Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia 2

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This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.


The proposal is accepted and the proposed actions should be taken.


  • Type: 2 (non-routine proposal)
  • Proposed outcome: deletion
  • Proposed action regarding the content: has been moved to rowiki
  • Notice on the project: English Wikipedia ([1]), Romanian Wikipedia ([2])
  • Informed Group(s): (Which chapters, wiki projects, and other community groups have been informed, if any.)

This is a formal continuation of the request made at Proposals for closing projects/Deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia, which was closed procedurally as having been made invalid under the new closing projects policy. I cannot notify the community in question as the wiki itself had already been locked. In the interests of transparency, I have decided to name this request as the third to close (actually delete) Moldovan Wikipedia, the first one already successful ([[Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Moldovan Wikipedia]]) and the second I have made as a redirect at [[Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Moldovan Wikipedia 2]] to point to the above request which was closed procedurally. The arguments there apply here as well, and I will copy them below for reference: (credit: permalink by User:Danutz)

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL FOR CLOSING THE MOLDOVAN WIKIPEDIA (it is already closed). THIS IS A PROPOSAL FOR THE DELETION (i.e. remove it completely from Wikimedia and the SiteMatrix) OF THE MOLDOVAN WIKIPEDIA AND ITS DOMAIN http://mo.wikipedia.org as per the Siberian Wikipedia precedent..

Arguments against:

  • Original content was created at this Wiki, which was since copied without attribution by ro.wp. Unfortunately, due to actions of several ro.wikipedians, this wikipedia was locked so that creative people can no longer write new content for the time being. In addition, ro.wp refuses to provide any sort of accomodations to users who wish to read or edit in Cyrillic, although it would be easy to implement a converter tab much like on sr.wp.

Arguments for:

The identifiers mo and mol are deprecated, leaving ro and ron (639-2/T) and rum (639-2/B) the current language identifiers to be used for the variant of the Romanian language also known as Moldavian and Moldovan in English and moldave in French. (source: The Library of Congress - ISO 639-2 Registration Authority / SIL)
  • NO CONTENT WILL BE LOST All articles on the so called Moldovan Wikipedia are old versions of Romanian Wikipedia articles (back in 2006), that were just automaticaly transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet. There is no need for such a content, as there are various online tools that can automaticaly transilterate content into Cyrillic from any language written in the Latin alphabet. Even English if you want.
Compare Muzică (Romanian Wikipedia, October 2005) to Музикэ (Moldovan Wikipedia). That happened because the user who started this Wikipedia didn't speak the language, and couldn't create content on its own.
Now, if someone really wants to read all Romanian Wikipedia in Cyrillic he can do that here (the script was developed by Bogdan and is ready to be implemented as soon as anybody requests it).
  • According to the Constitution of Moldova, the official language of Moldova is written with the Latin alphabet, not the Cyrillic alphabet (art. 13 of the Constitution).
  • Wikipedia is often mocked in the Romanian-speaking media because of the so-called Moldovan Wikipedia,Timpul, Contrafort, Adevărul as an example of voluntary work gone bad (you can also have a look at this cause on causes.com, signed by 6700 people).

I propose that the mo subdomain should be taken down and redirected to the Romanian Wikipedia.

NOTE Moldovan language is not a dialect, or another standard language of a pluricentric language (like in the case of Croatian and Serbian), there is not even the slightest difference in the written form of the language in Moldova and the language in Romania. There is no Moldovan language standard. According to the national conception of Moldova, Moldovan is BY LAW just another name of the Romanian language: see Title I (DISPOZIŢII GENERALE) of the law on the Conception of the national politics of Moldova, and the 1989 Language Law that made the language official across Moldova. Reffer to en:Moldovan language and ro:Limba moldovenească for more sources on this issue and further reading.

The result of this discussion should also apply to the Moldovan Wiktionary, that is empty (only 11 pages, that are not actual dictionary entries, just Wikipedia articles). --Danutz 17:00, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

In addition to this, I would like to make my own statement as to why this should be removed from the SiteMatrix.

