I know that this issue has come up one or two times this list before, but from what I saw in the archives the discussion attracted only a small audience, while the issue itself does not show any signs of going way. I post this now hoping that there will be a bigger discussion, hopefully followed by a resolution of the matter.
The background of the issue and some comments on it are available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Moldovan_Wi...
and more information is at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
In short, http://mo.wikipedia.org/ is a version of Wikipedia written in Romanian with Cyrillic characters. This combination is used nowhere in the world except in Transnistria which is a breakaway region of Republic of Moldova without international recognition and with a rather dubious regime. It is a relic from Soviet times, when in Republic of Moldova people used Cyrillic.
There are two views on this matter. Some people think that nothing is wrong with having Wikipedia in all languages/character sets possible. The number of potential readers and editors of this particular version of Wikipedia is very small, but it still could be useful. And deleting a language version of Wikipedia would be against the Wiki spirit, would make Wikipedia politicized, etc.
The other view is mostly reflected by people in Republic of Moldova itself and neighboring Romania (again, we are talking about the Romanian language here, the issue is the set of characters - in Romania proper they use the Latin alphabet). To us (I am from Republic of Moldova) writing our language in Cyrillic is a symbol of what was wrong with the Soviet Union, a totalitarian regime which did not give us even the choice of how to write our own language, and of all the tragedies which happened after Republic of Moldova was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940 and then again in 1945.
The discussion of this issue has been going on since June; see again
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
Neither side of course has any power to do anything about it (an administrator is not enough to close it down, for example). I would like to again express my hope that this discussion will attract a wide audience, and that the issue of existence of this Wikipedia will eventually be settled.
Thank you,
Oleg Alexandrov CAM assistant professor, UCLA aoleg@math.ucla.edu
I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.
Also, as you will find on many websites, many rural peasants in Moldova proper are literate only in Cyrillic. True, they are not likely to have access to computers, but in the distant future they may have use for a print edition (perhaps distributed for free or for very cheap by a not-for-profit organisation).
I feel it should also be noted that it's not entirely accurate to say that all Moldovans and Romanians have opposed this Wikipedia so far.
Dmitriid and Vertaler, two Moldovans living in Moldova, have supported the existance of this Wikipedia.
So far, the only opposition has come from people living outside of Moldova, although some of them are Moldovans in nationality. Most of the opposition is still in Romania.
In the past, there was already a vote on the future of that Wikipedia, and by a wide margin people voted to keep it.
Let me give a brief list of the supporters and opposers of this Wikipedia and their national origin and current residence where they are different.
Opposers: 1) Goie, Romania 2) Duca, Romania 3) Mihaitza, Romania 4) Alexandru, Romanian living in America 5) Landroni, Moldovan in France 6) Jeorjika, Moldovan living abroad (didn't specify country) 7) Oleg Alexandrov, Moldovan living in America 8) Anittas, Romanian living in America
Supporters: 1) Ronline, Romania 2) Dmitriid, Moldova 3) Vertaler, Moldova 4) Gabix, Belarus 5) myself
Now this is not an exhaustive list, rather, it is a list of the people that I can remember have been part of this.
Also, I feel it's worth noting that:
Jeorjika, Duca, Goie, Landroni, and Mihaitza only very recently joined to Wikipedia, the first four specifically because of the Moldovan WP. Vertaler and Dmitriid too. Ronline, Gabix, myself, Oleg, Anittas, and Alexandru are all previous users.
Mark
On 23/10/05, Oleg Alexandrov aoleg@math.ucla.edu wrote:
I know that this issue has come up one or two times this list before, but from what I saw in the archives the discussion attracted only a small audience, while the issue itself does not show any signs of going way. I post this now hoping that there will be a bigger discussion, hopefully followed by a resolution of the matter.
The background of the issue and some comments on it are available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Moldovan_Wi...
and more information is at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
In short, http://mo.wikipedia.org/ is a version of Wikipedia written in Romanian with Cyrillic characters. This combination is used nowhere in the world except in Transnistria which is a breakaway region of Republic of Moldova without international recognition and with a rather dubious regime. It is a relic from Soviet times, when in Republic of Moldova people used Cyrillic.
There are two views on this matter. Some people think that nothing is wrong with having Wikipedia in all languages/character sets possible. The number of potential readers and editors of this particular version of Wikipedia is very small, but it still could be useful. And deleting a language version of Wikipedia would be against the Wiki spirit, would make Wikipedia politicized, etc.
The other view is mostly reflected by people in Republic of Moldova itself and neighboring Romania (again, we are talking about the Romanian language here, the issue is the set of characters - in Romania proper they use the Latin alphabet). To us (I am from Republic of Moldova) writing our language in Cyrillic is a symbol of what was wrong with the Soviet Union, a totalitarian regime which did not give us even the choice of how to write our own language, and of all the tragedies which happened after Republic of Moldova was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940 and then again in 1945.
The discussion of this issue has been going on since June; see again
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
Neither side of course has any power to do anything about it (an administrator is not enough to close it down, for example). I would like to again express my hope that this discussion will attract a wide audience, and that the issue of existence of this Wikipedia will eventually be settled.
Thank you,
Oleg Alexandrov CAM assistant professor, UCLA aoleg@math.ucla.edu
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail. Si ud. querría que le enviara una invitación para juntar gmail, favor de envíeme un mensaje. Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation à joindre gmail, envoyez-moi s.v.p un message. Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail, favor de envie-me uma mensagem.
