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%BA...
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
On 4/14/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
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.
There's no consensus within the board either. In a discussion last month, Anthere said the Chinese community should decide, I said the whole community should decide, Tim Shell said it should be started, Jimbo said it shouldn't, and Michael Davis didn't respond to my email about it.
Considering the complete split of opinions, both in the original vote, the recent Chinese vote, and within the board, I think we need to consider alternative options to the simple question of whether we start it or not. One solution could be for Wikimedia to support the project being hosted elsewhere without it being an official Wikimedia project, if any of the supporters of the project wanted to find alternative hosting for it. It wouldn't be able to use the Wikinews trademarks, but would mean that those who want to work on it could do so, and if there is ever a consensus for the project within Wikimedia, we could move it back here then.
Angela
Erik, folks,
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.
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.
So many of the comments in the vote were in the spirit of, "It's not a good time to do something that will most definitely get roped into this mess." 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.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 4/14/05, Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
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%BA...
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.
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