[Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

Sun Mar 12 09:10:44 UTC 2006

Dear Matt,

You correctly understood the situation, but just a part of it. The fact that Romanian can be transliterated into cyrillic was already known, but there is also the question of where to put this tool. 

Leaving it at mo.wiki proved to be useless/bad, for it gathered no further support, and at the same time managed to stir nationalisms. Putting it at mo-cyr may be an idea, although giving a wiki domain to a bot may seem an overkill. Finally, putting it on ro.wiki as a full-fledged script raises another question: The current moldovan cyrillic script is a Soviet invention. When Romanian was written in cyrillic script (until mid-19th century) another cyrillic alphabet was in use. 

Please, advise,
Dpotop

Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote: On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> What will be the reaction if the Romanian Wikipedia converts
> automatically to Cyrillic? Not just among Wikipedians, but among
> Romanians in general.

Anyone who reacts negatively is being frankly ridiculous.  Not that
such behaviour is unlikely, of course.

These seem to be the facts as I see them: (let me know if I get anything wrong)

1. There are some people who speak a language that is essentially a
version of Romanian (whether under that name, Moldovan, or whatever)
but read and write it in Cyrillic characters.  These include some
people unable to read Romanian in Latin script, and others who would
prefer to read it in Cyrillic because they're more familiar with it
that way.
2. There has proven to be, currently, insufficient contributors
interested in producing a Cyrillic-script Wikipedia in this language
to make it a truly vibrant and alive project.
3. It is possible to transliterate latin-script Romanian into cyrillic
script in an automated fashion with few errors.  Some words etc. have
to be special-cased because it isn't always a 1:1 transliteration, but
it's certainly feasible.

It seems to me that having a Romanian latin-script source base with
automated transliteration into Cyrillic should keep most practical
people in all communities happy.  The source text base being in Latin
script should satisfy most Romanian nationalists, since it puts latin
script in the primary position and ensures that all new Wikipedia
developments in the language are written in that version.

Having an automated transliteration into Cyrillic script should not be
seen as a bad thing even from that perspective - but rather
acknowledging the simple fact that some people would be unable to use
a Latin-script Romanian project.  Indeed, it could be seen from the
Romanian-nationalist perspective as actually encouraging those people
to learn or the Latin-script version in baby steps, since to
contribute they'd have to learn it.

While this solution doesn't allow people to contribute in Cyrillic
script, it acknowledges the fact that there seems to be little editor
base to work on a Cyrillic script Moldovan wikipedia.  A read-only but
more complete and useful Cyrillic version obtainable by
machine-transliteration from the Latin script would serve readers and
users better than a Cyrillic-only but tiny project.

-Matt
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