On 9/25/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
And another time someone on this list quotes offlist people. I should get some celebrity names in my posts as well. It seems to be the trend to quote offlist people to strengthen ones arguments. I
When did membership to the email list constitute any more legitimacy than folks who are "offlist"? That's one of the more odd arguments I've seen about this issue.
Yes, and many people from that language community have voted in favour as well. Why are the votes of the people you quoted Andrew more important than those of the ones that already voted?
No, because the vote pertaining to Wu and Yue (Cantonese) was all stuck together into one combined poll, which I pointed out as a flaw very early on. In effect, the "votes for" became a union of folks interested in one or the other. You shouldn't take the AND of an OR vote.
Obviously, one of the biggest issues was Cantonese Wikipedia. After discussing it for a while, there was consensus (in fact unanimity) that though there is legitimate and desirable use for vernacular written Cantonese in casual use, arts, film, newspaper columns and the like, the conclusion about Cantonese Wikipedia was - "not at this time."
Ok so the concensus was that the Cantonese users found it a legitimate request ...... interesting.
How do you draw that conclusion? The issues brought up were that written Cantonese is used today in nonstandard ways, and that it is unusual to use it in formal writings. That might change over the years, but for now, to folks at the meetup it was not desirable to embark on the starup of an entire project in writing Cantonese encyclopedia entries the way you find in zh:, en:, de:, etc.
This is another repetition of the same argument that so many have rebunked. It is an argument with little to no value. You cannot measure a gain or downfall in activity on the Chinese wikipedia. Has Minnan effected it? With the same reason we could delete all languages but the 5 major ones. I am happy this debate wasn't held when wikipedia started. It might have ended with .... we need to shore up Nupedia before we can start up Wikipedia.
Pretty weak strawman argument. See Tim Starling's post earlier today. Wikipedia's goal is to make the sum of all human knowledge available for free. And right now, zh: is one, if not the most, prominent weakness in the Wikipedia universe.
Now I am going to draw a parallel here with Thailand.
The parade of parallels and comparisons are deeply flawed. Debate this case on its own merits.
There are few situations similar to the one with Cantonese and baihua (what zh: has), in that Cantonese speakers who are literate read/write baihua. There is a reading grammar and vocabulary which is very different than the spoken vernacular. This is a situation unfamiliar to most people. And usually when other "parallels" are drawn, it's to project other types of irrelevant ethnic/cultural conflicts onto a situation one does not understand. And all simply to make an uninformed point.
To quote Mark again: "Waerth and I both think it's unfair to let anybody but the actual language community make decisions about whether or not they should get a Wikipedia whether or not they should get a Wikipedia."
Yet here we are, with non-Cantonese folks spearheading the effort, and a Cantonese-based meetup saying no, they don't want one.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)