[Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday "Our romanian language" in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !

[Dennis During]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:18 AM, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's more complex than that I think.
>
> "mo" was deleted from the list of ISO codes relatively recently; when
> the Wiki was created it was a valid ISO code.
>
>
> Like I said, it is a complex issue. Also, from what I have heard (and
> this may be incorrect), the US Library of Congress deleted the MO code
> without consulting with any Moldovan authority which seems
> inappropriate. Imagine the outcry if those "experts" were to delete
> SR, HR, and BS codes in favor of SH without consulting any local
> authority?
>
> Mark
>
> Funny you should mention deleting SR, HR, and BS. At Wiktionary this very
issue was voted on. An inside group favored the eliminations based on the
linguistic argument that the various overlapping dialects (which don't
correspond well to national borders) and on the valuable contributions in
other areas of the principal admin advocating the elimination. A great deal
of nastiness accompanied the vote, which failed due to the participation of
new Wiktionary contributors. These contributors have now made sure that they
have made 50 edits so as to qualify under proposed new voting qualification
rules also under vote.  The issue has been somewhat divisive.

The point is that it in some cases language is an aspect of national
identity. We are very lucky when an international authority (the ISO) makes
a decision which we can choose to rely on instead of getting involved in
matters generating such anger.

There does seem to be a clear trend in some places for wikipedia and
wiktionary to become national rather than linguistic in their focus. I have
noted the very low influence of Indian English contributors on Wiktionary
despite their being one of the largest groups of English speakers and having
some distinct vocabulary and distinct grammatical details to their variety
of English. The situation contrasts with that for, say, Australia. I wonder
whether that is attributable to a similar phenomenon

-- 
Dennis C. During

Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity
with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry