" ro.wiki este doar pentru limba română, cu mo.wiki pentru limba
moldovenească. Singurul mod în care noi vom accepta ca legătura să
meargă la Română/Moldovenască (Latin) va fi când mo.wiki va deveni o
Wikipedie de dezambiguizare şi conţinutul chirilic se va muta la un
subdomain nou. Până atunci, ro.wiki nu este numită Wikipedia pentru
română/moldovenească în latin, fiind că este doar pentru limba română,
care întotdeauna se scrie în Latin. Nu vreau să sun arogant - dar dacă
voi nu vreţi să vă faceţi mo.wiki ca o Wikipedie numai pentru
alfabetul chirilic, care efectiv discriminează pe majoritatea care
foloseşte alfabetul latin, atunci nu aştepta ca ro.wiki să vă facă
concesii."
I just received this in Romanian on my talkpage on mo.wiki. Most
people can probably understand it but I will help some: "limba romana"
= Romanian, limba moldoveneasca = Moldovan, "ca legatura sa mearga la
Romana/Moldoveneasca (Latin)" = "link that merges them as
Romanian/Moldovan (Latin)", "ro.wiki nu este numita Wikipedia pentru
romana/moldoveneasca in latin" - "ro.wiki isn't the Wikipedia for
Romanian/Moldovan in Latin", " doar pentru" = " it's only
for", "care
intotdeauna se scrie in Latin" = "which is always written in Latin",
"care efectiv discrimineaza pe majoritatea care foloseste alfabetul
latin" = "which is effectively discriminating against the majority
which uses the Latin alphabet", "atunci nu astepta ca ro.wiki sa va
faca concesii" = "in light of this ro.wiki isn't going to make any
concessions".
Now, this is solely in response to my changes on the mo.wiki mainpage,
rather than me doing anything on the Romanian Wikipedia or making
requests of Ronline.
But in doing this, Ronline is making the statement that Moldovan and
Romanian are separate languages, which is doubtful at best and
laughable at worst.
Also, he is purposefully attempting to exclude Wikipedians from
ro.wikipedia based simply on their nationality, and is unwilling to
make any accommodations at all for that 14% of the Romano-Moldovan
speaking population which lives in Moldova.
He conveniently excludes the fact that, discrimination or not, there
is already an accommodation for Latin users on mo.wiki - there is a
prominent link to ro.wikipedia, saying that "if you would prefer to
use the Moldovan Wikipedia in the Latin alphabet, go here".
Instead he suggests that Moldovans who prefer the Latin alphabet can
go to mo.wiki instead of ro.wiki, and that they will not be welcomed
at ro.wiki based solely on their nationality.
Now, not only is that "incorrect", but it is entirely unacceptable
from a Wikimedia point of view because it separates two populations
more on the basis of nationality rather than actual linguistic
differences.
In addition, ro.wiki is only hurting itself by turning away that 14%
of possible content writers whose contributions would barely be
noticed as using a slightly different spelling.
At the same time, the pages on ro.wiki state in parenthesis - all over
- that Moldovan = Romanian. So, if Ronline feels that this is not the
case and that they are in fact separate languages, why doesn't he fix
his native Wikipedia pages like
which say POV things like "Româna moldovenească estică (denumită şi
limba moldovenească din motive politice) este o ramură a românei
moldoveneşti, un grai al limbii române, vorbită fiind în Republica
Moldova." = "Eastern Moldovan Romanian (called "Moldovan language"
for
political motives) is the Moldovan variety of Romanian, a branch of
the Romanian languages, spoken in the Republic of Moldova". How is
that POV, when over 1 million people clearly state that their mother
tongue Moldovan? For your Wikipedia to write these people off as
insignificant or to pass judgement on them as only renaming their
speech for political motives is at best not NPOV, and at worst an
attempt to promote a Romanian nationalist agenda.
Mark
On 18/04/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Again I would like to point out that you are
emphasising >what is
"right" or "correct". Why does
that matter? Why
should >we care?
I am emphasising what is right because that is what we
should be striving towards. Just because any
Moldovans, who you seem to think are the only ones who
have an authoritative right to a say in this, haven't
complained, doesn't mean that the idea of is right.
Why should we be striving towards it when the current solution works
just fine and we have only received complaints from foreigners?
