Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
No technical solution will, of course, address the differences in vocabulary among Taiwan, PRC-Hong Kong, PRC-Mainland (and God forbid, Singapore and PRC-Macau). The differences are sometimes considerable in certain technical and pop cultural fields, though they should not be exaggerated.
Within a fairly wide range, though, such differences can be avoided in an encyclopedia. It depends on how extreme the differences might be, of course, but mutual intelligibility is the standard that I would use.
I can testify that when I'm in London talking to people, I have a lot harder time understanding what's being said than I do when reading Wikipedia, because (in my uneducated opinion) UK and US casual speaking is further apart than UK and US formal writing. This may be similar to when you are talking about when you mention pop culture.
--Jimbo