Hello,
This was not a group without expertise. Among those
present -
Lorenzarius, one of the original zh: Wikipedians; Little Alex,
currently studying for a degree in translation; Mcy_jerry, studying
medicine in Chinese University (an institution coping with
Mandarin/Cantonese/English issues as the medium of instruction); and
Simon Shek, Carlsmith, W.F. Siu, Mapocathy, all folks who've grown up
in the mixed language school environment.
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
And to quote from Mark's previous message:
"The whole point here is that 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, with exceptions for
artificial languages perhaps."
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?
[...]
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.
* Current state of Chinese Wikipedia. There was agreement that the
general quality of the average article in Chinese Wikipedia is
relatively poor, even though it has 40,000+ articles. The recent stats
on "short articles" showed zh: contained unusually high number of
them, and empirically Mcyjerry made the point that they are generally
lacking in content. Folks felt that it was more important to shore up
the existing zh: Wikipedia instead of splitting the effort.
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.
* Universities and Cantonese use. Mcyjerry and
Lorenzarius, students
at Chinese University of Hong Kong explained that their science and
medicine classes were not done in Cantonese, and if they were it would
be confusing. They can elaborate more as to why, but Chinese
University was setup to promote Chinese education in a (then) British
Colony.
And??? We have an Esperanto wikipedia .... are there science and or
medicine classes in Esperanto. There are many languages we support that
do not have education in them. and why because little has been written
in those languages because a national government oppresses it in favour
of the "national" language.
I personally feel that while you have actually concluded amongst
yourselves that a Cantonese is a legitimate request but you are still
trying to find excuses not to open it! Why are you still coming up with
these excuses? Now I am going to draw a parallel here with Thailand.
Thailand has Thai as its national language and a couple of minority
languages, like Khmer (Thai-Khmer) and Isaan (Lao-Thai). While big parts
of the population speak these languages and media is being produced in
these, the Central Thais and especially the higher educated ones either
laugh at these folksy people (they use a Thai word that roughly
translates to hillbillies) or rather deny its importance in daily life.
Most would like to see it stamped out and replaced by "proper"
Central-Thai.
I personally see the same attitude in your arguments here. Although you
actually do recognise the legitimacy of the request ... which would give
many educated Thais in the similar situation a fit. You are still trying
to stop the start of a wikipedia in this "folksy" language.
Offcourse this discussion is actually useless. Because nobody wants to
set up new language wikipedias anymore with totally hilarious arguments
like ... but these people speak another language as wel, let them go
there. So I am actually waisting my breath here.
I feel that the debaters/conservatives have finally won and managed to
stall any further development in wikimedialand. If these debates had
been had when wikipedia was started, it would never have gotten of the
ground. What we do not need is more voting on starting new
wikipedialanguages, but a clear ruleset so every language gets a clear
chance because there will always be people against starting a new language!
Waerth/Walter van Kalken