This wiki would not have passed the Language proposal policy, which was established in order to determine which wikis are eligible to belong to the Wikimedia Foundation's care and which are not. They are as follows, analyzed in detail:

  1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of an existing Wikimedia project that does not already exist (see the complete list of Wikimedia projects or the SiteMatrix).
    • As ro.wikipedia.org already exists and is considered the same language edition, it would not have passed this criteria.
  2. The language must have a valid ISO 639 1–3 code (search).
    • It does not.
  3. The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language.
    • Again, this could coexist on rowiki in theory, as a Cyrillic script.
  4. The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a viable community and audience (Wikisource wikis are allowed in languages with no native speakers, although these should be on a wiki for the modern form of the language if possible).
    • There cannot be any native speakers for this language (for the reason given below about the ISO code) and any such "speakers" will already have moved to rowiki.
  5. There is an active test project on the Multilingual Wikisource (Wikisource only), Beta Wikiversity (Wikiversity only), or the Incubator (all other projects).
  6. There is a continuing effort to translate the MediaWiki interface into that language so that nobody is excluded from participating if they do not understand the English-language user interface. As a baseline, it is recommended that you begin by translating the "most used MediaWiki messages". These are the messages that are of highest importance to our readers and users. If a Wikimedia project in your language already exists and these messages have already been translated, we ask that you show evidence that localisation is continuing to be improved and maintained at a reasonable pace.
    • See reason above.

As again repeated above, no content will be lost as they are duplicated on rowiki, and because there is no hope nor possibility of new content being generated, this wiki should be redirected to rowiki. Leaving it as it is in its current state, as a mere project closed indefinitely, with no future of where it's going to go and a huge sitenotice banner on display for all to see, for three years or more at the SiteMatrix, is more like a mark of shame. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 05:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support[edit]

  1. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 05:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  2. A wiki full of stale old versions of Romanian Wikipedia articles automatically transliterated into Cyrillic is simply of no use to anyone. Such a wiki should be deleted altogether from the Wikimedia cluster. Users wishing to read Romanian Wikipedia in Cyrillic should use a script or other on-the-fly conversion system.

