[Foundation-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

[GerardM]

Hoi,
The Romanians and Moldovans have let it explicitly known that they, by law,
do not accept the Cyrillic expression of the language. Consequently, they
denounce what they as a consequence recognise is not theirs. There is an
unfinished war going on and this situation is consequently starkly
political. The name of a language and the name of a country are not
necessarily the same.. an obvious mistake.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On Nov 9, 2007 7:53 PM, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> GerardM wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > First of all there were people contributing to the mo.wikipedia. This is
> > conveniently forgotten.
> >
> > When for political reasons a project is closed, something that I find
> > objectionable in and of itself, and when the language committee does not
> > consider political arguments at all, it makes in my mind perfect sense
> to at
> > least inform you that the arguments used to close a project down are not
> > accepted at all when considering the start or restart of a project.
> >
> > Again, the fact of the matter is that a vote does not remove the
> politics
> > from the issue. When there is an existing state of war, you present the
> > perfect argument why this vote has been a flawed instrument.
> >
> > Again, the procedure followed is problematic. I disagree utterly with
> the
> > proposal and the fact that this project was closed at all in the first
> > place.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> >
> >
> Wading into this argument (and trying to duck the arrows already flying
> around), this is a contentious issue in part because most people
> involved with Wikimedia projects generally want to stay apolitical in
> terms of the major issues involved.
>
> Most of the issues presented regarding the Moldovan Wikipedia go back to
> WWII era politics and later Cold War era policies, and it is important
> to keep that in mind. (I'm trying very hard not to invoke Godwin's law
> here, but it is tough and strangely applies as an exception in this
> case!)  In addition, it pushes hard on the line in terms of defining
> what exactly is a language, and at what point does a people distinguish
> itself with a unique identity.
>
> The primary criticism that I felt was valid in the whole mess was the
> fact that only non-native speakers were even involved with creating
> content for the Moldovan Wikipedia, including one particularly
> argumentative individual who was an American that was blocked from
> en.wikipedia due to flame and edit wars, and moved on to smaller wikis
> like the Moldovan Wikipedia because he could be a "big fish" there.  I'm
> not sure where he picked up Romanian or Moldovan as a language, but he
> was also quite active on several other language editions of Wikipedia as
> well, and was one of the leading opponents of closing down the Moldovan
> Wikipedia.  In short, I don't really consider most of those opposed to
> closing down this edition of Wikipedia to be all that credible, as has
> been the general concensus on this issue when brought up on Meta.
>
> One positive aspect about closing this Wikipedia, as well as the Klingon
> Wikipedia, is that the process of creating a new language edition has
> become much more formalized, where some standards regarding what should
> be dismissed and what would be allowed have been established.  Shutting
> down and cleaning up this Wikipedia edition is really something of
> trying to clean up mistakes that happened in the past, in spite of some
> very good intentions, and trying to be wary of those who would take a
> situation such as an underused Wikipedia language edition (or any other
> Wikimedia project) and try to turn that project into their own private
> playground.
>
> IF, and only if, there are some strong native speakers of Moldovan
> (regardless of political motivations) or those who have a genuine
> interest in preserving the language from a linguistic viewpoint want to
> get this going again, they can go through the new project creation
> process that other languages are currently going through.  In this
> regard, preserving the db dump is a good idea if any future group really
> desires to get involved, but I fail to see why given the current climate
> of the supporters that it needs to be preserved, especially when there
> are significant objections that have been raised by native speakers of
> the Romanian language, and people who live in Moldovia.
>
> -- Robert Horning
>
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