Utilizator:Ronline/Wikipedia moldovenească

Aceasta pagină este una pentru discuţii despre Wikipedia moldoveanească şi ce se va întâmpla cu ea.

Problema

mo.wikipedia.org a fost făcută de mult timp fiind că, în Rep. Moldova, limba oficială este "moldoveanească". Până recent, mo.wiki avea o legătură clară la ro.wiki şi era pus un mesaj pe pagină principală că niciodată nu va exista o Wikipedia moldovenească.

Acum, cu suportul utilizatorului Node_ue, utilizatorul Vertaler şi alţi utilizatori anonimi au început o versiune în "limba moldovenească" scrisă cu alfabetul chirilic. Au transformat mo.wiki într-o Wikipedia chirilica şi se vede că vor să adauge cât de mult conţinut. Eu am vorbit cu Node_ue, şi a spus că el vrea să facă ca la pagina principală să fie o legătură la ro.wiki pentru cei care vor enciclopedia în limba română/moldoveanească în alfabet latin, şi pentru cei care o vor în alfabet chirilic, prezintă un director la articole găzduite pe mo.wiki în acest alfabet.

Problema este că limba "moldoveanească" în alfabet chirilic este în minoritate, fiind folosită de doar 10-20% din vorbitorii de moldoveanească, şi în orice caz nu este versiunea oficiala, nici în Rep. Moldova, fiind recunoscută oficial doar în Transnistria, care de fapt nu este o entitate politică legală.

Eu am propus că este foarte bine să se facă o Wikipedie în moldoveneasca chirilică, dacă este cerinţă, dar aceasta să fie găzduita nu la mo.wiki, ci la mo-cyrillic.wikipedia.org, sau mo-cy.wikipedia.org. Mo.wikipedia.org va rămână "goală", cu legături la ro.wiki şi la această mo-cy.wikipedia.org. Asta pentru că o versiunea a unei limbi într-o grafie sau alfabet de minoritate nu poate niciodată să fie găzduită ca versiunea principală.

Eu propun ca noi, ca Wikipediştii români, să ne coalizăm şi să le explicăm că este inaccepabil ca mo.wikipedia.org să devină o enciclopedia numai în alfabet chirilic, când acest alfabet este folosit de o minoritate de vorbitorii de "moldovenească".

Pe această pagina, puteţi să vă experimaţi opinia despre această probleme şi să oferiţi soluţii. Mulţumesc, Ronline. Trăiscă 2005. Trăiască informaţia românilor. 10 Apr 2005 09:58 (UTC)

Dacă vreţi mai multe informaţii, vedeţi:

Discuţiile mele cu Node_ue şi replicile lui - Node_ue pare că este neutru şi este destul de rezonabil, dar suportă creerea unei wikipedii chirilice la mo.wiki pentru motive practice (adică, zice că nu are rost să se facă o Wikipedia nouă la mo-cy şi să rămâne mo.wiki gol numai pentru motive politice)
Wikipedia moldoveanească - prima pagină
Discuţia mea cu Node_ue la mo.wiki
Cometariile lui Moby Dick şi replica lui Node_ue la mo.wiki articol Limba moldoveanească (Лимба молдовеняскэ)

Opinii

Somnorosul

Salut! M-am trezit si eu cam tirziu... Cred ca fiecare este liber sa se manifeste cum doreste. Nu o data un grup mic si galagios si/sau activ pare mare si obtine chiar recunosteri oficiale. La urma urmei e treaba lor... De fapt cred ca toata treaba tine de tipologia romanilor (si a moldovenilor): toti vrem sa fim mai interesanti si in general in defavoarea celui de linga noi. Restul argumentelor pot fi oricat de solide, "vointa politica" decide. Somnorosul, 28 Dec 2005 --82.76.111.227 28 decembrie 2005 23:53 (EET)

Moby Dick

Nu există o "limbă moldovenească", nici măcar un dialect cu acest nume, cu atât mai puţin cu litere chirilice, introduse de sovietici în procesul de rusificare, ceea ce se vorbeşte în Rep. Moldova este un regionalism al limbii române. Se poate cere opinia unui lingvist. Aşa cum nu există o Wikipedie a Angliei, alta a Americii sau Australiei, ci doar en.Wikipedia.org, cum este normal, nu trebuie să fie decât o ro.wikipedia.org. Enciclopedia Wikipedia este concepută pe diferite limbi şi nu după diferite state ("multilinguală" nu "multistatală"). Orice altă încercare este împotriva realităţii lingvistice şi de rea credinţă. Moby Dick, 10 Apr 2005, 14:04 (UTC)

Elerium

Pare mai mult o problemă naţionalist-politică decât una reală

Mi se pare o dicuţie lipsită de logică, atât timp cât site-urile oficiale moldoveneşti folosesc alfabetul latin. Nu înţeleg alfabetul chirilic şi, deşi aş avea pe cine să întreb cu privire la ce scrie pe paginile mo.wikipedia.org prefer să cred că nu este nimic de genul Wikipedia în limba moldovenească. Având în vedere numărul „imens“ de articole şi de utilizatori ai acestei wikipedii, problema e un mai mult de ordin etic, decât o problemă reală, ridicată de „numeroşii“ utilizatori ai wikipediei cu privire la alfabetul folosit. Îmi vine greu să cred că cei care folosesc alfabetul chirilic, chiar nu înţeleg alfabetul latin. Dacă sunt 5-10 utilizatori care îşi susţin moldo-chirilica nu ar trebui să fie o problemă mare în cazul în care wikipedia moldovenească ar fi mai folosită pentru că atunci proporţiile arătate de sondaje ar trebui să îşi arate rezultatele. Într-un sens aş fi de acord cu Node ue, dar un pic diferit. Ar trebui să existe mo.wikipedia.org în limba moldovenească în alfabet latin, aşa cum este oficial, cu un anunţ sidewide care să următoarele:

cei care vor subiecte tratate în limba română să meargă pe ro.wiki.
pentru cei care vor limba moldovenească în chirilice să existe un link care fie să facă conversia în chirilice, fie să existe mo-cy-wikipedia iar respectivul link să meargă acolo.

Nu am nimic cu limba moldovenească, numai că folosirea alfabetului chirilic dă o tentă de limbă slavică, ceea ce nu cred că este lingvistic corect. Dacă autorităţile ruse de dinainte de '89 au vrut să inventeze o nouă limbă, limba română(moldovenească) în culori ruseşti, ce vină au cei care au prins acele vremuri şi sunt obişnuiţi cu alfabetul chirilic. Repet, nu am nici o problemă cu minorităţile rusofone din Moldova(a se citi Transnistria) şi nici cu cei care preferă limba moldovenească în schimbul limbii române(dă o tentă de mândrie naţională moldovenească), dar mi se pare ciudat ca limba oficilă să fie în alfabet latin, prin norme stabilite de Academia moldovenească, iar wikipedia care se declară moldovenească să fie în alfabet chirilic. Mi se pare un pic naţionalism din partea unor minorităţi rusofone, nu din partea noastră. Din discuţiile prezente pe paginile de pe mo.wikipedia.org, cele pe care le-am înţeles, rezultă faptul că 10% din cei care susţin limba moldovenească, susţin şi alfabetul chirilic, deci mi se pare o minoritate din minoritate, prin urmare nu ar trebui acceptat ca mo.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia recunoscută, în general, ca wikipedia în moldovenească, să fie în chirilice. Cei care vor chirilice să îşi facă mo-cy.wikipedia.org şi să lase majoritatea să îşi dezvolte wikipedia în limba moldovenească, chiar dacă e foarte apropiată de ro.wiki. E limba pe care ei o recunosc, deci ar trebui ca mo.wiki să fie o reflecţie a ceea ce vrea majoritatea, probabil nu un mirror de ro.wiki ci o wikipedia a lor moldovenească. Depinde de ei să îşi facă o wikipedia aşa cum e a noastră sau să o folosească pe a noastră. Elerium | [ Discuţie Elerium ] 10 Apr 2005 13:09 (UTC).

Romihaitza

Din moment ce limba moldovenească există ca limbă oficială de stat recunoscut pe plan internaţional şi totodată această limbă este recunoscută internaţional (prin tăcere) trebuie să o admitem la Wikipedia ca limbă existentă. Problema intervine altfel şi anume alfabetul ... în principiu ar trebui să existe alfabetul oficial recunoscut de către Republica Moldova şi pe care îl ştiu eu ca fiind cel latin după legislaţia actuală. Dacă se doreşte un mo wiki cu alfabet latin, sunt de acord că trebuie creat separat mo-cy.wiki; La fel cum ar fi dacă am dori să facem o wikipedia română cu alfabet chirilic (din istorie ar putea reieşi că a fost folosit) sau alfabet grecesc :-)

Pe scurt, susţin crearea unei noi structuri pentru chirilic. - Mihai 10 Apr 2005 13:48 (UTC)

Node_ue

I would like to state that I do not particularly object to what is going on at this page, and that it is something I fully expected, but: please take note that it has given rise to "guerilla vandalism" at mo.wiki with people blanking pages, replacing content, and various other unscrupulous tactics.

Mie sa imi placa sa exprim clar pe care eu nu obiectez in special la ce se intimpla la aceasta pagina, si care el este ceva eu complet asteptat, dar: Rugati sa ii dati seama sa dea nastere la "vandalismul de gherila" la mo.wiki cu oameni stergind pagini, inlocuind continut, si tactica diversa alta lipsita de scrupule.

I do not believe that this was an intended side effect. However, I would like to request that whatever actions are taken are taken on an official level or a person-to-person level rather than resorting to such vandalistic tactics (yes, it is vandalism to delete content, regardless of the alphabet).

Eu nu sunt de parere ca acest am fost nici un am intentionat un efect secundar. Oricum, mie sa imi placa sa cer acele oricare actiuni sunt luate sunt luate pe un nivel oficial sau un nivel interuman mai mult decit o recurgere la unei tacticii asemenea lipsite de scrupule (da, el este vandalismul pentru a sterge continutul, indiferent de alfabetul).

My final response: (Raspunsul meu final:)

The ISO does not specify the alphabet or alphabets which correspond to their language code.

ISO nu specifica alfabetul sau alfabetele care corespunde codifica limbilor.

There are articles in both scripts at the Serbian Wikipedia, the Kurdish Wikipedia, and the Kashmiri Wikipedia. If the Romanian Wikipedia is willing to accept a biscriptal policy, then I would support the full merging of mo.wiki. However, I think that Romanian nationalistic attitudes would prevent this from happening, and do not see it occurring in the near future.

Existati articole in ambele alfabete Wikipediala Sirbesti, Kurdi, si Kashmiri. Daca Wikipedia Romana vrea sa accepte o politica unui alfebetului, atunci eu sa sprijin plin unire de mo.wiki. Oricum, eu cred acele atitudini nationaliste române sa impiedic acest de la intimplare, si vad sa se intimple in viitorul apropiat.

I do not deny the near-identicality of the official languages of Romania and Moldova (with of course their orthographic differences). I do however deny what has been said by Danutz that nobody uses the Cyrillic alphabet anymore. I also deny that all those who claim to speak "Moldovan, not Romanian" are Ruso-Moldavians or Ukraino-Moldavians, and I deny that the choice of Cyrillic for writing the language is based on heritage (Ruso-/Ukraino-Moldavian vs Romano-Moldavian) or political affiliation (communist vs opposition). In fact, most users of the script do not speak Russian or Ukrainian as their native language, and among them are opposers of communist ideology. It is based more on age, stubbornness, occasionally religion, and sometimes the belief that the Cyrillic script better fits the Romanian/Moldovan language (it does represent it more directly phonetically than does the Latin alphabet). Very few young people outside of Transnistria have a knowledge of this script, however most Moldovans over 20 have a knowledge of Cyrillic, and many Moldovans over 30 are better at reading and writing it than they are at Latin (even if they prefer Latin for nationalistic reasons, their education still took place in Cyrillic, and much of their exposure to the written word before the collapse of the USSR was entirely in the Cyrillic alphabet).

Currently, although no real Latin content is hosted at mo.wiki (due to the near-identicality of this content to ro.wiki content), there is a very prominent link on the principal page that says "Dacă preferaţi să vizualizaţi Wikipedia Moldovenească în alfabetul latin, clic aici." which links to the ro.wiki mainpage.

Node ue 11 Apr 2005 00:11 (UTC)

IulianU

We may like it or not, but mo.wikipedia has as much legitimacy as ro.wikipedia, or any other wikipedias, since mo has been recognised as a language in its own right. Whether this is linguistically correct or not, is a different matter altogether. See also the precedent of sr, hr, and bs wikipedias.

You're right here. But we never said that mo shouldn't exist. In fact, it should. But it should be in Latin script, with a secondary version in Cyrillic script. If the Moldovans want to found their own Latin mo.wiki, they can go ahead. If, however, there is no-one to found a mo.wiki in Latin, it should redirect to ro.wiki. If people want to found it in Cyrillic, it shouldn't be put on the main mo.wiki subdomain just because there is no Latin content there. It should go at mo-cy, with mo.wiki acting either as a "disambiguation wiki" or hosting Latin-alphabet content. Ronline. Trăiscă 2005. Trăiască informaţia românilor. 11 Apr 2005 13:05 (UTC)

As for the choice of writing systems to be used on mo.wikipedia, I think this matter should be left entirely to the mo.wikipedia contributors. I don't see why we have to make it a problem of the ro wikipedia. After all, ro and mo are distinct languages, right? ;-)

IulianU 11 Apr 2005 12:23 (UTC)

But it is our problem too! Not necessarily as contributors to ro.wiki, but as members of the broader Wikimedia community. As members of the Wikimedia community, we can express our opinion on any Wikimedia issue whether it affects our language Wikipedia or not. If there was an issue about Estonian Wikipedia being written in Cyrilic, I would just as much involve myself, because Estonia, in my case, is an interest which I have. Similarly, what happens in Moldova, and by extension on its mo.wiki, is also of interest to me, and to other ro.wiki contributors, because Moldova is close to us culturally and geographically. That doesn't mean that ro.wiki is interfering needlessly in mo.wiki affairs, but you must remember we are in perhaps the best position, after the mo.wiki contributors, to comment on this issue. The fact is that the mo.wiki contributors don't seem to be saying anything. This is why I proposed raising this issue on the mailing list, so the broader Wikimedia community can have a say - en.wiki users, de.wiki, fr.wiki and whoever else is interested. I don't want people to say that what we're doing here is an example of "Romanian expansionism". Clearly, it is not. We are simply a group of Wikipedians with an interest in the mo.wiki who wants to make it much fairer and not openly biased towards the Cyrillic alphabet. Ronline. Trăiscă 2005. Trăiască informaţia românilor. 11 Apr 2005 13:05 (UTC)

Bogdan

Wikipedia has different editions for different languages, not for different alphabets.

Also, it is noteworthy that the Romanian-Cyrillic Moldovan issue is not a parallel to the Urdu-Hindi issue (where as much as 40% of the vocabulary is different), nor to the Serbian-Croatian issue (where there also some grammar and vocabulary differences).

The only notable difference is the alphabet, so, a program can be written easily to make a lossless "translation" from Romanian to Cyrillic Moldovan and reverse.

So, the only precedent in Wikipedia is the Kurdish Wikipedia http://ku.wikipedia.org/ which uses both the Arabic and Latin scripts. Bogdan 11 Apr 2005 17:38 (UTC)

Well, you're right about the program being able to make a lossless translation, but I don't think having biscriptal Wikipedias is a true possibility. Yes, it's been done before, the example with Kurdish is a really good one. But, regardless of a Wikipedia being biscriptal or not, one of the scripts has to be the dominant one, simply because the interface has to be in one script or the other, and the main page also. In the Kurdish Wikipedia, Latin takes precedence. In the Moldovan wiki, Latin should also take precedence, being the official and minority script. That's not to say that a biscriptal Wikipedia wouldn't be a bad idea - it would be OK, but I don't think anyone would contribute Latin content since they would go over to ro.wiki. I still think that the cleanest solution would be one where the scripts are separated. You're right in saying that Wikipedia doesn't usually do that, but I think they should. For example, I think the idea of making a unified Chinese Wikipedia is wrong. I mean, what's the use of merging two scripts in one Wikipedia when no-one will use both of them at the same time. It just creates confusion in the pretext of forming a "stronger" language Wikipedia. Ronline. Trăiscă 2005. Trăiască informaţia românilor. 12 Apr 2005 02:44 (UTC)

Danutz

Eu sunt de acord ca mo.wiki sa devină o Wikipedie pentru chirilic, în condiţia ca pagina principală să fie un portal. Deci daca eu introduc în bara de adrese mo.wikipedia.org, să fiu dus la un portal, cu 2 legături (egale în mărime), spre ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principală şi spre mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Паӂина_принчипалэ (nu sunt sigur că browserul meu poate vedea bine caracterele chirilice, dar sper că se înţelege ce am vrut să zic). De asemenea propun ca cele două texte care fac introducerea (în latin şi chirilic) să fie scrise în paralel (pe două coloane), ca să trecem peste problema "care e primu?". În meniul din stânga trebuie să schimbăm legătura către main page, cu una către pagina Паӂина_принчипалэ, aşa încât utilizatorii noii Wikipedii să nu fie deranjaţi când vor să meargă spre pagina principală, să fie duşi la portal. Dacă nu se poate fără a afecta apariţia portalului Latin/Chirilic în momentul în care introduc mo.wikipedia.org în bara de adrese, atunci, Паӂина_принчипалэ poate apărea mai jos în meniul stânga, în loc de Current Events, cum am făcut în ro.wiki pentru pagina "Discută la cafenea". Asta e cam tot, sper că m-am gândit la tot. AAAAAAAAAAAA, SI CU TOT RESPECTU, DACĂ VREŢI SĂ VĂ CREAŢI PROPRIA WIKIPEDIE, NU COPIAŢI ARTICOLELE DIN RO.WIKI SCRISE ÎN CHIRILIC. NU CREDEŢI?

A, şi apropo, ro.wiki nu poate să folosească termeni dublii, cum ar fi "Wikipedia română/moldovenească". Moldovenii care consideră că vorbesc română, sunt bine veniţi. Moldovenii care consideră că vorbesc moldoveană în latin, ar trebui să îşi discute partea lor din mo.wikipedia.org (mo-la.wikipedia.org, despre care am vorbit), dar eu sunt total împotriva folosirii termenilor dublii în acest caz. Aceasta este Wikipedia în română (pentru vorbitorii de română din România, Republica Moldova, Voivodina şi din întreaga lume) şi asta nu se va schimba prea curând, după părerea mea.

Acum văd... De ce se ţine discuţia în engleză?! Nu e normal să alegem româna în latin pentru că oricine (chiar si Node_ue) o înţelege? --ro.Danutz | pt.Danutz 12 Apr 2005 17:28 (UTC)

Node_ue a fost cel care a început să scrie în engleză, şi după aia şi IulianU a scris. Şi am zic că e mai bine aşa când propunem ideile la cei la la mailing list. Zici că Node înţelege română? Ronline. Trăiscă 2005. Trăiască informaţia românilor. 13 Apr 2005 14:17 (UTC)

About Node_ue as an irresponsible child

I read in its bothering entirety the dispute between Node_ue and his opponents and, while I cannot condone some of the remarks addressed to this character, I think that he well deserves some of the critique. Here are several reasons:

First, and most important, he doesn’t seem to realize that his attitude is similar to the tango of an elephant in a china store. With an incredibly ignorant and blind insistence, Node_ue steps merciless on the most important symbols of the cultural revival of the Romanians in a former Russian colony, naively and cynically justifying his quest by the existence of some residues of Russian occupation in Basarabia. His knowledge in general about the Romanian culture and, in particular, about the identity crisis in Moldova is extremely poor and the very slim information he has about this region is most likely collected on russophone forums and other sources promoting exactly the kind of colonial ideas repelled by those who fought for the national revival of Romanians occupied by the russian empire. For example, he keeps in sustaining the absolutely ridiculous idea that the displeasure of the Moldovan population with the Russian influence is prevalent mainly among the older generation, while the young one develops some sort of multicultural disposition. For anyone with the slightest idea about RM, this is hilarious. Fact is that, in RM, the soviet nostalgic are among the elders while the youth, which studies in schools Istoria Românilor and Limba si literatura româna, are completely against the type of historical amnesia and soviet-type multi-national ideological restoration proposed by the communists. If Node_ue had had the decency to go to forums like moldova.net (they have an international forum where he could use English) and ask a wee bit around about the stuff he is so meninglessly blabbering around, he could’ve avoided most of the hissy fits he stirred in his opponents with his obstinacy. Node_ue seems to consider that the lack of reaction from the Romanians from Moldova against his Cyrillic initiative is sort of a tacit acceptance. In this case, a trip to moldova.net to sell his theories about how noble and welcome is to write Romanian in the alphabet of the Russian occupants would be a rather painful experience for his virtual arse.

Let’s clarify several details for him:

1. In the former colony of an empire, where the aborigines were subject of a systematic denationalization program, the presence of a confused population is unavoidable. The members of this population will continue to administer the symbols of the former oppressor and, as a form of Stockholm syndrome, will miss the whip of the colonists. Thus, in RM, one still has people repeating like some socio-zombies the parts learned via the soviet propaganda that Romanian is a different language and, some of them, even using the Cyrillik alphabet. Now, there comes the question: should one encourage these people? Do they represent something viable and progressive in Moldovan society? If they are just victims worth of respect, don’t they deserve to be shown that, by masquerading the symbols and ideas of the oppressors, from victims they became aggressors against the will of the most educated and responsible part of the society? How is their attitude related to the history of repression? Does it matter that their opinions are not sustained scientifically and represent only the residues of a postcolonial culture? Are symbols important in the well being of a society? Do you, Note_ue, understand the tremendous symbolical power of the Latin alphabet in RM? Do you understand the very intense symbolical reasons behind the dismissal of Cyrillik alphabet in RM? Why do you think that RM is the only country in the world with a day dedicated to the language? Have you ever meditated why one of the first gestures of national emancipation at the beginning of the 90-s was the switch to the Latin alphabet??? Do you realize that Cyrillik alphabet is in RM the symbol of occupation, denationalization and repression? In case you do, how do you dare to call “nationalists” whoever reminds you about this? Since your arguments are in such a perfect concordance with the soviet propaganda and since you put yourself in the position to advocate for a symbol of Russian occupation, what’s so unexpected in the accusation of stalinism you get from most of your opponents?

It's not Wikipedia's decision whether or not a specific alphabet or language represents "progressive ideas". It is only to look at the facts: that people still do indeed use the Cyrillic alphabet, and that they are real people. Your efforts to demean their very real decision to use the alphabet are juvenile at best. You're also wrong that Moldova is the only country in the world with a day dedicated to the language. Bangladesh has a day, for one, and I'd be surprised if there weren't any other country with one.

You conveniently chose to ignore the multitude of questions I asked. Obviously, there is a rhetorical dimension in my questioning, but I was hoping that, as a fair intellectual, you’d grow a conscience while searching for answers… Instead, you rushed to cover up a really serious conflict under some dubious and out of context rule, and by pointing out to an irrelevant inaccuracy (thanks for the information about Bangla, though). Moreover, you ignored the observation I made about why people call you a stalinist. While you seem to reduce this to the idea of censorship which, indeed, you do not condone, you refuse to understand that the accusations of stalinism hint to you as an obstinate promoter of a stalinist symbol… The fact that you’re not alone in your blindness and there are other consumers of this insidious icon doesn’t diminish the rectitude of the epithet. Mario 16 iul 2005

Grow a conscience? I'm pretty sure I already have one of those. But thanks for worrying about my spiritual well-being. While it's certainly true that many Romanian speakers in Transnistria do not use Cyrillic to write Romanian, it is also true that there are still many Moldovans who are more comfortable with Cyrillic, and there are more than a few rural peasants who only know Cyrillic (they're mostly over 30, so they would've learnt it in school, but as rural peasants would have had little motivation for learning a new alphabet). While many of these people will have died in 30 years' time, it's also true that the young Transnistrians being force-fed Romanian-Cyrillic against their parents' wishes will be adults then, and I'm guessing they'll prefer Cyrillic. Nobody knows for sure how long Transnistria will last, so it's quite possible that they will still be teaching Cyrillic for many years to come.

You’re guessing? You don't even have the decency to look up in the news to get the ongoing drama of the transnistrean kids. Do you know that in Transnistria hundreds of kids are refused decent schooling conditions just because they refuse to use Cyrillic? You treat the whole matter with such an incredible cynicism that I seriously doubt that “concience” is more than a topical prop for your childish obstinancy. Mario 15 aug 2005

Apparently you read nothing I said -- "I'm guessing" was in reference to a future event, which cannot be known for sure today, and thus any knowledge of such is limited to conjecture. It always seemed to me that it was more the parents who refused the Cyrillic education for their children, then the children who complained. Why should children care what alphabet their language uses at such an age? Maybe teenagers will protest, but 8-year-old children won't care much about such a thing. As with many issues regarding schools, it is all about the parents -- they do not want their kids learning in Cyrillic, so they put them in Latin schools, which were closed. Apparently, these parents feel it is more important that their kids don't learn Cyrillic, than that they have a good education, so they don't have a decency to enroll them in another school so at least they can get an education, even if it is through the Cyrillic alphabet which they so dislike. Nobody has been refused schooling, rather, they have refused schooling which is being offered to them because they do not like the script it uses. I think this is quite a childish behaviour for parents. If they are so sensitive about the alphabet, they can teach their kids at home. And public education is by no means a right. As a Romanian, you are obviously used to it, but in many countries there are still very few schools, and whatever minimal right people have to public education falls far behind the more important rights to dignity, workable living conditions, and arguably healthcare, housing, food, and freedom --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

Same cynicism and obstinate ignorance… Your observations about the schooling situation of ethnic Romanians in Transnistria reminds me of the infamous phrase “Let them eat cake!”… FYI, schooling in Transnistria is in general very low quality, especially for ethnics Romanians who are supposed to use textbooks from soviet era and a curricular corpus grossly inadequate. The relatively better schooling is exclusively in Russian, using textbooks imported from Russia. The only local chance to get a college education for high-school graduates from schools in Romanian written in Cyrillic alphabet is either to continue in Russian or in Cyrillic Romanian at Tiraspol – without any chance to have his/her diploma recognized by any institution outside Transnistria. (It may be useful for you to know that most of the Romanian speaking professors from State U of Tiraspol are refugees in Chisinau now teaching in Latin alphabet). So, with a wee bit of intellectual effort you may understand that your rambling about the choice of the parents was about as inept as the insistence of the transnistrean authorities to impose upon the kids a no-future education. The parents are not “childish”, tampitule, the parents are simply desperate because they realize that the ersatz of soviet education offered by the unrecognized republic is a recipe for new and new generations of postdated communistoid losers. This is why, even in the schools teaching Romanian in Cyrillic, a widespread (and dangerous) practice is for the kids to carry a double set of textbooks – one for the show in Cyrillic and one in Latin alphabet. As for the idiocies you’re trying to sell about home-schooling, I won’t even bother to comment. Suffice to say that this is another proof that you know squat about the social hardship of Eastern Europe… Mario, 23 aug 2005

Actually, last time I checked, there was one open Latin-alphabet school in Tiraspol, although the separatist authorities try to do just about everything they can to hurt it without actually closing it (because of the international fury it aroused last time). Again, you're speaking of a "right to education". There is no such thing. I believe that people have a right to food, water, a place to live, and perhaps liberty. But it's outrageous to state that people have a right to education. Everybody who gets any education at all should thank the heavens, there are millions upon millions of people who would like to go to school to get a better future but can't because their government makes them pay for school and they can't afford it, or because there is no school near where they live, or other various reasons. If parents are worried about their children's education, why not give in a little and send them to a Russian school where they can get an education that, although indoctrinated with Stalinist propaganda, is at least modern?? Plenty of contemporary geniuses in Romania, Russia, Poland, etc. were educated under Communism but still managed to get a good education. Sure, ideally people should be able to choose what they think is best for their children, but I don't think it's a right. --Node ue 22 septembrie 2005 09:09 (UTC)

Node_ue, you contradict yourself! Precisely because there are places where one has to pay in order to be educated, it's precisely why everybody should have the right to the education (but not in Russia, thank you very much. BTW, are you in Russia now? Have you been educated in Russia? I think not, because from what I've understood from the Moldavian wiki you live in SUA and your only ties with Moldavia are your parents origin. You don't speak the language, you just know perfectly well the Russian alphabet. Why do you do not practise what you preach? --Vlad 22 septembrie 2005 09:17 (UTC)

Who told you I don't know Romanian? Was it domnul Goie? He's also the one who said I am an ex-KGB Smirnovist agent. --Node ue 26 septembrie 2005 11:09 (UTC)

As someone with an interest in languages in general, I can also tell you that Moldovans must care less about their alphabet than Koreans, because Moldovans only have a language day while Koreans have a day for their alphabet. While Cyrillic is widely considered a Stalinist symbol, I remind you that Ukrainian language uses Cyrillic, and many Ukrainian nationalists were deported to Siberia. Much of Europe follows a religious rather than political division of scripts: Roman Catholic majority and Protestant or Lutheran majority nations use the Roman alphabet, Orthodox majority nations use the Cyrillic alphabet. Moldova, Romania, and Greece are the only exceptions. (this is based on the nation, rather than the person -- Catholics in Russia still use Cyrillic)