    In particular, if this is anything like the Siberian Wikipedia episode (where a wiki was closed and deleted because its "language" was determined to be nothing more than a regular dialect of Russian), this wiki should absolutely be deleted, as its mere existence is inappropriate. This, that and the other (talk) 10:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  3. Close. Cyrillic translitteration should be asked by Romanian language community to definitely close this project. In itself, this wiki has no reason to exist if not for nationalist purposes. Jagwargrrr... 13:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Please read the proposal more carefully. The wiki is already closed, though not deleted which is what was proposed here. Vogone talk 14:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Per TTO and Jagwar. No need to confuse Moldovan readers with a meaningless, closed copy of rowiki. Vogone talk 10:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Conditional Support: The official language for the population in w:Transnistria is still Moldovan written in Cyrillic. Thus Romanian Wiki needs to first have an automated conversion system from Latin->Cyrillic made available similar to that found on Serbian Wiki (Cyrillic->Latin). However who is going to implement it and how long would it take to be implemented? --Philip J (talk) 13:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Philip J: IMO the Uzbek Wikipedia is also Making Latin first, then convert contents into Cyrillic.--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 06:09, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support per Vogone /St1995 16:03, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support--GZWDer (talk) 07:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  8. IMO, Per @TeleComNasSprVen and GZWDer:, Support.--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:40, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support per above -FASTILY 09:13, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support since no content will be lost, and the Wikipedia is not open to new contributions.--Underlying lk (talk) 09:35, 14 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support per above. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  12. FDMS (WP: en, de) 18:24, 17 April 2014 (UTC): In my opinion there is no need for Wikimedia projects in languages that only very few people can understand and speak, therefore I think that having a Wikipedia in … something that is not even considered a language is even more absurd.[reply]
  13. Support per above. --Epìdosis (talk) 11:17, 27 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support Same case as Siberian, Klingon and Toki Pona wikis.--89.216.56.7 18:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support per above.--176.104.111.29 17:18, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support Moldovan in Cyrillic is simply Romanian written in another script, that is the main reason the project was closed, there is no chance that it could ever be reopened anyway, especially since as of last year Moldova has transitioned back to Latin, and declared Romanian its official language once again, the project might as well just be deleted, since it can not be revived, I'd say what little content was in the project if it has not already been, be merged into the Romanian Wikipedia but changed into Latin. Abrahamic Faiths (talk) 20:21, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support per above.--176.104.110.11 19:45, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support no need for this project they already have Romanian Wikipedia, no need for every single dialect to have its own Wikipedia, same language should be same project, delete mo keep only ro. 173.239.125.187 18:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support per This, that and the other, and per nom. -- M\A 19:19, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  20. Support per above. --Grind24 (talk) 19:34, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Support (from Moldova). This subdomain currently is used just for jokes on Internet in Moldova. You can see on TORRENTS.MD forum some opinions and reactions of native Moldovans when they heard about Moldovan wikipedia (Thread is old, 2007). I must add the fact that in schools/universities from Moldova students are studying in Romanian language and native language is considered Romanian, not Moldovan. --92.115.106.250 23:55, 17 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Support. 72.65.238.239 00:39, 4 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Support I just glances at the project and after using Google translate on several articles I do not see much of value outside of spam and jokes to keep. Reguyla (talk) 19:47, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  24. support move to wikia or redirect to ro: and ro:wikt: Vincentangeles005 (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  25. MarcoAurelio 22:52, 22 May 2015 (UTC) Per nom.[reply]
  26. Support Schwei2 (talk) 06:05, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  27. Support Brb, the same language... --Ochilov (talk) 16:46, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Support 73.168.5.183 02:51, 24 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Support, since there is no content loss and no ISO code. --Gutza (talk) 23:23, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  30. Support --Sergii-rachmonov (talk) 12:28, 30 June 2016 (UTC) This discussion has lasted for ten years, its time to put an end to it![reply]
  31. Support --KHMELNYTSKYIA (talk) 09:36, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Support - The "Moldovan language" is just an invention of an empire trying to wash away the national identity of a population. —  Ark25  (talk) 03:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  33. Support - Jagwar you can remove this Wikipedia before this inactive language, Moldovan language has not interested in Wikipedia. --cyɾʋs ɴɵtɵɜat bʉɭagɑ!!! (Talk | Contributions) 08:20, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  34. Support - Although some may affirm that so-called "moldovan language based on cyrillic" is still used in "Transdniester" region, and backed by so-called "official institutions" from so-called "Transdniester republic", this is false because, this country does not exist de jure, nor it is recognized by international law! The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.22.241.228 (talk • contribs) 16:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC) (UTC)[reply]
  35. Please dear god yes 😂 (talk) 19:57, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  36. Support - as per above and due to the fact that Moldovan language does not exist de jure: since the act Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Moldova proclaimed at 27.08.1991, which clearly states that in Moldova we use the Romanian language based on Latin alphabet not "Moldovan" on Cyrillic. The official document proclaims "millennial history" and "uninterrupted statehood" within historic and ethnic borders and refers to the official language as "Romanian language." This founding act of the Republic of Moldova is celebrated nowadays as the National Day or Independence Day. And this document precedes the Constitution of RM, were it was erroneously written "Moldovan language", which is pending corrective actions by Moldovan Parliament as per the decision nr.36 from 05.12.2013 of the Constitutional Court of Moldova, which was also published in the 'Monitorul Oficial nr.304-310 article.51' Moldovan official registry of law RO RU. -- SCostea (talk) 21:29, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  37. Support Of course. Double sharp (talk) 08:13, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  38. Obvious Support per all above and the original closure request --94.66.56.156 12:06, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  39. Support - Moldovan exists; it's another name for Romanian. Not even the Moldovan state claims it's a separate language anymore. Only claimed by a territory that not even Russia recognizes as independent, but rather an autonomous region of Moldova. It's funny that they're the only official users of Romanian in Moldovan Cyrillic, yet they call it after the name of a country which refutes its existence and which they claim to be independent from. The articles themselves have no real value, as they're simple transliterations of content found on rowiki at the time. The mere existence of mowiki leads to confusion - this is not what Wikipedia is about. —  Andreyyshore  T  C  19:16, 5 Aug 2017 (UTC) 
  40. Support per all above--2A02:587:6E12:DE00:687E:1527:379B:31B 20:07, 6 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  41. Support Jc86035 (talk) 15:30, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  42. Support No content loss.--Strainu (talk) 13:01, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

