[Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 00:49, Zugravu Gheorghe
<zugravu.gheorghe at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Milos proposal was about to discuss the issue of the "moldovan"
> wikipedia inside the interested people, the ones who sustain the idea of
> a such, and the opponents (maybe the word is not the most appropriate
> one - but i can remember any other more neutral word), together with the
> Langcom. In order not to monopolize the discussions on the
> [foundation-l] (and I have the feeling that otherwise the subject will
> become very "hot", and maybe somewhere too personalized), as M. Williams
> points out regarding the discussions that may take place.
>
> I want to remember that the question of the existence of a "moldovan
> language" separated by Romanian language, with a distinct grammar,
> vocabulary and literature, partially or totally different, it is an
> extremely politicized question inside Republic of Moldova, first of all.
> There has been no clear conclusion/decision on the question, since it
> implies a lot of political issues to be brought up.
> In the last years it is more a silent consensus in society that
> "moldovan" is identical with Romanian language, and that "moldovan" is
> merely the name of the spoken language used by people living in
> historical Moldova, divide between Romania and Republica Moldova (as
> Irish or Scottish dialect of English, or American-English), with some
> different words - *but* - with totally identical *grammar*.
>
> Thus the idea of Gutza to create a special discussion page on Meta will
> fit the idea of an open, public and transparent discussion with the
> support of Language subcommittee. And that we should not use the
> foundation-l for sharing inside talks on the issue.

One side wants to close the project, while it is against the core
principle of Wikimedia: closing the project which serves strong
majority of 177.000 Moldovans from Transnitria without giving them at
least some other option is not according to the idea to "give the sum
of all human knowledge to every human being".

In other words, plain deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia in Cyrillic is
not an option for the near future (let's say, next couple of years),
while it is unlikely that it would be an option at all. So, some other
idea is needed.

I have some ideas how it could be solved, but my ideas are irrelevant.
In any case, their implementation would be treated as imposing a
solution "from the above". Thus, interested parties should find
solution.

Years passed in open discussions and nothing acceptable has been
concluded. So, I suggest that a couple of you should discuss privately
and articulate [a draft for] some sensible solution and present it
publicly for further discussion and, after that discussion, the final
implementation.

According to the present situation, I have no confidence in continuing
any public discussion without making a proposal. To be honest, I am
highly skeptical about public discussion after making proposal, but,
at least, at that time the proposal would be in the focus.

This issue is probably the most important reason why we don't have
Wikimedia Romania yet. That means that the interest of the whole
Wikimedian community is to have that problem solved. However, we are
not able to solve it instead of you; as well as creating Wikimedia
Romania is in the interest of Romanian Wikimedians, too.

I suppose that you understand the circumstances under which Moldovan
Wikipedia [in Cyrillic] has been created. At the early time of
Wikipedia, Moldovan language was codified as a separate language. If
it was not the situation, it would have been highly unlikely that we
have the project now, but it would have been likely that we would have
it in the future, if Transnitrian Moldovans would have adopt Internet
in significant numbers. That situation would have been much fortunate
as the linguistic and national issues in Moldova and Romania won't be
so hot after ten more years or so. However, the situation is
different.