[Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

[Mark Williamson]

Oh, and in addition:

While there is a 1-to-1 correspondence for Serbian between Latin and
Cyrillic (Latin digraphs nonwithstanding), there is not between Latin
and Cyrillic for Moldovan, so Latin -> Cyrillic conversion by computer
is impossible (well, not impossible, but it would require AI),
although Cyrillic -> Latin is usually possible.

Mark

On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Milos,
> 
> Thanks for your message.
> 
> The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
> 
> Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but
> that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was
> basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now,
> Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of
> Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
> 
> Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively
> large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this
> hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the
> Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet,
> or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
> 
> And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only
> be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a
> duplication of the Serbian content?
> 
> I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind
> around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian
> and Moldovan.
> 
> ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept
> content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started
> having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at
> mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script
> pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we
> don't want to create a content fork.
> 
> Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain
> since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan
> language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate
> Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and
> mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a
> prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see
> http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
> 
> Mark
> 
> On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect
> > > of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians
> > > complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is
> > > bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which
> > > is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially
> > > recognised as a separate language).
> >
> > Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka)
> > and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same)
> > with Serbian problem.
> >
> > So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin
> > and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional
> > script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese
> >
>