Erik, folks,<br>
<br>
I've taken some time this weekend to read over the ZH Wikinews vote
comments, and the concerns of the 13 opposed are quite interesting.<br>
<br>
If you haven't been following it, the Chinese Internet is in a bad
slump right now. There are occasional reports of Internet crackdowns in
China, but the recent one should be a real concern. College campus
Internet BBS systems have had severe restrictions imposed, and some
have closed down. One of the best known Internet entrepreneurs had his
personal site shut down by government order because of content posted
on April Fools day. <br>
<br>
So many of the comments in the vote were in the spirit of, &quot;It's not a
good time to do something that will most definitely get roped into this
mess.&quot; OTOH, some said this is exactly why it should be created, in
that it will be a canary in the coal mine, so to speak. Just thought
you'd be interested in the sentiment that they've expressed in the vote.<br>
<br>
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)<br>
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/14/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Erik Moeller</b> &lt;<a href="mailto:erik_moeller@gmx.de">erik_moeller@gmx.de</a>&gt; wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese language<br>Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.<br><br>The results are at:<br><a href="http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E6%96%B0%E9%97%BB">
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E6%96%B0%E9%97%BB</a><br><br>In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13<br>votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with
<br>support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.<br><br>There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the<br>global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was<br>inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a
<br>global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong<br>expressions of emotions on both sides.<br><br>We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it would<br>be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
<br><br>My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under<br>somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at least<br>6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at<br><a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch">
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch</a> ). We can deal<br>with problems of censorship as they arise.<br><br>Erik<br>_______________________________________________<br>Wikinews-l mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org">
Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org</a><br><a href="http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l">http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l</a><br></blockquote></div><br>