After browsing the wonderful Wikicities for some time, I have a different idea. We do not need to be bound by the format of an encyclopedia. Why not start a wiki about Cantonese, written mainly in standard English and/or standard Chinese? I believe that wiki will be very useful, will attract contributors and readers, and should not be opposed.
Felix, I think it's an excellent idea. In fact I think it's a nice fit for what folks might be searching for in Cantonese - a cultural literacy guide, or something more freeform to capture the flavor and quirkiness of the language as a spoken, adaptive language. I can imagine whole sections on film, Cantopop, slang, literature and colloquialisms/differences in Cantonese found in HK, Guangdong, Southeast Asia, North America, etc.
"What folks might be searching for in Cantonese" - so here we're talking about the needs of non-Cantonese speakers who would like to learn more about Cantonese, rather than Cantonese speakers who would like to learn more about other subjects?
Since that will be a different project, I would like to do a quick popularity survey here. Who will support that project? Who will contribute?
I think it would be a much more exciting project to Cantonese speakers on the 'net if it was more fun and able to morph to the interests of the community, rather than what would be dictated by a formal encyclopedia.
"The interests of the community" -- I think that in fact the number of people who will want to write in English and Baihua about such a topic spectrum as Cantonese (even if we include culture as you suggest) will be smaller than that of people who would like to write /in/ Cantonese about anything at all.
The great thing about an encyclopaedia is that it fits perfectly with all the interests of the community. You can write about whatever your area of interest is, and it still fits in. There is no room in a CantoPedia for an article about "Nine Inch Nails" or Germany (except where Cantonese and Germany intersect), while in a Cantonese-medium general encyclopaedia there is room for both. Thus, the NIN fan or the German culture buff will be limited to writing about Cantonese, a topic they most likely are not at all interested in, when in a general encyclopaedia they would be able to write, in their mother tongue, about these topics which interest them but aren't exactly "Cantonese-related".
In addition, most of the content suggested could already fit into Wikipedia in any language very very well, with some possible parts (ie lessons in Cantonese language) would fit better in Wikibooks.
So you said you think it will be a "much more exciting project to Cantonese speakers on the 'net". What percentage of these people care at all about Cantonese pop culture? Many of them, yes, but a great deal of them are probably more concerned about business, daily life, and that sort of thing. Even of those who ARE interested, how many of them are interested beyond just "liking movies" or "listening to Lau Tak Wah Andy"?
The thing is, a CantoPedia would be much more restrictive than a general encyclopaedia which is written in Cantonese.
So far I have heard from you specifically 2 concerns that I can remember:
1) a Cantonese-version Wikipedia will split resources from the 'small' zh community - Response: Now, zh.wikipedia has over 20k articles. This isn't exactly "small" anymore, although it's still smaller than, say, en or ja. How many of the contributors speak Cantonese at all? I assume it is a significant, but still not even 1/4, minority. How many of these Cantonese-speakers would actually contribute to a Cantonese-version Wikipedia INSTEAD of zh? That must be a much smaller percentage - this would start as a fringe project, perhaps with most Cantonese speakers at zh: at least popping in to read it sometimes, but undoubtedly it would take a while to gain a stronghold where droves of people would actually leave zh: for a Cantonese-version Wikipedia. 2) a Cantonese-version Wikipedia won't be able to morph to the interests of the community as well as a CantoPedia - (responded to already above)
This is not to say I think that the Cantonese-language Wikipedia must be created instantly, but rather that I haven't seen any new arguments from you or actual responses that weren't just repeating yourself from before. So I have summed it up here, and I want to know: do you have anything more you would like to say?
Mark