----- Original Message ----- From: "Delirium" delirium@hackish.org
Interlanguage links are already done with [[zh-tw:]] and [[zh-cn:]], so perhaps we could simply split zh.wikipedia.org into zh-cn.wikipedia.org and zh-tw.wikipedia.org, with zh.wikipedia.org being a disambiguating portal? Of course, this is more up to Chinese-speakers than it is to myself; just a suggestion that would be consistent with our current usage. Having separate interlanguage links going to one encyclopedia that is effectively written in a mixture of two writing systems that are often not mutually intelligible is more than a little bit odd.
!!!
A relatively small effort is asked to full-form characters users to get used to simple forms, and the reverse. If you are a little bit used to it, the very largest part of simplification is obvious and only few "not obvious" simplified characters would need a check in a dictionnary. Those two scripting habits are very far from "two mutually unintelligible languages". In Mainland China, where I leave now, I do often see full form characters, for instance in some good and relatively expensive restaurants or hotels. It looks fancy... Most educated people do know enough of them to be quickly confortable reading a book in full-forms. On the other hand, simple form characters are often derivated from the common (and sometime very ancient) usage in fast hand script and. I know that simple forms hurts the eyes of some Taiwanese people, and I understand that (I'd be hurted in French spelling be simplified). But I don't agree with "simple english" comparison. One can easily write complex sentences using rare words in simple-form, right ? The difference between zh-tw and zh-cn is much closer to the difference between en-gb and en-us, and I didn't see any kind of "british english" wikipedia on my screen.
I don't agree also with the idea of a "tw.wikipedia.org". Full forms are used in many Chinatowns world wide and is not a specifically Taiwanese language. In Paris for example there are some Chinese language newspapers and most of them are in full forms, but the readers are mostly from Guangdong or such other places in Southern China while only few are from Taiwan.
What I agree with is that the present choice for chinese wikipedia is far from perfect. I guess a kind of option that you can change in "your prefs" would be better : you choose your prefered display and, if a page has the two versions, you are sent on the one you prefer. I have no idea of the feasability of such a thing.
Last word : I'm far from a defender of simplified forms, I often think full forms carry more semantics and phonetics and often have more "qi" (energy) and harmony, I'd prefer the writing-system reform to have been much softer, if any.
(gbog)
Just to chime in, to agree to keep ZH together.
This is a topic that comes up often, and the consensus is that keeping the single, mixed simplified and traditional Chinese Wikipedia. It is the right way to go, for now, since it is so small and the critical mass is needed for its growth. Splitting it too early will splinter the efforts and in fact cause more confusion, especially when it is trying to attract newbies.
With the unavailability of ZH in the PRC right now, it is even more important to keep it intact the way it is, and not make any big moves until the community is fully involved.
Imperfect solutions for an imperfect world.
-Andrew
On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 13:12:33 +0800, ruimu uestc ruimu@uestc.edu.cn wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Delirium" delirium@hackish.org
Interlanguage links are already done with [[zh-tw:]] and [[zh-cn:]], so perhaps we could simply split zh.wikipedia.org into zh-cn.wikipedia.org and zh-tw.wikipedia.org, with zh.wikipedia.org being a disambiguating portal? Of course, this is more up to Chinese-speakers than it is to myself; just a suggestion that would be consistent with our current usage. Having separate interlanguage links going to one encyclopedia that is effectively written in a mixture of two writing systems that are often not mutually intelligible is more than a little bit odd.
!!!
A relatively small effort is asked to full-form characters users to get used to simple forms, and the reverse. If you are a little bit used to it, the very largest part of simplification is obvious and only few "not obvious" simplified characters would need a check in a dictionnary. Those two scripting habits are very far from "two mutually unintelligible languages". In Mainland China, where I leave now, I do often see full form characters, for instance in some good and relatively expensive restaurants or hotels. It looks fancy... Most educated people do know enough of them to be quickly confortable reading a book in full-forms. On the other hand, simple form characters are often derivated from the common (and sometime very ancient) usage in fast hand script and. I know that simple forms hurts the eyes of some Taiwanese people, and I understand that (I'd be hurted in French spelling be simplified). But I don't agree with "simple english" comparison. One can easily write complex sentences using rare words in simple-form, right ? The difference between zh-tw and zh-cn is much closer to the difference between en-gb and en-us, and I didn't see any kind of "british english" wikipedia on my screen.
I don't agree also with the idea of a "tw.wikipedia.org". Full forms are used in many Chinatowns world wide and is not a specifically Taiwanese language. In Paris for example there are some Chinese language newspapers and most of them are in full forms, but the readers are mostly from Guangdong or such other places in Southern China while only few are from Taiwan.
What I agree with is that the present choice for chinese wikipedia is far from perfect. I guess a kind of option that you can change in "your prefs" would be better : you choose your prefered display and, if a page has the two versions, you are sent on the one you prefer. I have no idea of the feasability of such a thing.
Last word : I'm far from a defender of simplified forms, I often think full forms carry more semantics and phonetics and often have more "qi" (energy) and harmony, I'd prefer the writing-system reform to have been much softer, if any.
(gbog)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Just to chime in, to agree to keep ZH together.
This is a topic that comes up often, and the consensus is that keeping the single, mixed simplified and traditional Chinese Wikipedia. It is the right way to go, for now, since it is so small and the critical mass is needed for its growth. Splitting it too early will splinter the efforts and in fact cause more confusion, especially when it is trying to attract newbies.
With the unavailability of ZH in the PRC right now, it is even more important to keep it intact the way it is, and not make any big moves until the community is fully involved.
Imperfect solutions for an imperfect world.
You could have category tags for each script. That way all simplified and traditional articles would be tagged as such, making it easier to one day split the two if it is deemed necessary. In the meantime there could be an advanced search function that could search within just one script or the other (or within any category for that matter). Eventually there could even be a per-category recent changes ('Related changes' from category pages does not seem to work yet - it really should). User setable language preferences for the interface would also be nice.
So there would at least be some type of differentiation (I would like to see something like that happen for Wikibooks, which is one wiki but with many languages). This may work so well that you find it is perfectly fine to stay together (it has a nice symbolic feeling to it too).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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