Obviously, you got it wrong again. I have nothing against the Cyrillic alphabet per se. I don't see anything wrong in being used by nations who deem it fit for their language. It is a Stalinist symbol only in relation to the modern Romanian language. The rest of your rambling is irrelevant in the context. Mario 15 aug 2005

You don't seem to get what I said. My point was: if Cyrillic is a horrible artefact of Stalinism, why is it still used in Tajikistan? Before it became part of Russia, Tajikistan used Arabic script. Cyrillic was forced on them by Stalinist occupiers, but they still use it today. Mongolia was never a part of the USSR, but they were a "puppet state". Before they became communist, they used the beautiful Mongolian vertical writing, but the Stalinist regime which came into power forced the people to change to Cyrillic. The Mongolian government has made steps towards changing back, but most people still use Cyrillic, and it is not seen as a symbol of Stalinist occupiers. Unlike these languages, Moldovan/Romanian was actually first written in Cyrillic, and this remained the case until the late 1800s. Those Moldovans who still use Cyrillic do not seem to have the views of it that you do. --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

Read again! In Romania and RM, the Cyrillic alphabet imposed upon the language in modern times is widely regarded as a stalinist symbol. It’s irrelevant that this is not the case in other parts of the world and it's got nothing to do with the alphabet per se – which is as legitimate as any other one as long as it is part of an affirmative cultural acceptance. Equally irrelevant is the fact that Romanian used to be written in Cyrillic before 1860: the use of this alphabet was only an inertial cultural tail due to the fact that most writings in orthodox christian Romanian principalities were, rather naturally, in slavonic. Writing was a matter of officialdom, not a phenomenon en masse. As soon as the Romanian nationbuilding started (in the late 1700, with Scoala Ardeleana, in Latin alphabet), Romanian literature and publishing enterprise became more introspective, literacy became more than a class privilege and getting rid of the Cyrillic alphabet was regarded as a clear statement about the Romanian new weltaufshauung. Since it mainly served for texts written in a language completely obscure for the population, Cyrillic alphabet was never an integrate part of the in Romanian ethos or a local effective cultural icon like, for instance, in Bulgaria or other slavic countries. At the time of its demise, it was largely regarded as an atavism – not necessarily something bad but certainly imagologically unacceptable. Mario, 23 aug 2005

Read again!! In Tajikistan, the Cyrillic alphabet was imposed upon the language in modern times and is regarded by a significant number of people as a Stalinist symbol. But when it comes down to it, it's just an alphabet. Some people advocate to change to Latin or Arabic, but Tajiks have now been using Cyrillic for decades. To make an entire nation change a script is a difficult proposition, and there will be people who prefer the old alphabet for decades after it is abolished. The same has happened with all such transitions throught history: Tatar's change from Arabic to Latin to Cyrillic to Latin, Mongolian's change from Mongolian to Latin to Cyrillic to Mongolian (a very recent change), Berber's change from Tifinagh to Arabic to Roman to Arabic to Tifinagh, Abkhaz's change from Georgian to Latin to Cyrillic, Tajik's change from Arabic to Roman to Cyrillic (in China, Tajiks still use Arabic writing, which just makes it all more confusing), etc etc. In many cases, people do not greet such changes with enthusiasm, in others they do. But regardless, a script change inevitably leaves behind a "forgotten generation" who are more comfortable with the alphabet in which they were educated, often including quite a few who never learnt the newer alphabet, about whom nobody seems to care much anymore. Politics of script change are very interesting and can be emotional, positive or negative, and often quite confusing. Remind me, how long did Moldovans write in Latin before they were forced to change to Cyrillic? How long did Moldova have Latin-script literacy before the URSS forced a change to a different alphabet? You claimed earlier that I was injuring the feelings of Moldovans, but this time you relinquished that claim and changed it to Romanians. Which is it? Are Moldovans or Romanians offended? --Node ue 22 septembrie 2005 09:09 (UTC)

2. Ignorance is bliss and yours exceeds the boundaries of RM. You even seem to believe that Romania is composed of only Walachia and Transylvania… (somewhere you refer to your Romanian opponents as being from these two provinces). Sorry, buddy, but there is a province in Romania called Moldova. The population of this province – over 90% Romanian - is almost twice as big as the entire population of RM and its territory encompasses the largest chunk of the medieval princedom of Moldova. All the capitals of the medieval state are in Romania, its main historical events (battles, architectural sites, old literature) took place there and not on the actual territory of RM which was rather sparsely inhabited. Nobody in that province would even think to call the language Moldoveneasca and, oups, some of the most virulent Romanian nationalist movements (such as Garda de Fier) appeared there.. Review your geography besides the history of the region.

I don't recall saying that "Romania is composed only of Walachia and Transylvania". My point is that they are far removed from Moldova, and as far as I know most of the people commenting are not from RM or even the province of Moldova but rather from Transylvania mostly and maybe some from Walachia. You're making strange assumptions that just because I said my opponents are from those two provinces, that I meant the whole of Romania but accidentally excluded Moldova... if I did mean this why wouldn't I just say "Romania" instead of naming provinces???

No, you didn’t state directly that in your opinion Romania contains only Walachia and Transylvania, but your way of looking at things implied that. I’d be very curious, where did you get the idea that most of your opponents came from these two provinces and not from Moldova… If it’s just a guess, based on your abysmal ignorance about the culture of that country, please read more and cease to assume things. In general, your assumptions are wrong and demeaning for Romanians. For example, if you believe that Romanian nationalism is a rather walachian or transylvanian attitude, I’d inform you, as a Romanian from the Romanian province Moldova, that this kind of nationalism is more pronounced in Moldova than in Walachia. So, by using words like “moldovean” or “moldoveneste” with stalinist denotation, you commit an abuse against the culture of the very people who are by far mostly justified to define these terms. Same way you shunt off your opponents’ arguments with cheap sophisms about everybody’s right to butcher a language, I could ask you why you encourage the illegal use of these words, since my people invented them and they do not agree with your definitions, orthography and politico-cultural impact… Do we, Romanians, have any right related to these names? Who has more rights, we – the inventors of this words – or those who perverted them in order to harm us? Who has more rights, we, be us nationalists and whatnot, or you, an ignorant alien? In this context, I’d say that your conscience should have a hard job pacifying this abuse with your “noble” attempt to please the victims of the russian cultural aggression in Bassarabia. Mario 16 iul 2005

1) What was implied, and what was meant, and what was actually believed can be very different things. 2) Wallachia and Transylvania are the richer two, and more Internet users come from there -- a great deal from Cluj and Bucharest alone. 3) And what of people like Vasile Stati (you can read some quotes of his crazy ramblings here and here)? In my opinion he's a mad nationalistic idiot, but his use of "moldovan" is certainly more perverted than mine, and I think he has just as much a right to it as you do, being born in Moldova and whatnot. I mean, one Moldovan journalist called him "personaj grotesc", and he has been called a Stalinist more times than I have, for sure, and it is definitely more true because he's actually a former communist deputy. Notice that in one of those articles he's called a "promoter of Moldovenist ideology"... this refers quite obviously to promotion of Stalinist ideas of Moldovan history and nationality, rather than what you want to say it should mean.

