There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language
Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
The results are at:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%B…
In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13
votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with
support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the
global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was
inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a
global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong
expressions of emotions on both sides.
We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would
be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under
somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least
6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal
with problems of censorship as they arise.
Erik