  1. I worry about the genuine need to move from archived and not editable to delete. The major claim to harm appears to be that it is bad publicity for the Wikimedia, but none of this material was published recently, with the one critical source and the petition dating back to 2007. There appears to be no immediate need to delete it. If there was more evidence of active harm akin to the situation with Croatian Wikipedia, then this argument might be more compelling. --LauraHale (talk) 08:09, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  2. We need to preserve the cultural heritage. --Finland (talk) 09:28, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • But there simply is no cultural heritage. Hence this request for deletion... This, that and the other (talk) 09:34, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • why?! You need to delete all the partitions on all dialects, for example, the Kashubian Wikipedia, Sorbian Wikipedia and so on. --Finland (talk) 11:26, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Moldovan is no dialect, and nobody proposes to close dialect wikis … Vogone talk 15:49, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • The premise is the thing should be deleted because it is not a language, would not pass LangComm now, and by not being deleted, created bad publicity for the Wikimedia Foundation. The latter argument about deletion is not supported by any recent sources and it alone would actually probably be the most compelling argument for why this should cease to exist as a historical archive. (Because if you look at a lot of the supports, they appear to be support archiving, not support deleting.)--LauraHale (talk) 10:52, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  3. In the closing discussion, one (opposing) mentioned that he has seen two original pages on this wiki (alas he didn't say which, but a bot can be sent to explore). If Moldovan=Romanian, then there are native speakers :) And it used to have a code. I believe there are Moldovan people who are not familiar with Latin (of course a script like in kk:-wiki could help them much better, but just try to turn it on in ro-wiki). The project has historical significance for Wikipedia itself :) And there is already a link to ro-wiki in page tops. I don't know why we should close it. Maybe we could even reopen it like wiki on Transnistrian dialect which used to be official in Soviet Moldova before 1989 (but it's hardly compatible the opening policy, of course). Ignatus (talk) 20:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Shall we also e.g. clean deleted vandal versions of articles from database at all? And also script converting shall be made before such proposals otherwise it's destructive ones, IMO. --Base (talk) 08:08, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Base: So, you wanna restart it?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:34, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Restart what? The wiki? No, i'm not. It's the same as I dont want deleted test pages and stuff like that to be restored but in the same time I don't see the need to delete them from data base at all. But I want rowiki to have cyr<->lat converting so it could properly and fully substitute the wiki in question. --Base (talk) 04:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  5. No problem with moving it off the "mo" prefix to some suitable archive. No reason to delete, if people want to "point and laugh" let 'em. Suggesting "mo" should redirect to "ro" is a bad idea though. "mo" might be assigned in the future. Rich Farmbrough 21:18 2 April 2014 (GMT).
    1. It is exceedingly unlikely for "mo" to be assigned in the future. The ISO 639-1 website says "The identifiers mo and mol will not be assigned to different items, and recordings using these identifiers will not be invalid." At the current time, the only way to get a two-letter code is to be a new language that doesn't have a three letter code; the last new two letter tag to be added was Haitian Creole in 2003.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. I think that a blocked version of Moldovan Wikipedia is a good example of Wikipedia's principles on language recognition. So, this is not a "cultural heritage", but a historical document I'd say. --Мурад 97 (talk) 20:04, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment Comment I should say that there's already a wiki for the former Wikipedia 10th anniversary events for example in this case (vs. Tama language), what's wrong in my comment?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. We never know. Content could still be lost. Macadam1 (talk) 10:43, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. İ’m learning Romanian/Moldovan, and İ’m interessed in all the variants. İ don’t want to lose the Moldovan articles (written in Cyrillic). So İ oppose this deletion request. Now iťs closed and İ think iťs enough. --Josep Maria Roca Peña (talk) 09:32, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    @Josep Maria Roca Peña: I'd not recommend you to learn so-called "Moldovan language" from mo.wikipedia. Seems like this wiki was written just for fun and/or by people who actually doesn't know Romanian/Moldovan. Even the site interface is localized with errors; some examples from the left sidebar: "Прима паӂина", "Скимбарь корелате", or "Каутаре". Also I must mention that one of the most important article pages of mo subdomain - "Листэ де молдовей" ("List of Moldovans") has misspelled title and several errors in its short content. "Ён Друцэ" - rly?! If you want to study Moldovan language, the best option is to do it from printed books; there exists several good Moldovan encyclopedias, like "Енчиклопедия Советикэ Молдовеняскэ" (Soviet Moldovan Encyclopedia) or "Кишинэу. Енчиклопедие." --XXN (talk) 22:10, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Strong Oppose. I really think that it should be open again. Lets have 2 projects: 1 in latin script, 1 in Cyrillic. Ilya Drakonov (talk) 17:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC).[reply]
    @Илья Драконов: We have Kazakh, Serbian, Tajik, and Uzbek Wikipedias that have latn-cyrl language converter systems. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:29, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226: I tested the above conversion systems that you mentioned:
  • Kazakh (kk) Wikipedia: works for (i) kk-cyrl → kk-latin, and (ii) kk-cyrl → kk-Arabic but it does not work for kk-latin → kk-cyrl , kk-latin → kk-Arabic , and kk-Arabic → kk-Cyrl (see demo.).
  • Tajik (tg) Wikipedia: works for tg-cyrl → tg-latin but not for tg-latin → tg-cyrl
  • Serbian (sr) Wikipedia: works for sr-cyrl → sr-latin but not for sr-latin → sr-cyrl
  • Uzbek (uz) Wikipedia: works for uz-latin → uz-cyrl AND from uz-cyrl → uz-latin (see demonstration)
  • Chinese (zh) Wikipedia: works for zh-trad. → zh-simpl. AND from zh-simpl. → zh-trad. (demo). All users are allowed to both create and edit articles using Traditional Chinese characters or Simplified Chinese characters.
The following criteria would need to be satisfied before deleting Moldovan Wikipedia:
  • The community on Romanian Wikipedia vote by majority consensus to allow a Romanian latin → Moldovan Cyrillic conversion tool to be implemented on ro.wikipedia.org. From previous discussions, there were hints that some Romanian users could oppose such a move.
