On 4/14/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Mark, you said:
"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."
I think that is not at all right. I mean, Cyrillic is
a minority script in _all_ circumstances. Only 10% of
speakers of Moldo-Romanian in Moldova use it, and only
around 33% of people who say they speak Moldovan use
it. So those who say they speak Moldovan, will be
looking actually mostly for Latin content, especially
since many of the Cyrillic speakers are also used to
Latin content because that's the script they use in
public institutions, at work, etc.
Yes, but the thing is, most of the Moldovans who claim to speak
"Moldovan" only see it as an issue of naming of the same language. It
is a nationalistic matter - they don't want to call their mother
tongue after a foreign country. But the vast majority of these people
already go to "Romanian" websites, check out "Romanian" books from
the
library, have told at least one person that they speak "Romanian", and
don't deny that the languages are almost exactly the same.
As I have noted before, I think the use of the name "Romanian" all
over ro.wikipedia is very biased and cruel. 1 million people speak
Moldovan. That is 1/28th of the population. A minority, yes, but that
doesn't mean they shouldn't be represented. It is even plastered all
over your Wikipedia that Romanian is spoken in Moldova, that it is
official in Moldova, etc, all calling it "Moldovan", and nearly all
people from Moldova are placed in dual categories - one for "Moldovan
Poets" and another for "Romanian Poets" - and I hope you realise that
this alienates an entire nation (with the exception of Romanian
reunificationists - note that, in addition to patriots and
nationalists, it also alienates moderates who at least feel they are
"Moldovan" but not "Romanian"). And 1/28th is not as small a minority
as 1/100 (the ratio of Romanian/Moldovan speakers who use Cyrillic).
I don't see mo: as the Moldovan Wikipedia. I see it as the Moldovan
Cyrillic Wikipedia, which is the only script used extensively there
because the Moldovan Latin Wikipedia, written in the official,
majority script, is located at the exact same location as the Romanian
Latin Wikipedia - and for good reason.
Even very few of those 33% of "Moldovan" speakers who use Cyrillic
would deny that Romanian and Moldovan are basically one language,
although the percentage would be higher than among other "Moldovan"
speakers because anti-Romanian feeling is greater among Cyrillic
users.
Also, "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"
I've kept on saying that this is a practical solution,
but it isn't really a correct solution - While the
interesting context of the Moldo-Romanian language
would state that a mo.wiki in Cyrillic only would be
the most practical solution, it would basically be
very biased, despite the prominent link. The prominent
link is just a redirect, the interface would still be
in Cyrillic, the interwiki links would still go to
Cyrillic articles. We can't nominate a Wikipedia for
Cyrillic content, even though the case of
Moldo-Romanian would say that perhaps logically it is
a way to go, simply because we can't nominate a
language subdomain for a certain script when that
script is a minority script.
So what if it is "correct"? So far, nobody who claims to speak
"Moldovan" as their mother tongue has challenged it. All of the
visitors this year, to the best of my knowledge, are Cyrillic users or
from ro.wikipedia. You and your ro.wikipedian goon squad may care, but
so far nobody else has. My guess is that the first time an actual
"Moldovan" speaker who wants to view content in the Roman alphabet
visits mo.wikipedia, they won't give a second thought to it and will
click the link as instructed. This remains to be seen, so I still
think we should wait to see if what you are saying will happen
actually ever does happen, and if it does, we can deal with the
problem then.
That's what needs to be understood here - Cyrillic
is
a minority script in all cases - for Moldo-Romanian
speakers worldwide, for Moldo-Romanian speakers in
Moldova and for Moldovan speakers in Moldova. So we
need content to first cater for the majority, which
could be either at mo.wiki or ro.wiki, but I think
ro.wiki would be the more practical solution, unless
some Moldovans would actually have a problem with
being redirected to a Romanian Wikipedia, which they
might have. We need to hear their side of the story
too, but there are as of yet barely any Moldovan Latin
users. There should be a very prominent link on the
mo.wiki page redirecting Cyrillic users to their
subdomain. Interwiki links would then go to mo-cyr:
and be put in the form of "Moldoveanească
(Chirilic)" in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Why not "Moldoveneasca" in the Cyrillic alphabet? Only a dunce would
think, without some prior experience, that a link to "Moldoveneasca",
/in the Cyrillic alphabet/, would get them to non-Cyrillic content.
You may counter that the same is true vice-versa - but it was not
requested by the mo.wiki community that interwiki links read
"Moldoveana" in the Roman alphabet.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Sort of - I have a Y!IM account which I rarely use anymore, and I have
a couple of different e-mail addresses there. However, to be fair, I
go to the Taiwanese Yahoo! site more often than the English, and when
I do it's for convenience.
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
No thanks, I don't own or work for a small business.
Mark