[Wikipedia-l] Re: Conflict between two Wikipedias

[Wikipedia Romania]

Hi, I have just joined this mailing list so excuse me
if I'm posting in the wrong place by not "continuing"
the thread about the disputes regarding the Romanian
and Moldovan Wikipedias.

I think, as Mark (Node) highlighted, people are
arguing two separate issues here which should not be
combined. One is whether Moldovan or Romanian is the
same language, the other is over what to use mo.wiki
for. Now the first issue could be argued for forever,
and that's not really the focus of the discussion. 

The actual dispute is due to what to use mo.wiki for.
I think the fundamental idea lies in this: Mark wants
to use mo.wiki for Cyrillic only, with an explanation
redirecting people to Latin content on the Main Page.
I think the logic behind this is that since we already
have mo.wiki, and it's no use putting up Latin content
because it would be nearly identical to the ro.wiki
content, we should use mo.wiki for Cyrillic. I believe
that this is a practical reason, and I would agree
that this is the "easiest" solution because it would
require simply maintaining the status quo.

My proposal has been that we actually make the mo.wiki
a disambiguation Wikipedia, sort of like the
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, not in the sense that
theMoldovan issue is similar to Serbo-Croatian issue,
but just technically. There would be two columns
there, one redirecting users to a Moldovan Cyrillic
subdomain the other to ro.wiki. Now, the subdomain
should be mo-cyr not ro-cyr simply because out of the
people who write Moldovan-Romanian in Cyrillic, most
of them will say they speak Moldovan, and nearly all
of them live in Moldova. So it's only correct to call
that language Moldovan and set up the subdomain. The
reason why I think my proposal would work best is
because mo.wiki cannote be Cyrillic-only, even with a
Latin script redirect, simply because Cyrillic is the
minority script. We should provide content for that
minority, but not as if they were the majority. Those
who want Moldovan in Latin script, which is the
majority of speakers, even who say they speak Moldovan
not Romanian, can go to ro.wiki. If there is actually
demand, then perhaps we could form a Moldovan
Wikipedia  in Latin script, even though practically
that would be a tad pointless due to the
near-identicality of Ro-Latin and Mo-Latin.

Just to clear something up here about language
separation - I believe that Romanian and Moldovan are
not separate languages lingusitically. However, I do
believe that we can regard them as separate languages
politically. The definition of a language is not only
scientific, or purely linguistic, but rather has a
human/political element to it. Because the Moldovan
government constitutionally recognises "Moldovan" as
their language, then Wikipedia should recognise the
existence of the 

So when Mark said, "it should be noted that
Ronline believes - at least it would seem he does -
that Romanian and Moldovan are truly separate
languages", he was half-right. I mean, I don't believe
they're separate languages, but I'm not saying that we
shouldn't regard them as such. Basically, I'm not
going to argue any side in that issue of whether ro
and mo are separate because that's not really the key
to the so-called conflict.

Now, about meddling into the affairs of other
Wikipedias. Mark made a very valid point about
Romanian users involving themselves in Moldovan
affairs. What I'd like to point out is that our
involvement in the Moldovan issue is not so much in
our role as ro.wiki contributors but rather as members
of the broader Wikimedia community. We're involving
ourselves because we're close to Moldova, our language
is the same, or at least very similar, and the
Romanian wiki communities and Moldovan communities
have a considerable degree of overlap. It's true
though that I haven't visited Moldova and that perhaps
we're not all that knowledgeable on Moldovan affairs,
but in any case we're much closer to them and
therefore know a lot more about them than probably any
other nation in the world (don't want to sound
arrogant here, but Moldova's "closest" country in
Romania, not politically but culturally,
linguistically, etc).



		
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