As a total outsider who has never been to Moldova, one more aspect has
come to my mind while reading the above lines:
Does the fact that a small minority of people might prefer to use
the Cyrillic script for private purposes justify the enormous
effort of building an entire encyclopedia for them - while they
know the Latin script?
My point is: if a society generelly uses one script (which seems
to be so according to everything I have heard from our fellow
Wikipedians who know the country as well as the language) it doesn't
really matter if an individual likes another script better. They will
have to adapt to the common standard if they want to read the paper,
a current book, the phone book, the signs in public places, labels
on products etc., make they annual tax declaration, do business, get
a job, ride a train ... So are any severe reasons for Wikipedia to make
an exception here?
In Moldova proper, virtually everyone knows how to read/write Latin script,
because the government isn't allowed to use Cyrillic script (it's
unconstitutional, since Latin is specified as offical script). The case is
quite interesting - in rural areas, less people actually write in Cyrillic,
because rural areas are much less Russified. In urban areas, those who
previously wrote in Cyrillic have been accustomed so far to ubiquitous text
in Latin. So, as I said before, I don't think this Cyrillic script Wikipedia
serves any really practical purpose.
Having said that, there is still one open question: the issue of
Transnistria which does not make things easier and may
not be forgotten,
of course.
Yes, Cyrillic is official there. Remember, though, that Transnistria is
basically the continuation of the Moldavian SSR (Soviet Moldova) - it has
the same flag, it operates under a dictatorial structure, and it's
maintained Moldovan-Cyrillic. There was media coverage some time ago that
the Transnistrian government had closed down Moldovan-Latin schools, which
were quite plentiful. Romanians/Moldovans in Transnistria are quite widely
persecuted and basically unrepresented politically. Their "emotional" links
to Moldova and to an extent Romania are therefore quite strong. I presume
about half of those people would know and prefer the Latin alphabet, which
leaves about 100,000 people that would actually write in Cyrillic and may
have some trouble reading/writing Latin script.