Talk:Controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Moldova

Original research

Well, this "article" is only a few hours old, so I'm willing to give it some slack - it's about a notable topic, after all. However, its current state is miserable - most of it is original research by an undisclosed author, its statements are not supported by the sources presented - virtually all of these are broad "www.somerandomsite.com" type links that sort of tell the reader to "go look for verification yourself - it's out there somewhere!" Most of the sources are also either offline (the credible ones) or inaccessible (malformed links). Some of the research seems to come from another reality altogether, ("it prevents the majority of the people from freely developing their culture beyond the state boundaries" - huh?) and generally tends to bind all of Moldova's woes to the "wrong" choice of a language name. In short, it must be seriously reworked, first of all, sources for all the claimed facts must be presented and opinions and analysis must be attributed to their authors. That it also presents only the Romanian nationalist POV on the issue is a separate problem which will have to be addressed when the text is made into a viable article. --Illythr (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the bolshevik internationalist POV should also be presented.

The problem though is that we already have an article about the idea of a separate Moldovan ethnicity, i.e. Moldovans and there is an article about the so-called Moldovan language. So I don't really understand what the purpose of this article could be. One solution could be to merge this article with the other existing ones, however, I'm not sure if anything in here is even usable. I'm not one to jump with the axe at budding articles, however, at this point I just don't see any future for this article. Unless this article will be radically improved within a few days, I'm afraid deletion will be the only reasonable solution. TSO1D (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, we also have Moldovenism on top of it all. Perhaps, if this article becomes developed, the stuff from those other ones can be cut into this one, hopefully making the two articles you mentioned as uncontroversial as possible (impossible?). --Illythr (talk) 22:33, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

It's a week tomorrow evening since this mock-article has been created. Do we have any reason to believe it will be improved on a short term? Cause otherwise I think the AfD log will have a new entry.Xasha (talk) 23:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, it'd be kinda nice to put all the controversy issues from the articles listed above into this one, which has a neutral name. Right now it's in shambles, though. Maybe we can poke the author to do something about it first? --Illythr (talk) 23:26, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Talk between Illythr & S. Manoliu

Please don't link your newly created article from other ones before it it brought into some shape first. Right now it's pure WP:AFD fodder.

Also please don't turn section headers into wikilinks - it's a Bad Thing. --Illythr (talk) 16:39, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't misunderstand me - I am not addressing the POV of the article yet, only its encyclopaedic value, or rather, its current lack thereof. It also has absolutely nothing to do with Russians (Ukrainians etc) and their culture. As for opinions, mine is that ethnicity has always been a political thing.

• That's clear ((Ernest Gellner, States & nations)

It helped unite the various Vlach tribes under a single idea, which IMO is a Good Thing.

• Vlachs not formed tribes. East-Romance speaking peoples lived in medieval states, as Germanic- or Italic-speaking peoples. Germany, Italy, Romania as nations & states are constructions of the XIX century, and the modern form of German, Italian & Romanian languages, also.

But it didn't have the universal, massive, etc effect the nationalists claim

• The nationalists (romanians, moldovans, russians or hungarians) have their POV. I'm not one of them. I'm not against the Moldovan identity. To be "against" it, is to be against a part of the reality.

...especially not in Bessarabia, which was excluded from the creation of the Romanian nation due to it being a rural uneducated Russian province at the time.

• The Russian belong of Bassarabia, as the Austrian belong of Bucovina or the Hungarian belong of Transylvania, were not in incompatible with the romanian cultural developpement. The reality that you describe, are the same in Transylvania, Valachia and West-Moldavia (except the fact that this rural uneducated provinces were not soviet after 1945). If today Moldova is not Switzerland or Canada, where French, German, Italian & English cultural & linguistic identities are compatible with the Swiss or Canadian citizenship, if today Modova's authorithies support the local identity AGAINST the romanian identity (and ONLY against THIS identity), this is not an effect of the russian past of Moldova, but an effect of the soviet past. Vladimir Voronin himself said it: "We cannot delete the soviet past, it is an entire world for us".

