Romanian Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The logo of the Romanian Wikipedia.

Romanian Wikipedia (abr. ro.wiki or ro.wp^[1]) is the Romanian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Started in June 2003, this edition has over 50,000 articles (as of January 2007) and is the 21st largest Wikipedia edition. In December 2004, users on the Romanian Wikipedia started to talk about founding a local chapter of Wikimedia, Asociaţia Wikimedia România.

The logo of the Romanian Wikipedia is quite different from the logos of other Wikipedias. The letter Й in the logo was replaced with the Romanian letter Ă (A-breve), further adapting this Wikipedia to the local market.^[2]

Romanian articles can contain small variations of writing, mostly regarding the use of the letters "â" and "î" to mark the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ (cf. Romanian alphabet). According to the 1993 rules accepted by the Romanian Academy, /ɨ/ is transcribed as either î when used as the first or last letter of words, or â when it occurs in the middle of the word (with some exceptions). Still, between 1953 and 1993 Romanian language only used î. The Academy rules are mandatory in government organisations and in state schools in Romania. Moldova adopted the Latin alphabet for the Romanian language before the spelling reform in 1993, and it didn't switch to the new spelling, using currently the letter î exclusively (exceptions were made for România and the other related words; these are spelled with â). In practice, either usage is acceptable in both countries, and indeed there are publishing houses and printed magazines who use either of the two rules. Vojvodina uses the new Romanian spelling. Other spelling differences include sunt/sînt or niciun/nici un. The policy on language versions is established into the official policy of the Romanian Wikipedia.^[3]

During its existence, Romanian Wikipedia encountered problems concerning its division and the creation of a separate Moldovan Wikipedia (cf. Moldovan language). A Moldovan language version of Wikipedia exists as it was created automatically together with a lager number of other Wikipedias, because the language had been assigned a separate ISO 639 code (mo/mol). At its beginnings it worked as a portal redirecting to the Romanian Wikipedia, but it eventually began allowing content (although only intended for Cyrillic Moldovan/Romanian as it was used before 1989 in the Moldovan SSR), starting big editing wars and endless discussion. As of 2006 it is freezed and editing is no longer permitted. This question is still raised from time to time, although users on Wikipedia voted on its closure.^[4]

As for the addressing policy, Romanian Wikipedia uses (at least in theory) the polite form of the second person pronouns, verbs, or pronominal adjectives. A policy on this was discused in early 2006, and consensus was reached for the use of dvs. (polite "you") instead of tu (personal "you") on its pages.^[5]

In April 2004, the Romanian Wikipedia supported the launch of the Aromanian Wikipedia.

As of March 2007, the Romanian Wikipedia has more than 30,000 registered users and 19 administrators.