Now, you're going to say again something
along the
lines of "Yes, you keep on using the word right. Who
cares what's right". Well, we *should* care about
what's right! For example, we couldn't go ahead now
and form a Romanian Wikipedia without diacritical
symbols, just because the Romanian community supports
it, even when it is incorrect. In this example,
writing Romanian with no diacritics would be easier
and, hypothetically, let's say it would be supported
by the community, which , hypothetically, is made up
of 1 person. Does that mean we should actually
implement that proposal? Just because the "community"
agrees to something doesn't make it right, doesn't
mean that it's correct for, in the example, the
ro.wiki to be written without diacritic symbols.
Actually, if the entire community supports it, it's fine. The thing is
though the system is self-correcting. If you have a community of 3
people, as in the case of mo.wiki, who vote unanimously to do
something that's "wrong", if it's truly a problem eventually somebody
will come along and complain, or try to fix it, or whatever. That just
hasn't happened yet.
The same goes for mo.wiki. There is basically
*one*
Moldovan Cyrillic contributor, and you're saying that
just because he hasn't complained, then it's OK,
because no Moldovan contributor has so far complained.
Why? Because *there is no Moldovan wiki community*.
There is just one person! I think there might have
actually been a Moldovan contributor at ro.wiki which
is no longer active. But that's about all. For that
reason, we can't base ourselves here on "we do what
the Moldovans think, because they're the ones who
should have the most say." If we go by that principle,
then we won't get anywhere, because there isn't yet,
unfortunately, a Moldovan Wikipedia community.
Why? As I noted above, it is a self-correcting system.
Every time a Wikipedia is started, the founding contributors make
important decisions. Sometimes these are bad decisions which, when
more people join, are struck down democratically. But so far this has
not happened. As they say, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". And it
ain't broke, at least not according to the only Moldovan user to weigh
in on the issue. When more Moldovans arrive, if they have a problem
with it, that issue can be addressed /then/ and it can be "fixed".
So, as you keep on blaming the ro.wiki community
for,
there's nothing wrong with us getting involved. The
same goes in your case - there's nothing wrong about
you getting involved, as a non-Moldovan, in this
issue. We *all*, as Wikimedia contributors, have a
right to involve ourselves in *all* Wikimedia issues
as long as we are adequately informed. And I think
both of us, and many other people who have given an
opinion, have done so in an informed, comprehensive
manner.
The difference is, I have actually contributed my time and effort to
mo.wiki. I have transliterated articles, reverted vandalism, and the
like. ro.wikipedians, on the other hand, only heard about it just now
from your userpage, and as you can see on the talkpages on mo:, all
they ever do is come over and write "This is wrong, it shouldn't be
this way. --Romanianfromrowiki" and then retreat back to ro.wikipedia
never to appear again.
Thus, even though I am not a Moldovan I consider myself a part of the
community, and I see you and other ro.wikipedians as outsiders - you
come along and complain about the status quo without giving anything,
and on top of that you're not Moldovans.
At the moment, mo.wikipedia is my temporary home. As you can perhaps
observe from my activity on various Wikipedias, I'm not really active
much on en.wiki anymore, but I make tiny contributions here and there
to other Wikis. However I have recently focused a bit on mo.wikipedia,
writing new content, transliterating existing content, replacing
content duplication with interwiki redirects, etc.
There have
been
no complaints from actual Moldovans, only from
Romanians, and they are
all politically motivated.
I don't think you can actually say that all the
comments are politically motivated. If you read the
discussion page at ro.wiki, you will see that many
Romanians actually enforce the idea of having a
Moldovan Wikipedia, and recognise the need for one. I
don't think you can blame most of the community for
being either superficial or politically-motivated.
Most of us have said that - yes, having a mo.wiki is
OK, even in Cyrillic script, but it needs to be at a
separate subdomain, due to all the reasons that I've
mentioned in my numerous past messages.
What, then, do these Romanians say about the fact that any
Latin-script content is sure to be a near-duplication of Romanian
content?
mo.wiki started out as a biscriptal Wikipedia, but following
complaints from Danutz, the policy was re-evaluated and it was decided
that we should only use Cyrillic because Latin script-users needs are
already satisfied closely by ro.wikipedia.
My
solution is practical, and currently it is working
fine.
True. By the way, don't think I'm trying to argue with
you just for the sake of it. Your POV is actually a
very legitimate one on this issue and it is the most
practical. I "admit" that as you said. And it's
working fine. At the moment. What I mean by at the
moment is that 1) it will get more problematic in the
future and it's better to solve the problems now and
2) you can't really call it working, because the is 1
contributor! There is basically no community yet.