1) You are more transparent than you think. 2) Really, sometimes, when a read your “arguments”, I’m afraid I’m grossly overestimating you... Do you really believe yourself when you’re saying that your opponents come mostly from Wallachia and Transylvania since these are richer provinces…? Rrrreally??? Should I ask you about some statistics you have about Romania just to emphasize again your complete ignorance about that country? C’mon, Romania may be a poor country, and its eastern part may be poorer, but to say that the discrepancy between its different regions are sooo big that there is a relative lack of computers in its eastern part capable to influence the statistics over a small group denotes (euphemistically speaking) an infantile logic. Would it be suggestive if I told you that, for example in May, the average salary in Bacau was about 894 RON, in Iasi about 870 RON (both counties in the province of Moldova) while in Cluj it was 947 RON and in Alba 870 RON (both in Transylavania)? Does this look like a difference justifying your assumption? You just picked up somewhere the information about Moldova as the poorer province and – without a minimum respect for the image you’re creating about yourself – you’re trying to bring it about as a blank shot argument in a completely unrelated matter… Is it really so difficult for you to avoid the kind of ridiculous position you put yourself when trying to sell facts about Romania to a Romanian? Really, be more cautious! 3) My query was not about the right of stupid people to be stupid. It was about some undeniable facts: we, Romanians, invented the word Moldova with its derivatives (in fact the word comes from a river in Romania, I spent my childhood on its shores). We, Romanians, consider abusive the use of Cyrillic for our language (as much as the barbarism “limba moldoveneasca”). Do we have a say about this? If we, as Romanians, creators of this language, consider that you abuse our language in the name of some people brainwashed by a colonial culture which loathed us, how do you dare to call us nationalists and so??? What right do you have to throw names at us?? And, on the other side, forget about telling me who Vasile Stati is. I assure you that I know the situation in RM much better than you do. And cease detaching yourself from the likes of Stati. You are part of the same problem. Mario, 15 aug 2005

Alba may certainly be just as poor as Iasi, but Alba is much much more rural than Cluj, and its wealth (or lack thereof) is the exception rather than the rule. Transylvania is, as you should know, a relatively rich region. And, rich people are always more likely to have computers than poor people, this is even the case in America or Taiwan or Japan where computers are common: they are considerably less common in poorer areas such as Okinawa in Japan, the Bronx in America, or the hills of Taiwan. In some of these cases (mostly Okinawa, but somewhat others as well), the difference in wealth is not an extreme one, but there is still a difference in internet access. 3) Stati's views are very different from mine. He clearly lives in a fantasy world with no basis in reality. I, on the other hand, do not: regardless of what you say, there are still people who use Cyrillic to write Romanian, and you have yet to provide a valid reason why they should be ignored (it's backwards, a stalinist symbol... etc... none of these negate the fact that people still use it). --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

Again you’re just being ridiculous. I’m warning you again: trying to sell poorly researched information about Romania to a Romanian is rather stupid. Ok, let me give the complete statistics: in May the average salary over ALL Transylvanian counties was 819 RON before taxes (641 RON after). In Moldova it was 786/609 RON. This means that the average salary in eastern Romania was about 95% the salary in its western counties. Do you really think that a 5% difference would justify your assumption about the origin of your opponents???? Again, your ignorance and laughable insistence is far from serving your image. 3) Stati’s views may be different from yours formally, but not in spirit. Your attitude is typical for those outsiders who try to apply some cuckoo's land tree-hugger logic onto a socio-cultural reality way beyond their comprehension. You are just a blind, mindless tool in the hands of the likes of Stati, a perfect justification for perpetuating the existence of the so called „mankurts” (it may be useful for you to check out the meaning of this word). 4) You insist in bringing up the „argument” with the people still using the Cyrillic alphabet for Romanian... Can you paint for me sort of a sociological layout, some reliable statistics regarding the situation of these people? Do you actually have any idea about their whatabouts, or your Cyrillic quest is based only on the fragile assumption that they must be hiding somewhere under the ashes of soviet conformism? How many are they? How important is their activism? Can you actually give me one, ONE, example of an individual writing in Cyrillic Romanian on the internet, unable to use the latin alphabet? If you try to make a case against us, Romanians, being hurt by your deeds, you should have at least some victimized proponents, don't you think. You keep blabbing about the older people who find Cyrillic more comfortable... Where are they, Mark? C’mon, at least one should have the audacity to come up on the internet and talk the talk... Show me at least one Romanian speaking guerrilero in your ghost army fighting on the barricades of your wikipedia in Cyrillic Romanian... Instead, oups, how surprising!, your visitors and your transnistrean flock insist in using Russian and, oups, even you – the fierce condottiere pushing for a stalinist semiotics for Romanian – do not speak Romanian... Isn’t this looking kinda kafkaesque to you? Mario, 23 aug 2005

It would be kafka-esque if I couldn't speak Romanian. But I can. Not as good as you, I'm sure, since I didn't grow up in a community where everyone spoke Romanian. But certainly good enough to know what the comments you quote later say, and good enough that I was able to write two original articles for mowiki. I'm not sure about Gabix, but I know that Vertaler and Dmitriid were and are very fluent in Romanian. Also, read what I said again. I was comparing larger municipalities in Transylvania to larger municipalities in Moldavia. Cluj is obviously much richer than Iasi or Bacau, and this leads to the perception that Transylvania is a wealthy area, despite the fact that places such as Alba may not be so wealth. And I wonder -- how many people here are from Cluj? Is it proportionate to the relative population of Cluj to that of the rest of the Romanian-speaking world? I sort of doubt it... And, if I am the same as Stati, you are the same as Ceausescu because the "spirit" of your beliefs about language and culture is the same as his... --Node ue 22 septembrie 2005 09:09 (UTC)

3. Since your Romanian is very poor, (shamefully for somebody who insists in disrespecting the national idiosyncrasies of the Moldovan Romanians) you have a very rudimentary perspective about the culture in RM. There is no such thing as a Moldovan literature in Romanian separated from the mainstream Romanian culture. The Romanian language did not appear on the territory of the actual RM and, in its modern form, it was exclusively developed on the actual territory of Romania at a time when in Bassarabia the official language was Russian, Romanian being treated as a primitive closet lingo. With a little bit of effort you may realize that, missing a local literature, even during the double-thinking soviet times big portions of the Romanian literature was stripped off of any specific references to the nationality, rewritten in Cyrillik alphabet and dubbed “Moldovan classical literature”. During this exercise of societal schizophrenia, Romanian nationalists such as Eminescu or Alecsandri and even political figures participants in the creation of Romanian kingdom in the XIX-th century became characters in an absurd antiromanian propagandistic play. Can you find anything more outrageous and perverted than the systematic turning of the Romanian population of Basarabia against the cultural development of their ethnical brethrens? How is the Cyrillik alphabet involved in all this process? Anyway, at least in this respect, your attempts to put the Croatian-Serbian case – same language developed by two well defined cultures – on the same scale as Romania-RM case is ridiculous.

I don't recall ever saying there was a such thing as Moldovan classical literature. Serbian and Croatian cultural development hasn't exactly been separate for very long either. Certainly Bosnian was relatively unified with Serbian and Croatian, the division being made only on politico-religious grounds rather than actual significant cultural or linguistic differences. I certainly don't deny that there was no "Moldovan language" before the Soviet occupation, but the name "Moldovan language" is now official in Moldova, and approximately 1/3rd of the population names their mother tongue as "Moldovan". You may write this off as Stockholm syndrome, but why they claim that and why it's official with the government isn't really relevant here. Your paternalistic attitudes are a bit strange -- we should ignore the fact that people really use Cyrillic because they're confused or misguided??

