[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not the place for national constitution

Thu Nov 16 11:09:45 UTC 2006

> > Yeah. Despite their constant assertions to the
> > otherwise, I can
> > testify that Romanians are collectively Russophobic.
>
> What is this doing here?
> I'm not sure that wikipedia-l is the place for
> exposing your feelings about some nation or another.
> User pages and blogs serve this purpose.

Well, I'm sure that it is, when it's related to Wikipedia. And whether
or not Romanians are Russophobic (something you cannot deny --  while
your "public face" on Wikipedia-l makes nice, it's obvious from some
things you've said in Romanian that you don't like Russia one bit) is
certainly related to this issue.

> The argument here is about whether one *needs* two
> fully independent wikipedias (ro and mo), or two
> interfaces to a single code base, given that
> 1. the standard language is the same, as stated in
> sources presented above, and accepted, for instance,
> by GerardM.

If I recall correctly, GerardM *also* stated that both scripts *are*
used. RTFM please.

> 2. wikipedia is about languages, not politics

...your point being what? That's what I've been saying this whole thread.

> And there is a second question: Is the second variant
> feasible?

The second variant? You mean a conversion to Cyrillic? To a great
extent, it is. People have paraded around Bogdan's converter, but
really, it is, ahem, less than adequate. I actually sent him the
appropriate fixes, but he couldn't be bothered (just as he can't be
bothered to remove vandalism or block vandals on mo.wp).

If someone _really tried_, I'm sure it would be easy to come up with
something quite workable.

But would it be accepted by Romanians? Tell me. Would it? And don't
say "that doesn't even matter, the question is -- is it needed"
because I know that's what you would say. I want a real answer. Would
a Cyrillic converter be accepted by Romanians, yes or no? And after
you answer that question according to your own judgement, try to tell
me that they are not Russophobic.

And before you ask the question of is it needed, the answer is yes, it
is. You go around making all sorts of statements assuming that nothing
has changed. Well, it has, and the thing you said in the past isn't
true anymore. The vast majority of Transnistrians _use Cyrillic_ and
most (if not all) of them use it _by choice_.

The arguments usually given after this is established in any conversation are:

1) They are a separatist region. They don't matter.
-- Well, they may be separatist, and that may mean you want to ignore
their policy, but you can't ignore their people. And it's not just 1
or 2 people either.
2) Well, why don't we wait until they show up?
-- It's not as if they haven't already. And it's not as if more won't
in the future. Bonaparte has succeeded in scaring away the handful who
have actually ever indicated interest to me in that Wikipedia.
3) The vote on meta clearly showed we shouldn't have it.
-- Yes, a vote that was flashmobbed by Romanians and Russians, called
for separately by Constantzeanu, yourself, Bonaparte, and, I admit,
myself. Besides since when is Wikimedia a democracy? Actually, very
few political entities in the world use absolute democracy because
many of the eligible voters are not well educated enough on the issues
at hand. Show me a country that has all of its citizens simultaneously
as its heads of state and I will show you a Wikimedia where everything
is decided by a vote of the masses.
4) Moldovans clearly don't want it
-- How many Moldovans have we asked? And how did we even get them? If
I recall correctly, it was selectively by people like Bonaparte who
put messages everywhere in Romanian telling them that some American
bastard kid is trying to do blah blah blah and help us vote against
him blah blah blah. Doesn't seem likely to draw out the people who
would vote to keep that Wiki does it now? And besides, the Chisinau
elite cannot represent Nistrians.
5) It's an insult to all of those Romanians who died to write in the
Latin script
-- Doesn't even deserve a response.

And btw it happened and you didn't ;-p So either you weren't aware, or
you didn't mean it in the first place.

Mark

> Dpotop
>
>
> > I don't really
> > blame them, given the role Russia has had in their
> > history.
> >
> > Danutz claimed that it was a "coincidence" that they
> > removed the
> > Cyrillic character from the ball in the logo to
> > replace it with a
> > Romanian one, that they were just replacing a letter
> > at random, not
> > because it was Cyrillic. But I do not believe this.
> >
> > Certainly, it is a basic difficulty that most
> > Romanians don't know
> > Cyrillic well enough to be able to write it,
> > although they can
> > probably read it with some difficulty (just as
> > someone who knew
> > Serbian Latin but not Cyrillic could eke their way
> > through a text).
> >
> > Presumably, though, it could be solved that editbox
> > text, too, would
> > be converted.
> >
> > But still, ro.wp would probably vote against the
> > very idea of having
> > Cyrillic on their WP in any way, shape, or form.
> > They've said some
> > pretty interesting stuff about it, like how badly it
> > fits the
> > language, despite the fact that it is linguistically
> > much
> > better-suited (more phonetic and has no digraphs,
> > represents some
> > distinctions that Latin does not, and combines a
> > couple of
> > diphthongs), and a hostile attitude in general
> > through various
> > actions.
> >
> > I'm guessing that a long-term solution (ie, when the
> > internet comes to
> > Transnistria in its entirety) would be some form of
> > a transliterating
> > portal, if not a separate WP. (likely the Romanian
> > domination of power
> > would anger Nistrians regarding POV disputes)
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 15/11/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > > > As long as there is no automated lossless
> > > > > conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from
> > Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> > > > > orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide
> > the required functionality
> > > > > for Romanian/Moldovan.
> > > >
> > > > That's a third thing, and an implementation
> > detail for the given
> > > > language (eg, already implemented for Serbian,
> > etc). Nor is it related
> > > > to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.
> > >
> > > Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia
> > are regulated by
> > > policy, not by software (if initial article is
> > written in
> > > Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian)
> > and we are not quite
> > > happy because of that (we want solution in which
> > anyone may use it's
> > > own script and variant inside of the code). And
> > what we want, it is
> > > necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all
> > other cases where
> > > differences between orthographies are not inside
> > of one cultural
> > > space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to
> > see Iyekavian text,
> > > but I don't think that it would be OK for some
> > Romanian user to have
> > > to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> >
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> > >
> >
> >
> > --
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>
>
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