[Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

Tue Oct 5 21:44:11 UTC 2010

Yes, I am not proposing that we have to have a new Moldovan-Romanian
language Wiki (we don't have a United States-english Wiki, a
Canadian-english Wiki, a Great Britain-english Wiki, an
Australian-english Wiki, etc...). (oh, ouch, there's a contingent from
New Zealand chasing me now!)

I am saying, "mo.wikipedia" in Cyrillic?  Insults all sides, and is Wrong.

-george

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> We will never have a Romanian or a Moldovan Wikipedia. What we have is a
> Romanian language Wikipedia.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> On 6 October 2010 04:11, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> NPOV is good as far as it goes, but the issues of wiki naming and
>> language are necessarily one where positions need to be taken on some
>> very touchy real-world issues.
>>
>> The naming of mo.wikipedia and its use of Cyrillic were particularly
>> unfortunate, as the Moldovan standard alphabet is Roman, the
>> Transnistrian is Cyrillic, the Moldovan TLD / name code is "MD" not
>> "MO", and we have no Transnistrian wiki that I am aware of.
>>
>> Essentially - we landed in a configuration that simultaneously is as
>> wrong as possible, on every account, offending nearly all people on
>> both sides of the defacto border.  This is highly inappropriate, even
>> from a "We're NPOV and not here to make political statements"
>> standpoint.
>>
>> The particular campaign of emails is ... at best unfortunate.  But we
>> really should do something about this eventually.
>>
>> Whether that's deleting mo.wikipedia, renaming it to tr.wikipedia (or
>> deleting and creating a new one there), or what, I don't know.  But
>> we're Very Wrong right now.  We can neutrally get to Somewhat Right.
>>
>> I understand (at a high level) the technical issues and staff priority
>> issues, etc.  But there's a difference between "low on the priority
>> order" and "We shouldn't fix this".
>>
>>
>> -george
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hoi,
>> > Your approach is the wrong one. Our aim is to bring information to all
>> > people of this world. When people leave for political reasons, they are
>> > welcome to leave. Their point of view is clearly not the Neutral Point Of
>> > View that is also expected of them in their contributions.
>> > Thanks,
>> >       GerardM
>> >
>> > On 6 October 2010 03:50, Marcus Buck <me at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >>  An'n 05.10.2010 22:24, hett M. Williamson schreven:
>> >> > 2010/10/5 Gerard Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>> >> >> Hoi,
>> >> >> Technically it is easier to transliterate from Cyrillic. So when
>> >> >> transliteration works in a round robin fashion, it does not really
>> >> matter in
>> >> >> what script people edit. It will only be stored in one script. The
>> >> choice
>> >> >> for a script can be based on a user setting or on the method access
>> to
>> >> the
>> >> >> information was sought.
>> >> >> Thanks,
>> >> > Gerard, I am aware of all this, however in the proposals of Marcus
>> >> > there is constant mention of a "read-only" Cyrillic portal rather than
>> >> > a "round robin" transliteration program which enables editors to
>> >> > create content in Cyrillic which is saved to the database in Latin.
>> >> >
>> >> > -m.
>> >> I'm trying to promote a solution that _works_. If you want a solution
>> >> where Cyrillic users can participate on par with Latin users you need
>> >> the support of the Latin users. I'm sure you won't get that support. You
>> >> can critizise ro.wp for being unwilling to give that support but that
>> >> won't change anything about it. If you try to impose something on them
>> >> that can break the ro.wp community. If just 2% of all active ro.wp
>> >> Wikipedians leave the project in disagreement about the issue that's
>> >> twice as worse as if the 1% Romanian speakers of Transnistria are unable
>> >> to participate.
>> >>
>> >> Marcus Buck
>> >> User:Slomox
>> >>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com