Again, you don’t have to clearly state something; you just imply. For example, you do consider as similar the cases Romania/Moldova vs Serbia/Croatia, and this implies that you think that the very clear split between Serbian and Croatian cultures may very well define the R/M fracture. For a necessary wake-up, perhaps you should ask around how many Croatian intellectuals consider themselves as being Serbian. Compare with how many intellectuals from RM consider themselves “Moldovans but not Romanians” and you may get an idea about how ridiculous is your comparison. And people don’t “really use Cyrillic”. Scribbling with an unofficial alphabet for meager purposes by a dying species of cultural outcasts cannot be qualified as a legitimate use worth of normative attention… Mario, 16 iul 2005

What is implied, is your opinion. When I read my messages I don't see that implication anywhere. Sure, there is literature written in Moldova, but there is no "Moldovan literature" separate from Romanian, until the Soviet period and that is mostly propaganda novels anyways. "scribbling with an unofficial alphabet for meager purposes by a dying species of cultural..." wow, you're at it again. So these people don't matter because they're a dying species of cultural outcasts? Well, if they're so bad, musn't actual Russians be worse? Maybe we shouldn't have a Russian Wikipedia!?

No, the Russians have all rights to keep things Russian in their own backyard. But not to impose theories and alphabets upon conquered populations in order to justify after a while the necessity of these theories and alphabets by the very existence of the brainwashed victims. I’m not saying that these victims are to be punished for their connivance. They must be either educated or ignored since they are either uneducated or politically motivated. Either way, people like you – ignorant do-gooders – are damaging. Mario, 15 aug 2005

Educated or ignored? Is this what you advocate? So, you do not care about poor people? If rural peasants have access to information? See, that is the difference between you and me. You seem to think that only educated people with money deserve knowledge, while I believe that everybody should have access to an encyclopaedia, even if they didn't go to school and live in horrible poverty. Why should they be "educated or ignored"? Why can't their needs be served the way they are? You have said things about why Cyrillic for Romanian is bad, but you have yet to give a real reason why we should ignore those people who prefer Cyrillic -- they may be uneducated or poor, they may be this or that, but none of this is a reason they can't have reading material. --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

See my previous comments. As a self-appointed advocate, you hurt real people in the name of a ghastly army of mankurts. None of your subjects ever show up so that your entire activity reduces at fighting against actual people who, for god’s sake, have more rights than you to administer the symbolical outfit of their own language. In this context, the Romanian word "nesimtire" would be an understatement... Mario, 23 aug 2005

You yourself admited that these people exist, but you also said they should be educated or ignored. You also acknowledged on another site that the Moldorussian slang exists, but said it is despicable. --Node ue 22 septembrie 2005 09:09 (UTC)

4. Personally, I don’t believe that your stubbornness is due to some malevolence but to a mindless innocence. You should read more about the set of cultural symbols characteristic to the ethos of the Romanian ethnos and I surely hope that eventually you shall understand that your insistence with Cyrillik alphabet deeply hurts and opens old wounds.

It seems that the only hurting of old wounds I've done so far is piss off some people from the nation of Romania, not the neighbouring de jure independent nation of Moldova. In fact, so far the only actual Moldovan to step forward currently supports the continued existance of a Moldovan Wikipedia. As far as I can tell he is proud of his identity as a Moldovan, even though he is of Russian ancestry, and he speaks the language well and learnt it in school.

It’s your problem that you ignore my above given advice: if you really wanted the opinion about all these things from the Romanian speaking internet users from RM, you'd go on www.moldova.net and ask them about your beloved Cyrillic alphabet. Before assuming something about their attitude, based on the relative lack of reaction on wikipedia, you should actually research a little bit, don’t you think? If they don’t come here, a minimum of intellectual fairness should push you to go out there and inquire them. Or, if you don’t care, don’t comment! Moreover, even the way you use the word "nation" with respect to the population of RM (i.e., "Republic of Moldova" and not "Moldova" which is a province of Romania), while perhaps unintended, is in itself one of the political statements you refuse to acknowledge as being political while parading some sort of false objectivity. It is just another signature of your complete disregard for the cultural idiosyncrasies of Romanians (sooo shameful for a half Romanian). Mario 16 iul 2005

Somebody on Moldova.net, which I read regularly, discovered it a couple of months ago independently. There was a bit of discussion about it... some people said it was interesting, some people said it was entertaining, some people said it was stupid, and some people said it was disgusting. A mixed box. The original poster posted it because they thought it was interesting and funny at the same time, if I recall correctly. Again, your stupid "old wounds" have been 99,9% from Romanians, in Romania, and 0,1% from people Moldova.

Ohoho! It happens that I know pretty well the population on moldova.net. When exactly was your “Romanian in Cyrillic” idea posted there? It would be very simple for me to verify your sayings. Can you give me some examples of the 99.9% people from Romania active on that forum who reacted different from the others? Providing such an impressive number – 99.9%, yippy! - you should either have some examples, or you misinform, or you exaggerate poetically (which is again uncalled in the context). Really, for your own sake, you should be more careful with numbers… Mario, 15 aug 2005

What are you talking about? There aren't really any people from Romania on moldova.net, at least nobody who posts a lot. And yet, you claim to know the site so well... --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

Here are several names of Romanians from Romania among the most active members on moldova.net at this moment: husky40, dacodava, solara, sfinx, www.cbi.ro. These are only some of them – quite a bunch for a forum without a very numerous core population. I didn’t specify any of the occasional users, such as one of your opponents – Danutz – who advertised your Cyrillic crap stirring remarks like "holu sh.it nu credeam ca o sa vad asa ceva pe net..." or "cine a scris asta? cum asa ceva poate sa ajunga in internet? am vazut astfel de texte cind am fost in Transnistria.. dar nu credeam ca 'progresul' va ajunge pe internet..", or "mdea ... iata ca aberatiile se consolideaza in aceata lume !"... Anyways, I am not a member of the respective forum but I’m following it since the situation in Bassarabia has been one of my hobbies for quite a while (at least 5 years). Can you give some examples of the people from RM on moldova.net who consider using Cyrillic for Romanian "interesting" and "entertaining" disagreeing with much fewer (in your opinion) who consider it "stupid" or "disgusting"? I cited above from 3 different Moldova Romanians who consider your Cyrillic crap as aberrant. Since you pretended that 99.9% of the Romanians feeling hurt by you are from Romania and only 0.1% from RM, I invite you to find at least 2997 Romanians from Romania ready to counterbalance my 0.1%... LOL... Really, Mark, you seem to be basically a nice guy, but sometimes you amaze me with how rudimentary you can be... I strongly advice you again to avoid using numbers in your predications since they are obviously less than helpful in your case. Mario, 23 aug 2005

One person from Bucuresti said "ce aiurea e sa citesc literele chirilice si sa mai si inteleg ce scrie". Obviously not Moldova, but still positive rather than negative feedb. Another person said "corect, e dreptul lor! pai si sarbo-croata e una si aceasi limba ( cu diferente dialectale mici), dar croatii catolici scriu latineste, iar sarbii ortodocsi ( mai cu motz " istoric si pravoslavnic") scriu cu caractere kirilice! sa scrie cum vor! au scris kirilic 100 si mai bine de ani ( de fapt de la 1812).... gresesc! si inainte de anexarea la rusia, tot kirilc scriau! mde.... numai noi ardelenii scriam cu litere latine ( in romana!) de la Micu-Klein incoace! cred ca moldovenilor li se potriveste kirilica. e treaba lor si voia lor nu putem decat sa o respectam!"

