[Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

[Gerard Meijssen]

Anthere schreef:
> Hello
>
> Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the 
> whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
> Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
Hoi,
As I can not edit on the Moldovan, the Romanian or any of the Balkan 
Wikipedias but as I do have an interest in languages and as I have spend 
a considerable amount of time trying to understand what the issues are. 
I am happy to oblige.

As a language Moldovan is considered by linguists to be the same as 
Romanian. The Romanian language is written in the Latin script. In the 
days of the USSR, Moldova used to be a USSR republic and has since 
become an independent nation. However, a small part, Transnistria, broke 
away from Moldova and declared itself independent in 1990. There has 
been a war between Moldova and Transnistria until a cease fire was 
reached in 1992. Forces of the 18th Russian army fought on the side of 
Transnistria.

Transnistria uses the Cyrillic script, Moldova the Latin script and as 
part of the conflict, they both declared the use of script used by the 
others illegal. The Wikipedia articles says: "The problem of the 
official language in the MSSR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSSR> had 
become a Gordian knot <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot>, being 
exaggerated and, perhaps, intentionally politicized. Some described the 
language laws as "discriminatory" and criticized their rapid 
implementation. Others, on the contrary, complained the laws were not 
followed."

The problem for wikipedia is that we suffer the brunt of extremists of 
both sides. People who will do whatever to keep their project alive and 
people who will do whatever to kill off the http://mo.wikipedia.org  The 
mo.wikipedia is traumatised by a lack of admins fighting spam and 
vandalism and of vilification of people who want to create a project 
that is in Cyrillic.

The mo.wikipedia can not at present function normally; their main page 
stigmatises the effort and has people go to the http://ro.wikipedia.org. 
There are people of other Wikipedia projects that vandalise each other 
projects in the name of their "good" cause. Given that Wikipedia stands 
for a Neutral Point Of View these people are all horribly wrong and 
given these actions they cannot be trusted to bring a NPOV in their own 
language either.

 From a language point of view, it would be best to come to one project, 
a project where the Moldovan orthography both in the Latin and the 
Cyrillic script is accepted. It is extremely likely that both a Moldovan 
orthography and a Cyrillic script for this language will be supported by 
the ISO in the future. Imho it will need a roadmap with clear 
deliverables to both parties to come to such a situation.

Thanks,
     GerardM

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Transnistria