[Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

[Mark Williamson]

Liviu fails to mention a number of things.

First of all, he can not testify to the current situation in Moldova
because he does not live there. He lives in Toulouse, at least last
time I heard.

If you went to the (old) main page, it was made _very clear_ that
Cyrillic is the minority script. The site notice was, and still is,
huge bold letters telling people that if they want to read articles in
Latin, go to ro.wp.

> scale (that is, generally speaking, you won't encounter Moldovan Cyrillic
> anywhere in Moldova). At least for Moldova, I can assure you, as I am a
> native Moldovan. As far as Transnistria is concerned, I really doubt it.

Transnistrian internet is very small, consisting of a handful of
websites mostly in Russian. If it grew bigger, maybe you could expect
more. However, there are a couple of Transnistrian government websites
in Moldovan Cyrillic:

www.kspmr.idknet.com/md/
www.president-pmr.org/news/dok/obr_md.htm (in fact this document was
signed by V.A. Tulgara, an ethnic Moldovan and one of the founders of
Transnistria)

You may reject the latter as propaganda, but statistics from
independent researchers have shown that Transnistrian Moldovans are
overwhelmingly supporters of Transnistrian independence.

Even a document published by a progressive group which studies
European integration of Moldova used Cyrillic in one document:

http://www.pca.md/files/publications44.doc

(it's in Document 20, you have to scroll down quite a bit, but all of
Document 20 is in Cyrillic).

> The big issue: when people visit  mo.wikipedia.org and see the Cyrillic
> content, they believe that this is the language currently used in Moldova.

That's not really an issue. What Wikipedia is for is to provide
information using language as a vehicle, not vice-versa. If someone
wants to know about Moldovan language, they should go to the article
at their respective Wikipedia about the language, rather than mo.wp.

> By all this I am trying to explain that current Cyrillic content has nothing
> to do on mo.wikipedia. If it has any right to exist (low quality content, no

Psh.

> The reason for my opinion is that before 28 June
> 2006<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-June/044584.html>,
> not one time (at least not to my knowledge and not on the Wikipedia-I
> mailing list ; please correct me if I am wrong) did Mark ackowledge himself
> as being a native Moldovan speaker. Although he had plenty of occasions,  for
> example<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043992.html>

I did mention it elsewhere, including on my userpage at the Romanian
Wikipedia. I don't know if I mentioned it on this mailing list.

> Moldovan speaker ever asked for a Moldovan Wikipedia", Mark's response is
> "Dpotop is spreading FUD". And, as far as I know, Moldovan Wikipedia was
> created on Mark Williamson's demand.

FUD is an acronym, look it up. This suggests that he is deceiving
people, which can include telling lies, which could thus imply that he
was lying when he said there are no native speakers.

Also, you're wrong -- Moldovan Wikipedia existed before I found it, it
just had no articles (like the Kanuri Wikipedia right now --
http://kr.wikipedia.org/ ).

> I am wondering if shouldn't the decision on closing down the Moldovan
> Wikipedia<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043897.html>be
> put in action as soon as possible, to avoid all these useless
> discussions

No, it won't, because of the new vote. An old decision that was never
carried out is unlikely to be put into place without further
deliberations if new events transpond.

> (if my calculations are correct, the next re-openning of this discussion is
> scheduled on September
> 2006<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/>).

Indeed. And I am not looking forward to it. But I will stock up on my
supplies and I will practice my oratory in preparation.

> If there are users who want to get out of the state of confusion regarding
> this issue, they could look here for an acceptably well put status
> quo<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#What_decision_makers_need_to_know>and
> here for some
> background <http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rezultat_alegeri>

Hah. You just happen to provide the one vote which resulted in a
"close" result. The VERY FIRST VOTE on that Wikipedia resulted in a
clear "leave open".

Mark

-- 
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