Moldovan and Romanian are not different languages. My understanding of the position of the Moldovan government is that "their" language should be called Moldovan because it "came before Romanian", not because it's a different language. That is, Romanian, according to them is a western dialect of Moldovan, which is the "mother tongue" of the whole group, and not vice versa.

• I'm against it, because it is NOT ENCYCLOPEDIC to accept a political diktat in Science. The name of the language today called "Romanian" & "Moldovan" (why not ?) is DACO-ROMAN for the linguists. The modern form of the Daco-Roman is the same one in Moldova and Romania. And the ancient forms of it, spoken in Transylvania, Valachia, the former Principality of Moldova (entire) & Dobruja, and written not in russian cyrillic, but in old greek-slavonic cyrillic, were called "Rumâniaska" by the own speakers : it means (in this times) not "Romanian" but "from Rome", and this Rome is not the first one (Rome in Italy) but the second one (Romania: our "Byzantine Empire"). Miron Costin, Grigore Ureche, Dimitri Cantemir wrote this, not me. So, the "Moldovan" is not coming before Romanian, but the former "Rumâniaska" (Abstand language) preceded the modern Daco-Roman called "Romanian" & "Moldovan" (Ausbau language). This is the historical reality, different of the nationalist POV from Romania or Moldova. I have not today the exact sources about this, because I have no more entrance in the libraries of the universities were I was student (Sorbonne-Paris I, Institut national des langues et des Civilisations orientales-Paris III), but I certify to you: this sources exists.

Moldovan citizens are not automatically ethnic Moldovans. According to the last census, there was something like 98% of the former and only 75% of the latter in Moldova. Citizenship is something that is enforced by the state (fact). Ethnicity, on the other hand, is a matter of cultural affiliation (my opinion).

• The confusion between ethnicity & citizenship is also from the soviet model (who takes the german model of the "Blood right"). In the modern international right, ethnicity (a matter of cultural affiliation, yes) must be different from the citizenship, ans you can be Moldovan by citizenship AND Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian by ethnicity, like you can be Swiss by citizenship AND German, French or Italian by ethicity.

---

If the russian- and ukrainian-speaking Moldovans can use freely russian or ukrainian language and enjoy the russian or ukrainian culture and history, why the latin-speaking Moldovans cannot use freely romanian language and enjoy the romanian culture and history, if some of they want it ?

This I can't understand. Why can't they?

• May be because it is forbidden by the Constitution ? This is a purely political thing...

Moldovan government doesn't welcome any movement whose goal is to turn it from a sovereign government into a provincial one. Illythr (talk) 21:36, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

• I understand perfectly it, but the political weapons used by the Moldovan govt are wrong, and wounded not the romanian nationalism, but Science, and cultural freedom. The right way is to claim strong the unalienable right of the peoples from Moldova to be an independent state, in a total PaBeHcmBo/Egalitate, but without soviet distorsions of history and cultural areas.

Cnacuba for your attention, --Spiridon MANOLIU (talk) 15:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

• I'm too lazy to copy it every time, so I'd suggest a single place for it, my talk page, for example. --Illythr (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

What is to be done?

I have read the article again and I haven't really seen much improvement from its state a few weeks ago. In its current form, the article is very far from meeting Wikipedia's standards on verifiability or neutrality of point of view. I think the best approach is to follow Illythir's suggestion that we should try to make this article the main article regarding the Moldovan controversy with various sections discussion the historical aspects, the idea of a Moldovan language i.e. Moldovan language, the idea of a Moldovan ethnicity i.e. Moldovans, the current situation in Moldova and the official ideology i.e. Moldovenism. I am not sure whether it is best to merge some of the articles into here or just to have a summary of them in a subsection. Probably longer articles like Moldovan language should be maintained, while some like Moldovenism because of their brevity could simply be merged here as a section.

As for the current content of this article, I simply don't know what could be used. I think it would be more difficult to try to improve the existing text than to start over, so what I propose is that we provisionally move the current content to a non-mainspace site (say at Talk:Controversy over national identity in Moldova/draft). Then we can develop an outline for this article and decide what topics we want included. Finally we can start including/merging those sections and while we're doing that we could also integrate the information from this current text that is appropriate.

For the sections I propose having something like the following 1) Historical context (where we can briefly discuss Moldova's history and particularly the aspects relevant to demography. 2) Moldovan language 3) Moldovan ethnicity 4) State ideology (i.e. Moldovenism).

What do others think? TSO1D (talk) 03:05, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but this "moldovenism" is not more of a state ideology than "romanianism" is for Romania (see the official census directions that forbids census takers to register Moldovans and Aromanians as they declare themselves; not to talk about Romanian courts forbiding self-declaring Moldovan ethnics to form legal associations).Xasha (talk) 12:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

When I said moldovenism, I was referring specifically to the ideology embodied in the "Concept of National Policy" passed by the PCRM a few years back where the authors set out their vision of the identity of the local population, claiming that Moldovans and Romanians are two distinct peoples speaking two different languages, that Moldova is the legal successor of the Principality, etc. Previously that's all the article Moldovenism discussed and that is why I called it that. But I just meant that we should include that law here as well. How about the rest of the proposal? TSO1D (talk) 14:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

How is that different from the census directions adopted by the Romanian gvt that said Moldovans are Romanians, no matter how they answer the question about ethnicity (and I think it was a PSD gvt , not a extremist one like PRM or PUNR)?Xasha (talk) 14:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Hold on, Xasha ! The census results in Moldova concerning the ethnicity and the language are highly suspected to be falsified. Read this: "Membrii mişcării "Patrioţii Moldovei" invocă datele recensământului populaţiei din anul 2004 în care două procente din populaţia Republicii Moldova s-a declarat română şi 76 de procente – moldoveană. Aceste date au fost contestate de către observatorii europeni care au monitorizat recensământul." And yes, maybe this article could also help you a little bit. Though you might be not a Moldovan, I hope you understood the text (it is written in the official language of the country where you come from). If you have some problems, ask me and I'm going to translate the text. --Olahus (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, Xasha's a native speaker. Anyhow, here's a more specific article on that census. It seems only the nationalists, who unsurprisingly didn't like the 2% number have really contested the census by interpreting the experts' statements. This doesn't seem to be relevant in this discussion at all, though... --Illythr (talk) 20:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

But, I wasn't criticizing that viewpoint here, not that I agree with it, but I just wasn't discussing the idea here at all. All I meant to say was that I believe we should have a section were we present that particular law since it represents the official view of the current government. Do you agree with that? And how about the rest of the outline? TSO1D (talk) 14:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with TSO1D, but I'm way too lazy to start cleaning the existing article up, or start a new one. True to my my Wikisloth nature, I'll generously let someone else to lay the foundation, after which point I'll join in with points I raised above (NPOV and stuff). --Illythr (talk) 20:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

You won't do it, I'm not allowed to do it (so is Olahus)... Unless someone promises to fix it I'll AfD it this week.Xasha (talk) 20:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you both can do it - on the draft page proposed by TSO1D. Then he and I (and whoever else might join in) can move it to the mainspace. Considering the, um, circumstances, I think it might actually be a good idea to do two separate drafts, or we're gonna have a unique opportunity to witness a revert war on a wikispace draft page. --Illythr (talk) 22:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Since nobody seems to want to touch this article I'll AfD it on September 15. It's not fair to the reader and is damaging to Wikipedia's reputation to have an article in such an appalling state.Xasha (talk) 22:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

More stuff

• "Fascist," "Boyar," "reactionary," and to a lesser degree "bourgeois" were the Soviet "vocabulary" words describing someone who is anti-Soviet or anti-Communist. --Illythr (talk) 18:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
• "the following citation is not enough, more needed" - that page is simply a page of the History Institute of the Moldovan ASM and describes its aims and structure. It is as relevant to and as supportive of the assertion "The official definition of a distinct Moldovan identity gives rise to protests from the the scientific community" as the home page of an American Football team would be. Sure, it's true, but the source says absolutely nothing about that.
• "repudiates" is what's tagged. The existence of a common language, for instance is certainly not repudiated by the claim that it is spoken by two distinct ethnic groups.
• "in that it has been impossible to build up local patriotism" - you might want to ask user:Serhio about that. Also, see patriotism: "Patriotism is commonly defined as love of and/or devotion to one's country." and "nationalism is not considered an inherent part of patriotism." According to the surveys presented in that article, Moldovans are more patriotic than the Japanese or Lithuanians, who certainly don't have any ethnic identity problems.
• "in the instability of relations between Moldova and neighbouring countries" - So, how does that destabilise relations with Ukraine, eh? Anyhow, that's a problem of Moldovan leadership, trying to sit on two chairs at once, rather than an ethnicity problem.
• "Moldavians from Romania have the same opinion as their government" - This cannot be verified based on existing sources and none are given anyway. Reworded. --Illythr (talk) 18:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
  • agree
  • agree
  • Oh, I see. Sorry, misunderstood.
  • I did not add that phrase. Please, modify it if you know a better way. I am just a watcher on that.
  • exactly! it is political leadership related, not ethnicity! (BTW, Russia is also a "neighboring country")
  • some kind of rewording needed, agree - I will see now what you did in the article, but your solution to reword is the only correct here, totally agree. Dc76\^talk 18:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
    • 3)I think you still misunderstand the purpose of most of these tags - they don't question the factual correctness of the things listed, but their causal relation with the controversy, that is, the assertion that it is the political position of the Moldovan government on the state language and ethnicity that are causing these things, as opposed to economy, other (possibly related) political issues, sunspots of particular shapes, etc. The very definition of original research. --Illythr (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
      • Did I remove that tag again? (wonders) I think I did not remove any tags today. revert me if I did.* Pls, see your talk page: imho, claims of type A :) should definitively be tagged, while those of typoe B :) should not, imho. I confess I am a little puzzled, because it wasn't me who introduced that text, so I kept wondering what that editor meant, and I was rephrasing to whatever I understood he/she meant. This article actually brings about an interesting aspect: if I have such hard time figuring out what another editor meant, chances are others do not understand me either. I should use rather simpler words when editing some things in WP, because while not knowing English as I would have wanted, I sometimes tend to use the words incorrectly (viz. sensible and sensitive :) )Dc76\^talk 19:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

        I am referring to these edits, where you seem to be unaware of the problem the tags are meant to address. --Illythr (talk) 20:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

        I thought the tags there could only mean one thing: that the fact itself needs sourcing. I have trouble in understanding words like "in that"/"in the" at the beginning of new items. Are you claiming these words imply causality and that is the problem? Perhaps we can solve the problem like this: add a tag and comment "this tag requests to cite that X is Y / that X claimed Y". I think I will understand then. And obviously repeat this with other tags, until i get it (if they are not similar). Dc76\^talk 20:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

        Actually, the sentence structure is somewhat ungrammatical as it is. Anyhow, if you "open the brackets," you will get the following: The controversy surrounding national identity fuels permanent tension in the Moldovan society by making it impossible to build up local patriotism and making the relations between Moldova and its "neighbouring countries" unstable (meaning the constant swings between Romania (EU) and Russia).--Illythr (talk) 01:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

This is actually THE problem of this article right now - it does not attribute any of its analysis to anyone. Sources are either not given at all, those that are given are very broad and unhelpful (just some random links in the sense of "go ask them!"). --Illythr (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

:) yea, looks more or less like that. Dc76\^talk 19:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The part about problems with the Russian language since 2001 is odd. What problems? Sure, courses in Russian are being steadily reduced and budget places disappearing in most education institutions, but this is clearly outside of the scope of this article. --Illythr (talk) 19:20, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I will remove it now. It's a long story, and perhaps we can address it in Education in Moldova sometimes later. The problem is a little different from what you understood: e.g., the French language was completely removed from the curriculum to make space for reintroducing Russian.Dc76\^talk 19:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh, Russian was reintroduced as a compulsory subject? Didn't the nationalists CDPP block that clumsy attempt by Voronin to make good on his election promise? --Illythr (talk) 20:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it IS implemented, and has been for the last several years now. Ask the current curriculum of Romanian schools in Moldova. I actually know this first hand, I have relatives who teach in schools, and they have shown me. And please, can we stop the n-word, please. You know very well that the opposition was wide, not limited to a bunch of extremists. That it was clumsy, I agree with you. Should Voronin know how to do things better, he would have achieved everything he wanted, and everybody would have supported him. But then, if he was smarter, he wouldn't be in Moldova now, but somewhere higher. Dc76\^talk 20:30, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Whoah, I didn't know that. Why was there no outcry? Last time, there were tents all over the central street and I remember provocateurs running through the halls of our alma mater calling us to rise up to defend Moldova's freedom (from ourselves, hehe). Hm, will have to ask around when I get back. BTW, the nationalists in Modova ceased to be extremist back in 1993 or so (those that were), so right now, they're just a relatively normal political party professing the views of (Romanian) Nationalism. Nothing wrong with that, in general (although a few specific cases are clinical). That I don't like them (regardless of ethnicity) is just my POV. --Illythr (talk) 01:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

About "building patriotism" - no, but you did remove its fact tag. I don't think there's anything to reformulate, it's simply factually incorrect. --Illythr (talk) 19:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I thought you removed "building patriotism". I agree with removal of that, as I sincerely do not understand what the original editor meant exactly. Dc76\^talk 19:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Reference to German

The line "Just as those who spoke Germanic languages began to feel themselves to be Germans" makes no sense... speakers of Germanic languages do not and have never felt themselves to be Germans. The English, Danes, Dutch etc would be astounded to hear such a claim. Speakers of dialects of German came to feel themselves as German but that is quite a different thing altogether. Vauxhall1964 (talk) 00:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Removal of sources

While I have to agree that this edit is certainly an improvement, getting the paragraph in question in line with WP policies, I have to strongly disagree with this edit, which I consider at least dishonest, if not tendentious.

User:Serenusaurelius So we agree that the last edit is in line with the policies. The previous edit, was also factually correct (if you follow more closely Moldovan politics, you would agree) - right-of-center parties consider themselves Romanian, left-of-center Moldovan, this is a basic observation about Moldovan politics that anyone who reads their programs, policies, declarations and decisions understands. It would need more effort to bring all that together, so that it doesn't sound like somebody's POV. But let's agree that we could keep this out of the article.

WP (fortunately) doesn't work that way, so we can't just write things we know are factually correct. We need reliable sources for everything except tautologies. See more at WP:VERIFIABILITY.Anonimu (talk) 22:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

:-) Yes, of course. The point was -- there was nothing dishonest or tendentious in my previous version either; I have changed it, still. Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

1. The paper by C. Goina was published by an established Hungarian journal dealing with the problem of nationalities in East-Central Europe, that is cited by newer publications on the topic (the journal was established only in 1990, so you won't find citation older than ~1995) and is present in numerous bibliographic guides (see Google Book search result), and is indexed by Google Scholar. Also, the fact that he was a graduate student in his final year at the time of the publication doesn't make it unreliable, especially considering his study domain (sociology at one of the most prestigious US Universities, UCLA) allows him to make pertinent observations about the topic discussed in the article.

User:Serenusaurelius I agree that we don't have to question the journal, and not even the fact that the author might have been a student when wrote it. The point is this - the article itself is substandard. I don't know how it ended up published in that version.

User:SerenusaureliusLink: http://www.epa.hu/00400/00476/00005/pdf/13.pdf The paper is full of language errors (negligence is blatant). A few examples

"divided in people belonging to different religions" - page 154

"stressing role of state policies and institutions in this process." page 155

Transylvania – nation making by (another’s) state policies - page 165

"national movement that facilitated province’s unification with Romania." 167 and many others...

Papers by non-native English language speakers in scientific journals of non-English speaking countries commonly have some style and grammar errors (this is the case even for some of the English-language papers published by the Romanian Academy, as being a professional translator/English-language copyeditor for a scientific journal in Eastern Europe doesn't pay).Anonimu (talk) 22:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

We need to reasonable, obviously. But not too lenient with very poor editing and negligence - many of the issues were surely not caused by not being a native speaker of English. Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

There's no reason to be overscrupulous (it's that a pleonasm?) with this source. Except the occasional language mistake, there's nothing wrong with that paper. Unless you can prove I'm wrong, that source will stay, per Wikipedia policies.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

User:SerenusaureliusMORE IMPORTANTLY THE PAPER FAILS TO MAKE ANY PROGRESS IN THE DIRECTION INTENDED - explaining the important role of the state in shaping the nation, beyond just common sense. First, he says

"I suggest that the spread and the acceptance of the idea that there is a Romanian nation, and that Romanian-speaking people are its members it is due to a large degree to the nationalizing policies pursued by the modern Romanian state."

User:SerenusaureliusThen let's see how he explains the case of Transylvania? He goes on with

"I claim that the difference between the two provinces [Bessarabia and Transylvania] should be assigned to the modernizing and nationalizing policies of the Hungarian state. It is the Hungarian state, which is the major responsible agent for the success of the process of Romanian nation building in ransylvania" [...] (Goina 165-167)

"In my view the Romanian national movement in Transylvania was a direct response to the Hungarian national movement, especially to its exclusionary provisions codified in its projects, laws and state policies. Had the Hungarian liberal nationalists provided for some minority rights for populations they claimed to rule, history would have probably took (sic!) a different turn." (Goina 165-167)

User:SerenusaureliusWell then, how would he explain the case of Bukovina where there were both modernizing policies and minority rights for Romanians and also a nationalist Romanian movement? No answer...

User:SerenusaureliusI think the paper needs much more research and thinking until it can be taken seriously. This 16-page paper looks very much like a student's paper trying to understand and synthesize awkwardly what is already known, without being a expert in any of the issues mentioned. It's plausible that it ended up being published more or less by accident.

We are not here to judge if a certain paper made a notable progress in a certain domain. The journal is notable and established in this specific domain, so, if the journal's editor accepted C. Goina's paper, there's no reason whatsoever for WP to refuse the use of the information he provides. For further information about why Wikipedia doesn't allow individual editors to judge papers published in scientific journals, see WP:No original research.Anonimu (talk) 22:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure it's absolutely 'legal' to quote CG a hundred times in any WP article vaguely related to his topic. I'm not challenging that. I am only trying to make a case for wisely avoiding this source. Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

This article is not "vaguely related" with the topic of CG's paper, but it one of the main points of it, i.e. how Romanians came to be Romanians and Moldovans not. There's no motivation for avoiding this source, unless you disagree with the facts or opinions expressed in it, in which case I invite you to read Wikipedia's policy about editing from a neutral point of view.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

1. Several of the facts mentioned by Goina were confirmed by Irina Livezeanu (see our article for credentials) and Cristina Petrescu, a lecturer at the University of Bucharest. I noted whenever this was the case, even adding more details from this two sources : [1], [2]. I also attributed all opinions, to conform with NPOV: search for "Sorin Alexandrescu saw", "historian of Romanian origin Irina Livezeanu has shown" and "University of Bucharest lecturer Cristina Petrescu notes" in this version of the article.

User:Serenusaurelius C.G.'s paper didn't bring any new facts to the table. He simply quoted Livezeanu's conclusions and others. Why don't we just go directly to Livezeanu then, without mentioning C.G.?

A lot of historians quote others in their papers. We can't ignore C.G. because he quotes Livezeanu, just as we don't ignore a scholarly work by an expert in Ancient Greece if he quotes Herodotus.Anonimu (talk) 22:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

:-) We can ignore CG if he's not an expert but a student who quotes the experts; although, as I said above, according to WP rules, anyone who made it to a decent journal is formally quotable, even if he's not an expert at all.Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

I'd say the only difference between an UCLA graduate student in sociology and the traditional "expert" is the age. CG's relatively young age can't be objectively used to dismiss his work, and refuse its use as a source on Wikipedia. The journal fits Wikipedia's guidelines about reliable sources, and the topic of the article is in CG's main domain of study, so it's perfectly quotable.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

A UCLA masters student is a young(er) expert? You must be joking. A masters student is an older student :) I'm disappointed you don't know that. But this is beside the point. I already told you that I'm sure Wikipedia allows CG to be quoted a hundred times in any article related to the topic (since he managed to publish his good or bad paper in an acceptable journal. I'm only saying it's unwise and immature to do it. Following the WP written rules and guidelines is necessary, but not sufficient to write a competent article. Serenusaurelius (talk) May 1, 2010 4pm(EST)

You're only points for not using CG is that he has some language errors (excusable for a non-native) and that he quotes others (nothing wrong with that either). As for your allegations that he "fails to make any progress" or that he uses different arguments to explain the different evolution of an idea in different regions, that's only you POV. And guess what? You, as an anonymous Wikipedia editor, have no right to exclude a paper published by a reputable journal as a source. So CG will stay. I'll consider any further removal of him as tendentious edit warring, and report it accordingly.Anonimu (talk) 20:50, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Common sense cannot be thought. If an obviously mediocre article does not strike you as mediocre, I can't change your eyes. Go ahead and base half of the "historical background" of a WP article on a student's paper for a class, who also contains countless language mistakes "understandable for a non-native speaker". I'm sure WP allows such mediocre practices, so go ahead and benefit from this freedom. I thought we could talk like gentleman and find an acceptable version, but I guess I was wrong. You deleted sources that I provided, so I could just as well report you. I didn't delete anything, except for Goina's paper, which is substandard. If you don't think it's substandard, I can't teach you that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Serenusaurelius (talk • contribs) 06:07, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

1. This edit removes all facts and comments sourced from Goina, Livezeanu and Petrescu, all of them quite relevant to the discussed problem. References tags are kept, even if they bear no relation to the text they are supposed to certify, and all relevant facts and comments are literally hidden in the notes. This violates several policies, including the core policies of WP:V and WP:NPOV.

User:Serenusaurelius All relevant material from Livezeanu and Petrescu is kept in the article, and I believe their important conclusions too. It's only C.G that's eliminated because he needs more work :)

Everyone who compares the two version of the article can see that all facts attributed to Livezeanu and Petrescu were gone, with only marginal information hidden in the footnotes.Anonimu (talk)

the points from Petrescu, Livezeanu, S Alexandrescu are extensively present in the footnotes; unfortunately I didn't have Livezeanu's book at my immediate disposal. I personally don't like formulations like "Assistant professor X believes that" + footnote. I'm sure they are formally acceptable too but it's not good styleSerenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

Removing facts and opinions from text and hiding them in footnotes can be seen as tendentious editing. Especially when the footnotes are either removed or so arranged as every correlation between main text and footnote disappears, which is what you edit has done to this article. Removal of facts has nothing to do with style.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm hoping that by bringing this here the community can solve the problematic edits of User:Serenusaurelius, without getting farther in the DR process (WP:RfC/WP:ANI).Anonimu (talk) 21:10, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