We can go down that road when we come to it. We don't need to deal
with future problems now. And you are wrong - while there is only one
actual Moldovan, I have worked a lot on mo.wiki, and there have been
minor contributions from a couple of others as well.
I see there have been people (it may be the same
user
as the Cyrillic one, actually I think it is) who have
already made Latin script contributions. Already it's
starting to become problematic. What happens if a user
comes and makes Latin script contributions? Should we
simply move them to ro.wiki? Or should we keep the
mo.wiki a biscriptal confusion?
Move them? Why not redirect them? In every one of these cases,
There have been many cases where a single
contributor
has started something, which is not technically right,
and then when a larger community came, the project had
to be moved somewhere. You must realise that by
putting only Cyrillic content at mo.wiki, we become
terribly biased towards that script? Why should
Wikipedia, the free, NPOV encyclopedia, be like that?
And why should we then have to change everything when
Moldovan Latin users come over and start adding
content to the mo.wiki?
If it's NPOV, then why does Cyrillic get the short end of the stick?
You say it's because it's a minority and it's not official. But in the
world of NPOV, it doesn't matter whether or not a POV is widely held
or officially endorsed. What matters is that it's POV.
And I don't see the problem with crossing that bridge when we come to it.
the only
people who have a problem with it are
Romanians who are trying to meddle in the affairs of
the Moldovan
Wikipedia for political reasons and replace the
perfectly working
status quo with some sort of cumbersome change that
they say is
technically correct, which will make the URL longer
and require the
assistance of a developer.
You're saying this as if it would require registering
a new domain, setting up a new interface and writing
new software! It's really not that hard to make a new
subdomain! It's being done all the time, when new
language projects are being launched. So what if we
require the assistance of a developer? I think that
you really are too practical - just for the sake of
easiness and practicality, it doesn't matter how wrong
something is, or how biased it is, you won't support
it just because it requires more work. I believe that
we must first be correct, then practical. Being
practical now will just cause more problems later on.
All the time? Do you have any idea how extremely infrequently new
language subdomains are set up? And for the last 4 or 5 new ones, I
had to request it personally from a developer, sometimes a few times
before it actually got done. It would require a new subdomain, yes,
which would be longer than the existing one and would take developer
time that is currently being spent on much less frivelous issues. A
new interface would be needed, yes, but that would happen even without
a new subdomain. New software? No, mediawiki 1.4 works just fine.
Finally, I'm not happy with the status quo.
I've tried
until now numerous ways to negotiate, I started
writing on this mailing list, and yet nothing has
worked. The status quo has just been maintained, and
you haven't considered the point of view than anyone
else. Honestly, that's really frustrating. I mean,
I've written many messages that just basically say the
same thing over and over again -- we've covered no
ground here. And you can't say I haven't been
reasonable. I've proposed something that doesn't
denigrate Moldovan Cyrillic, that is perfectly fair to
it, gives it space to grow, but at the same time
doesn't put it in favour of Moldovan Latin. Yes, it's
practically harder, but I don't see anything
theoretically wrong with it. On the practical side, I
will go and contact a developer to do it if we reach
concensus. That's not that hard a move. Neither is the
whole setting up. It's not as if you now have to go
and waste a week's work on setting up a new subdomain!
Ahh, but there's where our opinions differ majorly. I see the using of
a separate -and longer - subdomain for Cyrillic not as making it so it
the situation is fair and balanced. I see it as making it so that it
puts Moldovan Latin on a pedestal compared to Cyrillic. So what if
it's majority and official? That doesn't mean it should get the
mansion while Cyrillic gets the one-room apartment.
And actually, it would probably take well over a week for me to be
able to get somebody to set up a new subdomain.
You say you're not happy with the status quo. Not to be disrespectful,
but why should I care? You have not contributed your time to mo.wiki,
and you are not Moldovan. You are speaking entirely from a Romanian
point of view, and I strongly believe that the decisions made at a
Wikipedia shouldn't be able to be second-guessed by other Wikipedia
communities.
Why aren't you happy with the status quo? Evaluate this, with your
Wikipedia usage habits, for whom does it cause a problem? You. Do you
visit mo.wiki a lot? No. Do you read it or edit it a lot? No. Have you
contributed a lot to it? No. Do you even consider your mother tongue
to be Moldovan rather than Romanian? No. So why, then, should we give
your opinion more than a microscopic weight? You not being happy with
the status quo doesn't count for a lot if the status quo doesn't
actually have any impact on your Wikipedia usage.
Mark
--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE