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

Sun Mar 5 21:38:13 UTC 2006

Well...

This is a summary such as we would be happy to see more often ! Thanks 
for it Bogdan !

A question : do you think it should just be "frozen" as is ? (no more 
editable).
Or do you think mo.wikipedia should redirect to ro.wikipedia ?

ant

Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> 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