User:Serenusaurelius I think wisdom about the sources we mention is always necessary. We can't quote four times from something that looks more like a student's paper for a class, even though it was published and formally speaking it's allowed to mention it any number of times. I don't mean to disparage C.Goina as a person in any way. Maybe he is already or will be a good sociologist one day. But this older paper of his really does not deserve too much attention. Certainly it can't be put side by side with Livezeanu, King etc. User:Serenusaurelius April 16, 2010 3pm (EST)

Of course we should select sources, but only when there is external scholarly information suggesting the source is unreliable (such as works praising the booming economy in Eastern Europe published by the Soviet Bloc's economical institutes in the 80s, etc). This is not the case here.

For future messages, please reply in a single block of text bellow the message you want to reply to (i.e. after the signature of the editor you are replying to), eventually using numbers to make sure which point you are commenting upon.Anonimu (talk) 22:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I think careful reading and interaction with others should also be used for judging what is good to include from the formally acceptable sources and what is not; again, that's not the same as what is 'legal' to include ... Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

Fortunately, Wikipedia doesn't work on editors' opinions. Otherwise, some religious editors could object to the presence of evolutionist sources in the history of humankind, not to talk about the numerous fringe theories that advocates would try to impose by demanding reputable journals be excluded from the discussion of such topics.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Let me say that I appreciate your patience and time you put into finding sources and replying to messages, even if we might disagree on many issues; Having said that, I wish you a good weekend!Serenusaurelius (talk) April 17, 2010 4am(EST)

Thanks.Anonimu (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Commenst of 188.24.89.132 moved out of article

(note*.When you make a wiki articles please inform yourself and don't lead peoples in error and write non sense things. I am from Transylvania and "sfredel" ,"harbuz" and "curechi"or "curet'i" more accurate, "curechi" is the literal form, is use by 90% of the farmers in Maramures and Transylvania ,are archaic Romanian words. The others "varza" ,"burghiu" and "pepene" is the official form ,or they are use for different situations . Ex:"sfredel" is more old form,and mostly is use for old iron drill tools ,while "burghiu" is use for modern electric drill machines,so please do not make confusion,the only difference between my province and Moldavian provinces is the spell of "p" "pilot" like c,"c'ilot" in some words or "b" with "g" ," bin'e"Transylvania,"g'ine" Moldova,even if they are write the same ,but not all words respect this rule and this applies to all Moldova ,not only the part occupied by USSR .So please don't induce in error,60% of Moldova is in Romania ,the capitals are in Romania ,Iasi and Suceava ,the holy places are in Romania , Moldovita ,Sucevita ,Putna etv ,70% of the mens who made the unification including the first prince of Romania was a moldavian ,that words are in Romanian to ,and are very used ,so do not mislead the readers .Another problem of this censuses made in Basarabia is that they state that "40% of moldavians respond " ,sire in Romania live 7 millions of moldavians ,in Bassarabia only 3.5 millions ,how to write this non sense ? Maybe they consider themselfs russians ,we cannot force them is their choice,but this article have no sense at all ,Moldavian Prince made Romanian modern state and unified the two Principality ,this is a insult to moldavians,moldavian=romanian it's like mazovian=polish or parizian=french .They are brainwash by USSR but please ,i have a moldavian girlfriend from Moldova Romania 40 % percents of romanians live in Moldova region ,our national poet Eminescu was from Moldova region, if they are not romanians it's ok for us ,but they could not call themselfs moldavians because moldavian means romanian 100%)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.24.89.132 (talk • contribs)

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Romanian is the official language of Moldova as of 2023

It is worth mentioning in the opening text that Moldova recently changed its offical language from "Moldovan" to "Romanian" on its constititution.

Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2023-04-23/moldova-new-law-establishes-romanian-as-the-state-language-of-the-country/?loclr=ealln 2001:1458:204:1:0:0:101:4F01 (talk) 15:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)