On 9/25/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The conclusion
was emphatic among the Cantonese speakers. The
consensus was - "not at this time." In fact, it was unanimous. (See
below for full description of the meetup).
I have a hard time believing this, since Littlalex was in fact an
ardent supporter of a Cantonese Wiki the last time around.
That seems a bit silly to me. If you take a look at
the vote, and
exclude all non-Cantonese speakers (at least, as far as I am aware):
Consider the folks who were at the meeting part of the "no" votes.
That _still_ gives a majority for "support".
Now, just because 7
people at a meetup agreed "unanimously", according to you (which I
still doubt, given the fact that it would mean a drastic change in
position for Littlalex),
If you look at the photo from the meeting, you'll see I am sitting
right next to Little Alex. But why not ask her yourself?
You are still spreading the silly idea that a
Cantonese Wikipedia will
take away lots of people and resources from zhwiki. Why not use an
example based on experience -- zh-min-nan?? How much did that take
away?
Your exaggeration again. I never said it will take away "lots of
people and resources" away. But every bit put behind zh: would help.
The exaggerated case helps you try to make your case, but that's your
error.
It's a shame we don't have an audio or video
recording of this meetup.
I sort of doubt the veracity of your claims here. And if these people
have these feelings, they're welcome to vote, as they have always
been.
LOL.
The meeting was attended by eight Wikipedians and two guests. The
summary is sitting on a public wiki that anyone who attended could
amend. Shek translated it into Chinese, so that's one more check on
the record. Feel free to leave a message for any and all the folks who
showed up, and ask for verification of the meeting observations.
But you, sitting in Arizona have a better sense of it, I'm sure.
This is bordering on tinfoil hat territory now.
* 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.
I'd not be surprised if you were the one who brought this up in the
first place, trying to make it sound logical when it makes no sense
whatsoever.
Wrong. It was Mcy_jerry who brought it up, talking about the generally
poor article quality of the average zh: article compared to others.
"splitting the effort" is not going to
happen. There will
be no mass-exodus.
"Mass exodus" - these are your words, not mine or those of anyone at
the meetup. It is not a case that was made.
* 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.
Well, others have testified here to the exact opposite. How are we to
sort out which is correct, and which is not?
Again, this shows the whole flaw with the "Sinitic policy" vote,
because there was no finding of fact laid out or debated to provide
proper background on the merits of the idea, not to mention the
selective publicity it received. It became a straight up or down vote
with the flaw of roping Wu and Yue into one bin, pandering to the
inclusionist, embrace anything-and-everything-attitude at the expense
of any subject knowledge or first hand experience with the language,
culture or issues.
The reason why I (and others) have not participated in the vote, is
because of the major flaws with it. Participating in it would be
implicitly endorsing the flawed methodology and structure setup by the
originator of it (ie. you). The hope was that the existing discussion
would dissipate with folks realizing the invalid "vote". But since it
keeps being brought up as an indication of the will of the community,
here's directly why it's not only nonbinding, but flawed and useless.
A few folks commented to me they did not want to get involved in the
rancorous nature of the vote or the mailing list debate, even though
they had opinions on the matter. To me, that's understandable and
disappointing. I can only speak for myself here.
A properly run vote would have:
- Laid out the issues in an NPOV-like manner using community input,
with historical background and a preset amount of time for crafting
the parameters of the vote. A list of liks to generic articles about
Chinese and Cantonese is not good enough.
- Had separate voting sections for Wu, Yue and Hakka, like other
proper votes in Wikipedia. See how reform of speedy deletion was
handled:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal
- Made an open call for participation in all relevant communities.
Certainly, not advertising it on wikizh-l until late was problematic.
Even the after-the-fact advertisement was not adequate, as the yea/nay
lists had already been influenced by one particular set of
constituents.
- Avoided singling out folks right away as this one did with Shizhao
and myself as the main opposition. I don't particularly care about
being singled out, but it's improper to personalize a vote on the
issues.
So we get to this point - you have somehow disregarded your own advice:
"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."
The fact is with the prevailing mood - the case for creating a
Wikipedia has to meet a very high threshold with respected members of
the Wikipedia community, and it's not there now.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)