On 10/23/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.
Mark, an idle curiosity on my part: What is the potential for good machine translation between these languages? Is it purely a character set difference?
It is possible, but it's not 1-to-1.
There are many Romanian letters that have multiple counterparts in Moldovan Cyrillic.
For example, the "i" in "pierdut" is written differently than the "i" in "eie"; the "i" in "avetzi" is written differently than the "i" in "domnului".
Romanian also has the tendency to preserve the internationally recognised Latin spellings of foreign names rather than changing them to fit Romanian sounds. Moldovan, on the other hand, being written in Cyrillic as it is, usually writes foreign names phonetically, with the exception of those names whose native language is Cyrillic, the spelling of which it often preserves (for example, Romanian "gorbaciov" is written as "gorbacev" or "gorbacYOv" in Moldovan).
Also, unlike other communities where conversion has already been discussed, for the Romanian Wikipedia to have Cyrillic conversion would be a nightmare -- many users would leave because of it, and the readership would decrease drastically when it got out that the Romanian Wikipedia can be viewed with one click in Moldovan-Cyrillic.
The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian, including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter. That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo. Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to convert it into Cyrillic.
Mark
On 23/10/05, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/23/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.
Mark, an idle curiosity on my part: What is the potential for good machine translation between these languages? Is it purely a character set difference? _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail. Si ud. querría que le enviara una invitación para juntar gmail, favor de envíeme un mensaje. Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation à joindre gmail, envoyez-moi s.v.p un message. Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail, favor de envie-me uma mensagem.
Mark Williamson wrote:
The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian, including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter. That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo. Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to convert it into Cyrillic.
That seems particularly bizarre and directly contrary to the spirit of both Wikipedia as a project in general and the design of the logo in particular. I mean, despite often rocky Chinese-Japanese cultural relations, the Chinese Wikipedia hasn't removed the Katakana character visible in the logo or anything, and it would be pretty strange and provocative if they did.
-Mark
Well, the relationship between Russia and Romania is much worse.
Russians don't really have problems with Romanians...
Russophobia in Romania is largely relating to Moldova, which many (but not all) Romanians perceive as "stolen" from them by Russia.
In reality, for most of its recent history, the current Republic of Moldova was independent, an Ottoman vassal state, or part of Greater Russia. Despite cultural ties to Romania, it was only united with Romania for 22 years.
In the Romanian nationalist view, Bessarabia (current Republic of Moldova) was gradually "invaded" by Slavs while it was part of the Ottoman SoI -- not a real invasion, but more of an infiltration by gradual migration of Slavic traders. After that, Bessarabia was independent for 2 years. Then, the parliament (not the people) voted to unite with Romania by majority (there was a little bit of opposition). Ethnic minorities such as the Gagauz and Roma were not well-represented in this parliament, and it's quite possible that if they were properly represented, the outcome may've been different. After 22 years, the Russian empire "stole"/"invaded" Bessarabia. Years and years later, Romania "liberated" it, but soon after it was reclaimed by the Soviet Union.
Now, while many Moldovans are proud of a separate identity from Romanians and consider themselves Moldovans, and the chances of a unification are very slim, especially given the huge size of ethnic minorities who oppose such a move (the Gagauz, the Ukrainians, and the Russians), many Romanians still consider that the Moldovans are their brothers, and that they continue to be oppressed by Russians. Well, the ruling government in Moldova is communist, but they are (supposedly) democratically elected, and opposition parties are legal and exist.
In fact, if anybody's being oppressed, it's the Slavic minority whose languages, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, and Belarusan mainly, have 0 status in Moldova, even though they are spoken by a huge portion of the population. Many Romanians say "Oh well they're all just russofile soviet communist immigrants". This isn't true -- although many are immigrants, the majority are the children and grandchildren of immigrants, and consider themselves Moldovan. In addition, a significant portion of the Slavs already lived there before the Soviet era.
From the point of view of most Moldovans, Moldova has been screwed by
both of her neighbours, the former Soviet bloc, and Romania. Russia isn't a direct neighbour, being separated by Ukraine.
They feel that Russia tries to keep them too close, and that they try to manipulate them, and many feel especially abused by the Kremlin over the Transdniester issue. They also feel that Romania gives too much pressure in other ways, namely the unionist sympathies of many Romanians, and the distorted national consciousness that is shown by many Romanians and in most of the Romanian government. Romania also tries to butt into Moldovan internal affairs sometimes.
Many Moldovans favor closer ties with the European Union, and I think many would be happier if Moldova were an island or if it were located between France and Germany than in its current position between two pushy neighbours.
For these historical reasons, Romania is filled with a deep collective natural hatred for Russia and all things perceived to be Russian.
Mark
On 23/10/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian, including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter. That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo. Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to convert it into Cyrillic.
That seems particularly bizarre and directly contrary to the spirit of both Wikipedia as a project in general and the design of the logo in particular. I mean, despite often rocky Chinese-Japanese cultural relations, the Chinese Wikipedia hasn't removed the Katakana character visible in the logo or anything, and it would be pretty strange and provocative if they did.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail. Si ud. querría que le enviara una invitación para juntar gmail, favor de envíeme un mensaje. Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation à joindre gmail, envoyez-moi s.v.p un message. Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail, favor de envie-me uma mensagem.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org