see from usage statistics, mo.wiki gets less than 100 visits a year, and I can tell you that most of those are from me and Vertaler and Danutz and Ronline and devs and stewards and the like. And, all those complaining are Romanian citizens who mainly use ro.wiki and claim their mother tongue as "Romanian", and it is my guess that most have never been to Moldova and that most have seen only a couple of texts in their lives spelled in a Moldovan fashion. These people aren't so upset about a language they claim to use or have as their mother tongue or even a language which has some attachment to them at all, they are interfering on a nationalist basis in an entirely separate Wikipedia. So far the only reaction from Moldovans on mo: has been tiny but it has been supportive and positive.
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
To be fair Ronline does not focus on the fact that mo.wiki is currently separate from ro.wiki, but this seems to be a main focus for most of the other people interested.
Another question that may arise is: Is Romanian spelling convertable by computer to Moldovan spelling and vice-versa? The answer is yes. But, is Latin alphabet of this language convertable to Cyrillic alphabet for this language by computer? No, because there are not exact correspondences. "ia" can sometimes be "i-ya" in Cyrillic and other times "i-a" (not using actual Cyrillic letters, just a transcription), "iu" can be "i-yu", "i-u", "`-yu", and most importantly there are 3 possible conversions in Cyrillic for the Latin "i". Also, in some words (almost all foreign), the "g" sound in "gi" or "ge" can be transliterated as a "zh" with a breve over it, and it others (both foreign and non-foreign) it is written without due to an actual difference in pronunciation. There are however a system of complex situational rules that can cover perhaps 80% of the ambiguities, but these might require computer parsing, needing to know how a word is actually pronounced, and for complete accuracy you would need a lexicon of "exceptions".
I only talk about the computer conversion because the question has arisen in the past over script diffferences (Kurdish, Serbian).
Mark
On 4/13/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
This is familiar kind of problem, remember the quite recent controversy with Serbocrotian on the one, and Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak on the other. I, as a Western European, could easily dismiss claims on speaking a separate language as politically inspired nonsense, but in countries like these with a heavily charged recent past, questions like these are controversial. On the other hand, this discussion is also current in Moldovia itself, I heard. I propose that you allow Latin script Moldavian on ro: only, and that you look for five enthousiasts (including you yourself, of course) for the Moldovian-only Cyrillic version, not to be allowed on ro:, since virtually no Romanians can read it. The rest of the procedure must be familiar to you, I suppose. This leaves only the question of the name: ro-cy or mol-cy. Do you consider this an appropriate solution?
Wouter
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On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
Hi Milos,
Thanks for your message.
The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now, Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet, or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a duplication of the Serbian content?
I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian and Moldovan.
ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we don't want to create a content fork.
Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
Oh, and in addition:
While there is a 1-to-1 correspondence for Serbian between Latin and Cyrillic (Latin digraphs nonwithstanding), there is not between Latin and Cyrillic for Moldovan, so Latin -> Cyrillic conversion by computer is impossible (well, not impossible, but it would require AI), although Cyrillic -> Latin is usually possible.
Mark
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
Thanks for your message.
The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now, Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet, or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a duplication of the Serbian content?
I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian and Moldovan.
ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we don't want to create a content fork.
Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
We had the similar situation with Serbo-Croatian standard language (divided into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard). We solved that with separation of Wikipedias.
However, I think that Wikipedias are (standard) language-based, not national-based (in general, I am sure that we can find some national-based Wikipedia). So, solution is (as I see) very simple:
1. Moldavians who think that their language is Romanian should write into Romanian Wikipedia (only in Latin alphabet).
2. Moldavians who think that their language is Moldavian should write into Moldavian Wikipedia. Also, those Moldavians can implement Chinese (and future Serbian) solution for them: they will have tabs (where "edit", "dicsussion" and "history" tabs are) where they can choose script. Also, they would have possibility to choose their interface (Cyrillic or Latin).
Also, note that content on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia can be treated as "duplicated content".
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
Thanks for your message.
The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now, Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet, or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a duplication of the Serbian content?
I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian and Moldovan.
ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we don't want to create a content fork.
Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I guess that this is OK.
But I think that the majority of users of mo.wikipedia will, no matter what, always be primarily users of Cyrillic, and I think that it should be dominant there until such time as there are more Moldovan users there who use Latin, if that is ever the case.
