[Wikipedia-l] Voting for the closing down of Moldovan Wikipedia

Sun Mar 5 18:29:44 UTC 2006

The Moldovan Wikipedia community has decided to close down the
Wikipedia.

A bit of background on this: Moldovan was the name given to the
standard Romanian language written with Cyrillic alphabet in the
Soviet Union.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Republic of
Moldova kept this name for the language, although it asserted to
be the same language with Romanian and began to be written once
again with Latin script.

More on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language

As such, the "Moldovan language" got its own ISO code and a Wikipedia
was created for it, although practically it's the same language as
Romanian.

This Wikipedia remained empty with a redirect to Romanian Wikipedia on
the main page, until User:Node_ue was made admin and began writing
articles in Cyrillic alphabet.

About 95% of these articles were simply transliterations of articles
from Romanian Wikipedia, a part of the transliterations being done
manually by User:Russ, who can't speak Moldovan/Romanian and the
resulting articles were rather wrong.

A few articles were actually written by User:Node_ue, but they were
mostly stubs and rather badly written (with several grammatical
mistakes per sentence).

The translation of the interface used a large number of obscure
"pure Moldovan and not found in Romanian" words, which however,
were not known to actual Moldovans. (examples include
"bircieste" = "search" and "halaturi" = "tools")

The Voting
-----------

During the period of 12 January - 12 February, a local voting has been
organized to determine whether the community sees the need for the
existence of a Moldovan Wikipedia.

The vote was opened to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian
editors. While many of the side discussions were held in English
and Russian (in addition to Moldovan/Romanian), the vote was
restrained to determine the will of actual and potential editors.
Some votes were rejected on this basis.

Romanian editors were accepted to vote for two reasons:

* 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary) from the Romanian wikipedia. In the oppinion
of the moldovan organizers of the referendum, this gives Romanians a
right to express their vote.

* Romanian and Moldovan are the same language for all day-to-day
purposes (cf. [[:en:Moldovan language]]), which makes them potential
editors.

Two votes were rejected because they were from people who did not
speak Romanian/Moldovan and didn't had enough contributions to
either wikipedia.

There are several strong reasons that compelled us to request the
deletion of the Moldovan language Wikipedia. Among them technical,
originality, and ethical arguments that we briefly expose here.

History
-------
It was created by Node_ue, who was the first admin.

Its deletion has already been discussed. Consensus not reached, for
the intentions of Node_ue, and the reaction of Moldovan editors was
not clear at the time. At that time, it was already clear that a
Latin-script Moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist (so that even
Node_ue agreed to point the latin version to the Romanian wikipedia).
It appeared that his only concern is to maintain the cyrillic version
of the moldovan wikipedia, which uses the Sovied-imposed script.

Following several abusive administration incidents, the adminship has
been removed from Node_ue.

==Deletion referendum==

Was held between between 12 January and 12 February and it was opened
to confirmed (>25 edits) Moldovan and Romanian editors. Romanian
editors were accepted here for two reasons:

- 95% of the content was simply copied here and transliterated (no
translation is necessary). In the oppinion of the moldovan organizers
of the referendum, this gives Romanians a right to express their vote.

- Romanian and Moldovan are arguably the same language for all
day-to-day purposes.

The result of the referendum is the following:

* No Moldovan editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.

* No Romanian editor supports the existence of this wikipedia.

* Only two editors have abstained, showing that the overwhelming
majority of the users find the existence of the moldovan wikipedia
offensive.

By Moldovan editor we understand here an editor that is able to
contribute originally in the language.

Conclusion
------------

In conclusion, we, the Moldovan and Romanian wikipedia editors,
believe that the current moldovan wikipedia has no reason to exist
for:

- it has no editor fluent in Moldovan

- it brings no information

- it is considered offensive by many Moldovans and Romanians.

Voting results
--------------

The following people voted for the closing of the Wikipedia:

Moldova
----------
#[[User:Pavel|Pavel]]
#[[User:Furculita|Furculita]]
#[[User:AndersoN|AndersoN]]
#[[User:Landroni|Landroni]]
#[[User:Argos|Argos]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:TSO1D|TSO1D]]

Romania
---------
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Out_slide|Out_slide]]
#[[User:Bogdan|Bogdan]]
#[[User:Romihaitza|Romihaitza]]
#[[User:AdiJapan|AdiJapan]]
#[[User:Dpotop]]/[[:ro:Utilizator:Dpotop]]
#[[User:Ditae|Ditae]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Vlad|Vlad]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Orioane]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Leinarius]] 
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Wars]]
#[[Utilizator:Dacodava|Dacodava]]
#[[User:Vasile|Vasile]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:MobyDick]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Arado]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Waelsch]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:olario]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Bunu vio]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:SCriBu]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Emily]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:R.S.]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Constantzeanu]]
#[[User:Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?|Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti?]]
#[[User:Cosco|Cosco]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:AnaZ|AnaZ]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Dumiac|Dumiac]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Evosphere]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Laurap]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:KlaudiuMihaila]]
#[[:ro:Utilizator:Strainu]]

With these results, a clear consensus has been reached in the group
of those who speak Romanian/Moldovan language.

http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alegeri