Russian ancestry ? That's a laugh. Please check all the encyclopedia to see from where the moldovans came from. They are right, you are an iresponsable child ... D.evil 3 iul 2005 09:12 (UTC)

Yes, according to most encyclopaedias, 29% of Moldovans are from Russia, the Ukraine, or Bulgaria! 64.5% are Moldovan/Romanian, about 5% are Gagauz, and the rest are from various other countries. Also, 21% of the population is under 14, so that means that many of these people who you would like to call "immigrants", are Moldovans born and raised. --24.251.198.251 12 august 2005 18:46 (UTC)

Update your information, Mr. Williamson. There was a census in RM last year. Even if the results were perverted by political fabrications, they suggest a situation way different from the one you present above. Mario, 16 iul 2005

Yes, then, what are the results? You tell me I am wrong, but don't elaborate? I don't see any information which is more up-to-date or much different than this... so suddenly all Ukrainians have left Chisinau overnight?? --Node ue 21 august 2005 08:21 (UTC)

There was a census in 2004. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova or, if you have patience, http://www.statistica.md/. The Romanian/Moldovan population is 78%. On the other side, the census was politically altered along the official ideology of the communist party (for example, there is an artificial split between Moldovans and Romanians and the total number of Romanians comes up being less than half the electors of the unionist party PPCD...). Mario, 23 aug 2005

Thus, the non-"Moldovan" population is 24%? If you include "Romanians", it's still 22%, a very large number. --Node ue 22 septembrie 2005 09:09 (UTC)

Also, while I don't support de-jure independence for Transnistria, it is undeniable that it is currently a de-facto independent state with its own governing bodies that hold actual control over that area, and currently the official alphabet in the de-facto independent state of Transnistria for writing the Romanian / Moldovan language is Cyrillic. Obviously, the majority of ethnic Romanians living in Transnistria do not like this policy, but there are also some who prefer to use this alphabet (something like 20% or 30% acc'd to Danutz). So long as people are being raised with Romanian as their mother tongue and Cyrillic as their first script, there is a sort of necessity for a Cyrillic version of the Romanian/Moldovan Wikipedia. I never said that Cyrillic was better than Latin or that it should replace it (although I did say, and it's the truth, that Moldovan Cyrillic is more phonetic than the Latin alphabet for Romanian), just that there are real people with real thoughts and real feelings and real lives that use this script, and that that fact alone justifies a Wikipedia or at least conversion software to accommodate them (Ronline and I agree though that a conversion software would not be acceptable to many visitors of ro.wiki). These ideas - that if there are people who speak a language as their mother tongue, and use a specific script to write it, then they should be accommodated somehow at some point by Wikipedia - are a core value of the Wikimedia foundation as I know it and no matter how you argue it it makes no sense to deny people access simply because they're confused. --24.251.198.251 3 iul 2005 07:23 (UTC)

Again, better go and dare to sell these ideas on a Moldovan forum. You may try again to blame the ugly reactions you're gonna get on nationalism and other sorts of self-indulging labels, but that won't change the fact that you know diddly-squat about what you're talkin' about. And, by the by, let me know if you find a Transnistrean forum in Romanian with Cyrillic orthography. Mind me, but I'd earnestly think that your insistence in offering content in Cyrillic Romanian should be backed up by some similar activity on the internet. The hypothetical common Transnistrean internauts should float somewhere on-line, don't they? Or perhaps you are the road-opener, you are the blessed hero and savior of the brave Transnistreans so unfairly treated by the ever so ferocious Romanian nationalists (or, ahem!, fascists)???… Otherwise, I was just wondering how stubborn you must be in order to think that the very improbable Romanian speaking Transnistrean internaut wouldn't be able to read Romanian in Latin script... Do you really believe yourself or you just like to push the argument for the heck of it???

28 iun 2005 05:18 (UTC)Mario

There is no Transnistrian internet, except a handful of sites in Russian, and one in Moldovan Cyrillics (the site of the Transnistrian Constitutional Court, so it doesn't count because it's by the government). There is one Transnistrian forum, and most of the postings are in Russian, with a handful in Ukrainian or Moldovan Cyrillics, and none in Latin alphabet. --24.251.198.251 12 august 2005 18:46 (UTC)

Models/Summary

So, basically here is a model of what should be done and an overall summary of the discussion above:

The "One Romanian language" model - basically, it would mean keeping mo.wiki as it used to be a few months ago, redirecting to ro.wiki, with no Cyrillic version. The philosophy behind this is that Wikipedia is based on different languages not on different states, and since Moldovan and Romanian are linguistically the same, there should only be one Wikipedia. The differences between Moldovan and Romanian are less than the differences between US English and UK English. This proposal, though, doesn't really address the issue of script. We're talking about script here, not language. It is also fairly undemocratic, because if people want to write in Cyrillic script, and there is demand for this script, then there should be a Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia. Whether there is a Moldovan Latin Wikipedia is a different issue. This model is supported by Moby Dick.

The new subdomain model - I think this is the most reasonable model of them all. Basically, it would keep the mo.wiki as an empty Wikipedia which would redirect either to Latin or Cyrillic script. The interface would be in Latin script, this being the majority script. The Main Page would be divided into two columns, one in Latin script, one in Cyrillic script. The Latin script link would direct you to ro.wiki, the Cyrillic script link to mo-cy.wiki, a Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia on a separate subdomain. The logic behind this is that Moldovan is written officially and majoritarily in Latin script, hence mo.wiki cannot be solely in Cyrillic script. But in fact this model doesn't give any more weight to Latin, it just redirects to either script. It would like having zh.wiki redirecting to zh-tw.wiki and zh-cn.wiki. The separate subdomain of mo-cy would be formed to reflect the status of Cyrillic as a minority script, in fact a fairly small minority. I'm not saying this in a prejudist way, we just need to acknowledge that Cyrillic script is used by only 10% of speakers who say that they speak a Moldovan language, which is only 33% of the total speakers of so-called Moldovan-Romanian. So, at most 3.3% of Romanian-Moldovan speakers in Moldova write in Cyrillic. That is different to Serbian, for example, which is written only in Cyrillic script, being the majority script, even though a much more significant percentage of the population uses Latin Serbian than does Moldovan Cyrillic. This model is supported by Ronline, Elerium and Romihaitza.

The biscriptal model - This model seeks to establish mo.wiki in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Mo.wiki would act like the Kurdish Wikipedia, with content in both Latin and Cyrillic. The fact here is that one script has to be dominant over the other, because of technical limitations - i.e. the interface can be either in Latin or Cyrillic. In that case, it has to be in Latin, being the majority and official script. The problem with this arrangement is that Latin script content will most probably be contributed at ro.wiki not mo.wiki, so mo.wiki will become majoritarily Cyrillic, which shouldn't be the case. Also, I don't see the logic behind keeping two scripts together when they can be separated. This mode is (I think) supported by Bogdan.

The biscriptal portal, Cyrillic content model - This model (currently the status quo) seeks to maintain the mo.wiki mainpage as a portal, with links to both Cyrillic and Latin sections. The Latin section is actually ro.wikipedia, but the Cyrillic section is hosted on mo.wikipedia. What is most important about this is that all interface translations, mainpage, etc. are in Romanian in both scripts, with Latin first, but all real content hosted by mo.wiki is in Cyrillic. This model is supported by node ue.

Strategie

Eu voi traduce toate opiniile voastre în engleză şi le voi trimite la mailing-listul Wikimediei. Discutaţi aici alte strategii care să le implementăm ca să rezolvăm problema.

NOTĂ IMPORTANTĂ: Nu vandalizaţi nici un articol de pe mo.wiki. Nu vom rezolva nimic prin vandalism! Dacă nu agreaţi cu ce este pe mo.wiki, doar de aia este această pagină aici, pentru opinii şi strategii. Scrieţi aici, nu vandalizaţi!