MF-Warburg reversed what he felt was a premature and unilateral decision on my part to reject this request, and rightly so. (This is not least because I
just promised to continue to post non-routine closings here.) My apologies to the Committee. Nevertheless, I am proposing to reject this request, which has been actively running for about three months.
In certain respects, Literary Chinese has parallels to Latin, in that it was the literary
lingua franca in much of East Asia—not just China—for centuries. On the basis of policy, one could thus justify allowing this as an independent project (currently in Multilingual Wikisource). At the same time, it is also a historical version of Chinese,
and on the basis of policy, one could also justify housing this content in Chinese Wikisource.
As a practical matter, there is substantial Literary Chinese content in Chinese Wikisource already, and very little in Multilingual Wikisource. Except for the person who made the request, everyone else who contributed to the discussion on Meta feels that Literary
Chinese is adequately and properly curated on Chinese Wikisource.
Over the course of the discussion, I made one request of the Chinese Wikisource community, and that was to make it possible for non-Mandarin speakers having an interest in this content to have a way to communicate other than in Mandarin. They have done so.
It doesn't really serve the bulk of the Literary Chinese community, nor WMF in general, to split Literary Chinese out from Chinese Wikisource as an independent project. The objections of the one user making the request notwithstanding, Wikisource content in
Literary Chinese is better off staying in Chinese Wikisource.
The discussion page is
here. Thank you in advance for your comments. If there are not objections in seven days, I will proceed to close.
Steven