  • Moldovan users living in Transnistria, Moldova or any other location be allowed to create new articles and edit existing articles on ro.wikipedia using the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet (similar to the systems adopted for Uzbek and Chinese Wikipedia). Please also note this is referring to the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet and not the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. (At present, try creating a Moldovan Cyrillic article or inserting Moldovan Cyrillic text on Romanian Wikipedia and see what happens........)
  • A conversion tool is created and enabled on ro.wikipedia which enables both Romanian Latin → Moldovan Cyrillic AND Moldovan Cyrillic → Romanian Latin.
A Transnistrian has stated that Moldovan Cyrillic is still used in Transnistria (view the Moldovan Cyrillic website). Hence they should be allowed to view and edit articles in Moldovan Cyrillic. --Ernesztina (talk) 02:07, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Comment Serbian Wikipedia does have the opportunity to convert from latin into cyrillic (sr-lat -> sr-cyrl), e.g. sr:Kristof Valc. --Jarash 05:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  1. --Arbnos (talk) 19:13, 21 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    @Arbnos: Per what reason?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:29, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose. If Moldovan language is Romanian, it is necessary to make converter latn-cyrl. But nobody does it. --Danvintius Bookix (talk) 10:00, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose. Preserve the closed Moldovan Wikipedia indefinitely for now. There have been some civility issues about Romanian Wikipedia, seen in an RFC case discussion. I don't think deleting those articles and/or moving them into Romanian Wikipedia would resolve those disputes at the Romanian one. Also, from what I've read, Moldova and Romania have historical tensions between them. --George Ho (talk) 01:56, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @George Ho: Sovereignty problems should never be a reason to keep a really gibberish wiki for purposes of only one country (otherwise, why we can't limit Czech Wikipedia to write articles only about Czech Republic?), also if you kept an eye on mw:Writing systems, you will also believe that combining different scripts of a language on any of wikis can however resolve many conflicts of interests between different nationalities. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:35, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    ......I hate to admit that you have a point here, and I hope you are right that merging Moldovan script with Romanian one won't lead to problems. I wonder how influential Wikimedia is to Romania and Moldova. --George Ho (talk) 13:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, w:Romanian Cyrillic alphabet (before 19th century) and w:Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet... I don't know. The Old Romanian Cyrillic alphabet used some older, obscure alphabets, while the Moldovan language does not. But that doesn't make current Romanian language and Moldovan language similar or different from each other, right? --George Ho (talk) 13:22, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose. Cyrillic script is still used in Transnistria. Look at the official website of Transnistrian Radio a newspaper Адевэрул Нистрян in Cyrillic script. Of course, Cyrillic script is used by thousands not millions. But still it is used. --Тарас Ашурков (talk) 08:46, 9 June 2017 (UTC) (ru:Участник:Тарас Ашурков)[reply]
    @Тарас Ашурков: Like what I said again and again on this page, keeping this closed wiki is also nonsense because those "articles" can be outdated after some decades, rather than keeping dormant informations, if you really want to edit under Moldovan Cyrillic, try Лимба Молдовеняскэ Wikia. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Тарас Ашурков: since when illegal resources of non-existing countries are considered as official? according to International Law - Transnistria is not an officially recognised country, therefore it can't issue any licences for this so-called "Transnistrian Radio" thus making this resource illegal -- SCostea (talk) 19:05, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @ Liuxinyu970226, I don´t think it´s about the language being official or legal. The proposal is to delete the project based on Siberian Wikipedia precedent. That refers to closing a project in an inexistent language. My point is that you can´t call a languange inexistent if there is broadcasting and printed press in the language. Moreover, it's being taught in schools. And I know that the ministry overseeing the schools is not a part of a recognized government. You may consider it illegal. But you cannot deny the fact that the language is still in use. @SCostea. Keeping it close may also result in reopening the project. Тарас Ашурков (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Тарас Ашурков: Montenegrin is also broadcasting by radio companies of Montenegro, is also on airing in the Yugoslavic area, is also teaching in several educational institutions in Montenegro, is also having official language status from ROCG government, is also trusted by millions of Montenegro people, and so it's simply in use too. However, how do you believe that we could consider opening a Montenegrin Wikipedia? Therefore "Keeping it close may also result in reopening the project." See both Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Moldavian-Romanian and Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Moldovan Cyrillic, both are vetoed by Langcom. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:06, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Тарас Ашурков: Have you read my this comment to you? And shouldn't you change your vote from misleading "oppose" to a fair support after reading? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:22, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Liuxinyu970226: I've read your comments and though I could agree with some of your points, my vote stays the way it is. My belief is that there has to exist an opportunity to contribute to wiki projects in the Cyrillic version of the language. There could be two possible ways to provide such an opportunityː 1) provide an opportunity to contribute to a separate Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia or 2) create a kind of a converter system for the existing Romanian Latin Wikipedia. Any single option of the two would be enough. Still, currently none of options are provided. And I will oppose any decision which will keep those options from being available. --Тарас Ашурков (talk) 08:47, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Better leave it as read-only than provide cyrilic version of rowiki. Making rowiki available in Cyrilic will drive the absolute majority of rowiki users somewhere between mad and dismayed, and will be a severe hit to the already shrinking community. mowiki as of now does not hurt anyone. In about ten years from creation, nobody from Transnistria has ever bothered to ask for unclosure, I think they are quite comfortable editing in ruwiki. Just please never merge with rowiki. Gikü (talk) 21:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gikü: So we should restore Klingon? restore Toki Pona? restore "Siberian"? restore wiki for comcom? restore zh-cn: zh-tw: and else from deleted.dblist because those contents from deleted wikis should not really "hurt" people? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    You missed my point, which is strange, since I marked it with bold. Gikü (talk) 07:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gikü: You also missed to, because as a simple example, we originally should not merge Simplified and Traditional Chinese to one zhwiki (which your comment even will be opposed by @Shizhao: and other zhwiki users) if under your bold part of comment. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:57, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gikü: As said above there is no reason in keeping this closed wiki because it is comprised merely of fake and written just for fun articles, that continuously keep getting more an more outdated, plain dormant informations -- SCostea (talk) SCostea (talk) 19:05, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose per phab:T169928. --Rschen7754 00:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  7. It does not really bother anyone. In some Moldovan regions Romanian (a.k.a. Moldovan) is still using the Cyrillic script; rowp doesn't provide the latn-cyrl language converter system, so in theory it still may be helpful. --Wolverène (talk) 12:38, 23 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  8. It is sad that having Moldovan wikipedia language causes a war. The do NOT matter if it a language. Where I grew up at the time Tiraspol, they teach in Cyrillic because Pridnestrovie republic want to be different. And I learned latin later on but never useful until you go to Moldova or Romania. So I understand Romanian latin but it is slow to me. English in Cyrillic is understandable but slow because you see it always in Latin. So me with Romanian. There is also small slang in Moldovan Romanian do not have. So please, make Cyrillic Romanian or Moldovan! The opposite support do know nothing. If we want Cyrillic, let us! Do not get angry we are anti Romanian. It is faster in Cyrillic. That is all. I do not like the Romanians, we are close countrys and friends. But we want Cyrillic and they fight. They say NO you lie! Romanian is latin! The Cyrillic was old! Yes it is in Romania and Moldova. But Pridnestrovie writes in Cyrillic! They say Soviet is gone from the country and no cyrillic has use. Yes for Romania and Moldova. No for Pridnestrovie! No for Tiraspol! Please. Reconsider! Нои скрьем ын кириликэ! Думитру (talk) 14:35, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Romanian being faster to read in Cyrillic is, well, your opinion. You're just used to it, that's all. If I were to tell the opposite, it would hold just as much weight. Also, English slang terms vary widely depending on the country, yet no one claims that American and British, for example, are different languages — regional variations are only natural.
    It is also normal to be indignant with the Transnistrian authorities' actions for linguistic "cleansing" — they use aggresive methods for pushing a fabricated Cyrillic version of the language (I'm sorry for you for being a victim) even though a part of the region's population clearly prefers Latin; should I remind you how people protested when they forcibly closed Latin Romanian schools in the region under questionable reasoning, until the European Court of Human Rights intervened? Not to mention how outdated Moldovan Cyrillic textbooks are (not necessarily because of the script, but because of the content, which is useless for pursuing higher education nowadays) or how parents are constantly being threatened for simply insisting that their kids study in their native language (Romanian in Latin script).
    I see no reason to support a disputed government's ambitions for promoting a forced and unscientific duplicate of an existing language, created by the USSR specifically in order to shake a nation's identity — they did similar stuff in the southern parts of the USSR by devising different alphabets for Turkic languages so as to distract from the similarities between them, leading to cultural division and ensuring Russian dominance in the Union. Threatening and silencing those who don't agree with their warped reality is also unacceptable.
    Also, did you really create an account just for this?
    Last, but not least, "Ной скрием ын кириликэ" would be the actual correct spelling in Moldovan Cyrillic. —  Andreyyshore  T  C  08:27, 24 Sep 2017 (UTC) 
    I see what you say. But that I did not mean. Other people use Cyrillic as much, and other people read as quickly as possible. For many people, using Cyrillic will be useful. I mean, create a Cyrillic side of the Romanian Вікіпедія. I do not care about what you are watching and how other people see politics. Why do you train her? Even if you do not agree with them, that is good, then you still have to ask the question that people still use the Cyrillic script, regardless of your own selfish opinion. For me I have problems with the Latin language. I'm sure I'm not the only one. You are so stupid, considering that you simply do not agree with the Придністров'я government, so everyone else people will have to struggle with reading in Latin. You do not support anyone, just speak the language. You refuse people to be able to read in your own language, however, deliberately restricting your language because you do not agree with one submission. As long as it has official status, while people still write and read it, regardless of whether you agree, it should remain.
    j is next to I in Cyrillic. Thank you for pointing out, but why you do it.
    I have a Wikipedia, but no вікімідіа Does it matter?
    Думитру (talk) 14:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    What is more selfish? Stealing and twisting someone else's language, or calling someone out when they do that? I'd go for the former. To clarify, I'm not saying that you stole anything, but there are people perpetuating, forcing and defending the steal, resulting in people like you thinking the way they do. I also use Hangul privately, for fun. Should I pretend it's an official script for Romanian now? Or even pretend it's some kind of new language? I know better than that, thank you, please consider doing the same.
    Also, there is nothing official or righteous about Transnistria — it's not a real country, just a local, unrecognized de facto authority that uses questionable methods to make people believe and/or accept a fantasy. At this point, I'm wondering why y'all haven't just switched to Russian.
    Also, stop pretending that Latin is this huge burden — I can use both alphabets with great ease and you can too, if you just try. Learning is a thing, you know, you weren't born all-knowing and neither was I. So I'm not refusing anyone's ability to read — what a ridiculous accusation.
    P.S. Please watch your language, as I did not insult you. —  Andreyyshore  T  C  15:21, 29 Sep 2017 (UTC) 
  9. I believe that if existing people who use a certain language/script, then they should have the opportunity to write and read in their language/script. We (Moldavians) literally getting destroyed like the nation. Our historical simbols was taken from us, then the right to learn our history in the schools, then our moldavian language, right now they saying that we don't even exist. If you want to find out the truth, then visit Moldova and ask simple people who they are and how they naming their language. Please sorry my poor English, Peace :) Cybernenea11 (talk) 13:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Very simple, who would benefit from deleting this? No-one would, in fact for historical preservation I would argue that keeping this would be a great example of how not to make new wiki’s, and how ineffective transliteration wiki's could be (though I would still support Hanja and Chữ Nôm, but not separating the Zh-Wiki in two). Deleting this from the servers wouldn't really benefit anyone, and would just be a pain in necks 🧣 of future historians. Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 😒🌏🔒) (My global unlock 😄🌏🔓) 09:44, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

@George Ho: Well, in my view, the fact that the Romanian Wikipedia has a bad leadership is not a good reason for keeping the Moldovan Wikipedia. If other users, like me, can't contribute to Romanian Wikipedia, they can come to Wikia, or they should better join their energies and replace the current leadership of the Romanian Wikipedia. But most of them would support closing the Moldovan Wikipedia, because the "Moldovan language" was forged by those who wanted to dismantle the national identity of the Romanians who had the bad luck to be born on the wrong part of Romania (the one grabbed by Russia - i.e. current day Republic of Moldova). The existence of Moldovan Wikipedia is, by extension, an attack to the very identity of the Romanian people in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, and therefore they can have no sympathy for such fake projects. This is an aggressive political project of an empire which, instead of attracting their target audience with benefits, tries to dismantle those communities. They keep telling us that we don't exist. Like en:Benzion Netanyahu claimed that "Palestinian people do not exist". It's quite impossible to agree with that. —  Ark25  (talk) 06:02, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I thank you for, appreciate, and respect your views on the language project, Ark25. BTW, you might want to read the RFC discussion about Croatian Wikipedia from 2013, which illustrated conflicts between Serbian and Croatian editors... just for reference. --George Ho (talk) 06:24, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Almost forgot, this is the "deletion proposal" for the already closed Moldovan Wikipedia. --George Ho (talk) 08:02, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A few points:
  1. The "Now, if someone really wants to read all Romanian Wikipedia in Cyrillic he can do that here" link is that.
  2. It was said that "The language isn't sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki", however as it seems like romanian community are not happy to implement a script converter on their wiki, in effect it will not coexist.
  3. I am not sure how the concept of "native speaker" can be applied to different script as script are not language...But what's the situation for school education in the respective region?
C933103 (talk) 06:36, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To do if approved[edit]

This is a propersed plan to do if deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia is approved.

  1. Remove mowiki (and mowiktionary) form all.dblist, wikipedia.dblist, visualeditor.dblist, visualeditor-default.dblist, small.dblist, s3.dblist, echowikis.dblist, closed.dblist, cirrus.dblist, wikidataclient.dblist and add them to deleted.dblist, and then do something in wikitech:Delete a wiki
  2. Remove mo from /a/common/langlist and /a/common/php/languages/Names.php
  3. Redirect mo.(wikipedia|wiktionary) to ro.xxx
  4. ... (Please expand when needed)

--GZWDer (talk) 10:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And please, request for delete the Portal:Mo of translatewiki via its support page. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's a matter for the local translatewiki.net community to handle, not LangCom. I do not think LangCom has any control over the translatewiki community. If this proposal is approved by one of the LangCom members however, you can post the proposal to delete mo from the language code list yourself at the Support page. Or ask me to post it on your behalf. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 05:01, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
With 2 LangCom members being TWN staff and 4 of them being local bureaucrats that's probably not entirely true. Vogone talk 23:38, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't realize that. What if we were to have both this proposal and a proposal initiated on translatewiki's Support board to attract the attention of LangCom members for comment? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 04:08, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Language converter support proposal[edit]

İf this project is deleted, can you implement on rowiki an optional converter tab much like on srwiki for users who wish to read or edit in Cyrillic, to enable on each user’s preferences? Thanks! --Josep Maria Roca Peña (talk) 09:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've documented at Wikipedias in multiple writing systems#Romanian Wikipedia. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATE 2017-01-02:

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T169453 --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:28, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If it is done as a gadget which converts Latin characters to Cyrillic characters for the reader and this gadget can be turned on and off by the reader, I don't object to it, provided that ro.wiki remains written in Latin characters. Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:57, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is designed as not only a converter for readers, but for writers, too. Like you could go to rowiki and write ын молдовеняскэ (în moldovenească / in Moldovan), and then the software needs to be able to correctly display the page in Latin and Cyrillic. Gikü (talk) 15:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
NO! NO! NO! for a Trojan Horse in ro.wiki! Not a single cyrillic letter in ro.wiki! --85.76.4.137 16:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose Cyrillic support, as the only scientific organizations that regulate the Romanian language (i.e., The Linguistics Institute of the Romanian Academy and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova) state that Romanian is written using the Latin alphabet only, and that holds infinitely more weight than some ambiguous political organization. If we're to include Cyrillic, then we might as well devise a Hangul-employing system and add that as well; it would make just as little sense and it would be just as lousy a fit for the Romanian language. —  Andreyyshore  T  C  20:11, 5 Aug 2017 (UTC) 

For an update, the Phabricator task is closed as "declined". Pinging Liuxinyu970226 to ask whether the consideration is worth pursuing any further. --George Ho (talk) 17:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why decline it? On Chinese Wikipedia, users can edit articles by typing in Traditional Chinese characters or Simplified Chinese characters, however when they press the "Save" button, the articles are all displayed in Simplified Characters. If the user then wishes to view the article in Traditional Chinese characters, they simply click on the drop down arrow and select the "Traditional Chinese" tab option to view the whole article in Traditional Chinese characters. Alternatively, they could create a User account, go to "My Preferences" and select "Traditional Chinese" as their default display option when viewing articles.
Likewise, a gadget could be created on Romanian Wikipedia where the user can edit an article by typing Moldavian Cyrillic, then after clicking the "Save" button, the article displays as Romanian latin words. The user then selects a tab that could display the article in Cyrillic. --A-eng (talk) 03:14, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Per above discussions, Romanian users does not seems to be comfortable with the existence of such a button. And the deployment of such tool will also affect source code.
Also, as a note, the widget proposal is rather different from Chinese Wikipedia. For example, one can take a look at the Cantonese Wikipedia where it have a conversion widget on by default, but that can be switched off in preference and if the option is taken then no related button will appear on interface the gadget can also be turned off by default. Could this be considered by relevant parties?C933103 (talk) 06:42, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@George Ho and Strainu: How do you think about C933103's comment here? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:33, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this is still discussed anywhere but on the Romanian projects.--Strainu (talk) 10:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with C933103's comments. If you want to push forward to add Cyrillic script, why not ask the Romanian Wikipedia community? Otherwise, best to respect their opinions. --George Ho (talk) 17:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]