[Foundation-l] Delete "moldovan" Wikipedia

Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Thu Feb 5 18:38:39 UTC 2009


I read the text of the petition, here:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/moldovanwikipedia/

Parts of it are very humorous.

"It would be absurd to have a Wikipedia in "English" of "French" with
Arabic or Cyrillic letters. It is as absurd to have a "Moldovan
Wikipedia" with a Cyrillic script."

Well, sure, it would be... but is there a part of the world where
people actually write English or French in Arabic or Cyrillic, the way
Cyrillic is used for Moldovan on the left bank of the Dniester*? If
you can show me one, I'll happily support Wikipedias for them.

"You would probably intervene if somebody would start re-writing the
English Wikipedia in Arabic letters, and you would probably not allow
that."

Well, if somebody tried to start such a project within Wikimedia, it
would probably be rejected... but then, there's no case for writing
English in Arabic. Historically, it's not been done, and it isn't done
that way by any native speaker today. On the other hand, Moldovan was
written in Cyrillic in ALL of Moldova until 1989, and today it is
still used on the left bank of the Dniester and (perhaps) in some
Moldovan expatriot communities in the former Soviet Union. What SCHOOL
teaches children English-speaking children to write their own language
using Arabic letters, the way that most Moldavian-language schools
teach Moldavian children to use Cyrillic in that territory?

I realize this is an emotional issue for you, but please don't distort
facts. If your argument is really reasonable, you should be able to
make it without resorting to invalid analogies.

---
* The politically neutral name for what is sometimes referred to as
Transnistria or the PMR.

skype: node.ue

2009/2/5 Cetateanu Moldovanu <cetateanumd at gmail.com>:
>   1. Wikipedia has a pretended version of it in "Moldovan language" using
>   the Cyrillic script
>   2. The state language is Moldovan (identical to Romanian), and it is
>   written in the Latin alphabet, not Cyrillic
>   3. we request you to delete the fake "Moldovan version in Cyrillic" from
>   Wikipedia
>
> We have 2,212 people on facebook who signed the petition.
> http://apps.facebook.com/causes/39775
>
> Or at least rename it to mo-cyrillic.wikipedia
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