[Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia Proposal

[Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)]

Hi to all,

This is Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia. We have
currently (in the past week especially) had quite a
lot of controversy about the Moldovan Wikipedia at
http://mo.wikipedia.org.

The reason I'm raising the issue here is to gauge the
response of the wider community towards my proposal
and also what's happening over at mo:

Mo.wikipedia.org was founded a while ago, but until
about  this year, it basically had no content and
simply contained a redirect link to the Romanian
Wikipedia, since Moldovan is identical to Romanian,
renamed for political reasons (I won't go into the
whole story now, you can see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language).

Anyway, so a few months ago, a user called Vertaler
came and added some Cyrillic content to the Moldovan
Wikipedia. Cyrillic is a script used by a minority of
Moldovans. Node_ue (Mark Williamson) supported that
and said that he wishes to convert mo.wikipedia.org
into a Cyrillic-Moldovan Wikipedia, with all Latin
content being placed at ro.wikipedia.org in order to
avoid duplication.

After negotation with Node, I have come forward with a
proposal that he has agreed with, which seeks to
establish mo.wikipedia.org as a biscriptal
Latin/Cyrillic Wikipedia in interface, and a
biscriptal portal, but with Cyrillic content hosted on
mo.wikipedia in order to avoid duplication with
ro.wiki.

The entire proposal is at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere,
in English and Romanian.

Now, the reason I've come here is because some users
from the Romanian Wikipedia do not agree with keeping
a Moldovan Wikipedia for Cyrillic content, because
they believe that a Moldovan language doesn't exist
(most linguists agree with this) and that since
Wikipedia is neutral, it shouldn't have a Wikipedia in
a language renamed for political reasons like
Moldovan. Also, since Cyrillic is no longer the
official script in Moldova (it used to be during
Communist times), there is no place for it as mo.wiki.
Other users agree to Cyrillic content, but not under
the "Moldovan language" name.

The controversy, which can be viewed at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Паӂина
принчипалэ,
has been exacerbated by the fact that there has been
mutual distrust between Node on one hand, and a series
of Romanian users, on the other. Node has blamed the
Romanian users for being "nationalist" and "radical"
and "anti-Moldovan", this being the reason why they
don't support a Moldovan Wikipedia. The Romanian users
have labelled Node a "Stalinist" and claim that he is
not listening to them even though they are in the
majority. 

Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
sysop undemocratically (without any community
consensus - note, though, that at that time the
Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
place, especially since Node is saying that the
Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).

Now, personally, I have taken a very neutral stance
and compelled both sides to argue more rationally and
stop the criticism. I also am entirely committed to
hearing both sides out and acting in a professional
manner.

We have made some headway recently, and I have struck
an agreement with Node over my proposal, which he
seems to support. Some of the Romanian users, however,
still do not agree with all parts of the proposal,
some of them asking for a separate subdomain for a
Moldovan-Cyrillic wiki. What do people say to that? I
would personally agree to that, meaning a mo.wiki
which is simply a portal, and a mo-cyr.wikipedia.org
which hosts only Cyrillic content.

I have presented my case here in order to gauge public
response. I have also opened a consultation period
with the community to allow for any complaints to the
proposal, at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere.
I'd just like to hear some opinions of people which
aren't involved in this case so we can get more
neutral, unaffiliated viewpoints.

Thanks,

Ronline


		
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