By the way, why exactly is it that there are separate Wikipedias for Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian? If everybody worked together, you could have a much larger Wikipedia by now - Serbian has over 10k, but Croatian is quite large too and Bosnian has over 1000 - imagine if you worked together to make one Wikipedia.
And as I noted earlier, conversion between Latin Moldovan and Cyrillic Moldovan by computer is not possible or at least not practical (it would require neural networking or AI or something)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
We had the similar situation with Serbo-Croatian standard language (divided into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard). We solved that with separation of Wikipedias.
However, I think that Wikipedias are (standard) language-based, not national-based (in general, I am sure that we can find some national-based Wikipedia). So, solution is (as I see) very simple:
- Moldavians who think that their language is Romanian should write
into Romanian Wikipedia (only in Latin alphabet).
- Moldavians who think that their language is Moldavian should write
into Moldavian Wikipedia. Also, those Moldavians can implement Chinese (and future Serbian) solution for them: they will have tabs (where "edit", "dicsussion" and "history" tabs are) where they can choose script. Also, they would have possibility to choose their interface (Cyrillic or Latin).
Also, note that content on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia can be treated as "duplicated content".
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
Thanks for your message.
The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now, Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet, or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a duplication of the Serbian content?
I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian and Moldovan.
ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we don't want to create a content fork.
Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
And I would also like to add the same for the Indonesian/Malaysian Wikipedias. I think it's sad that these nearly-identical languages are spreading their resources thin over multiple projects based more on nationality than actual linguistic differences.
Mark
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I guess that this is OK.
But I think that the majority of users of mo.wikipedia will, no matter what, always be primarily users of Cyrillic, and I think that it should be dominant there until such time as there are more Moldovan users there who use Latin, if that is ever the case.
By the way, why exactly is it that there are separate Wikipedias for Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian? If everybody worked together, you could have a much larger Wikipedia by now - Serbian has over 10k, but Croatian is quite large too and Bosnian has over 1000 - imagine if you worked together to make one Wikipedia.
And as I noted earlier, conversion between Latin Moldovan and Cyrillic Moldovan by computer is not possible or at least not practical (it would require neural networking or AI or something)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
We had the similar situation with Serbo-Croatian standard language (divided into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard). We solved that with separation of Wikipedias.
However, I think that Wikipedias are (standard) language-based, not national-based (in general, I am sure that we can find some national-based Wikipedia). So, solution is (as I see) very simple:
- Moldavians who think that their language is Romanian should write
into Romanian Wikipedia (only in Latin alphabet).
- Moldavians who think that their language is Moldavian should write
into Moldavian Wikipedia. Also, those Moldavians can implement Chinese (and future Serbian) solution for them: they will have tabs (where "edit", "dicsussion" and "history" tabs are) where they can choose script. Also, they would have possibility to choose their interface (Cyrillic or Latin).
Also, note that content on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia can be treated as "duplicated content".
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
Thanks for your message.
The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now, Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet, or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a duplication of the Serbian content?
I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian and Moldovan.
ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we don't want to create a content fork.
Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
Mark
On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially recognised as a separate language).
Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka) and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same) with Serbian problem.
So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_t...
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Mark Williamson (node.ue@gmail.com) [050415 04:04]:
And I would also like to add the same for the Indonesian/Malaysian Wikipedias. I think it's sad that these nearly-identical languages are spreading their resources thin over multiple projects based more on nationality than actual linguistic differences.
Indonesian and Malaysian actually have a fair bit more difference, don't they? (Oversimplification: Indonesian = Malay + Dutch words; Malaysian = Malay + English words.) It's not a political difference thing per se, as with Romanian/Moldovan or the former Yugoslav language of Serbo-Croatian situation.
- d.
By accident I sent an e-mail to Node only which was intended for the mail list. Its content was that the Balkan wars ended to recently to make a common Serbocroatian tenable.
Wouter
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I have no firm opinion about this matter.
However, I wanted to drop a short note here to thank Mark for his report, and for his tireless work in minor language Wikipedias. Let's speak plainly here: Mark has annoyed a lot of people at various times, including me, but continues to study and keep on top of what is going on in smaller language Wikipedias, and I for one really appreciate his work.
--Jimbo
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