Mark Williamson wrote:

Wikipedia would be the first major website to pursue a unified zh:, with IBM, Microsoft, Linux, and just about everybody on the face of the earth having separate versions for simplified and traditional Chinese. To have a unified version is not workable.

Well, there's something to be said about innovation :) Seriously, should this work on a technical basis, it'd be a contribution to Han character interoperability *at a community level*.

It is not merely a difference in characters as perhaps some would like you to believe, but much more than that. It is very easy to convert traditional characters to simplified, but it is much trickier to do so vice-versa. zh: is almost completely in simplified chinese.

My limited observation does yield the impression that simplified Chinese is dominant (the interface not withstanding). Whether that is due to the head start by Simplified editors (who jump-started zh) and/or less success in attracting or retaining Traditional editors, is beyond me. I have heard *unconfirmed* stories of Traditional editors leaving the project in recent months, but the reasons aren't clear to me).

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In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively* traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI completely in Traditional.

I am sympathetic with this point of view. It seems to be that zh (as is probably true of Wikipedia in general) has a core of well-educated editors. This is likely to be a group to have had exposure to both scripts, in a way that is perhaps atypical of most casual Internet users. The same group is likely to underestimate the difficulty Traditional users (and maybe vice versa) have in utilizing the simplified script. Thus a unified (but Simplified-dominated) ZH will likely remain more of a niche project than the wildly popular EN for quite some time.

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If we are to have one dominant version, it should be traditional since traditional characters are much easier for a simplified user to read than vice-versa since they already have to learn them to read classical literature and such.

I still hope (as the ignorant often do?) that a technical solution could be found such that (1) the interface is dual-script, thus addressing the "scare factor" that will keep ZH a niche project, and (2) the Trad/Simp/Bi editors may work on the same article for each topic in a familiar or chosen script.

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.

For example, any random 50 characters you choose in Simplified might map to any of 100 or so characters in Traditional chinese, as you can imagine this leads to a great deal of ambiguity.

Also, Laurentius and others are trying to portray events on zh: as complete 100% consensus that a united version should be kept although this is far from the truth.

--Jin Jun-shu (Mark Williamson)

I myself is a traditional Chinese user, and I am also one of the first zh wikipedians. I don't agree that we should have one TC wp and one SC wp, because I know they are the same language, it's just some characters are written differently... if I read any article out-loud to you, you won't know whether the article I am holding is written in TC or SC. It's just like Russian can be written using Cyrillic alphabet or Latin alphabet, or Japanese can be written using hirakana, katakana or romanji.

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 20:40:54 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:

Because until just now, I was not subscribed to wikipedia-l because I had no good reason to be, I was not aware of this and nobody bothered to notify me, which irritates me since quite a few people knew I was pursuing this project.

The sudden appearance of zh-tw.wikipedia.org irritates me very much too, because we have been discussing this problem since the very beginning of zh.

The thing here is this: "One China, Two Systems" applies to HONG KONG, and not TAIWAN. The "tw" in zh-tw: stands for Taiwan. If it *were* to apply to Hong Kong, it couldn't be said to be a single language because the language spoken in Hong Kong is Cantonese.

So do you mean what you're pursuing is a "Taiwanese Chinese" wikipedia? But not a "traditional Chinese" wikipedia? Then shall we have a separate British English wp and an American English wp too?

Yes, we speak Cantonese in Hong Kong, but formally we don't write Cantonese. We write what we call "written language", which is the same "written language" in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Fuzhou or Taipei.

Wikipedia would be the first major website to pursue a unified zh:, with IBM, Microsoft, Linux, and just about everybody on the face of the earth having separate versions for simplified and traditional Chinese. To have a unified version is not workable.

Three years ago, some guys want to create a free, serious, online encyclopedia which allows everyone to edit its articles. People would say these guys are nuts. "Such an encyclopedia is not workable." They would say. Because the existing Encyclopaedia Britannia, Microsoft Encarta and many other serious works are all created by experts and authorities.

It is not merely a difference in characters as perhaps some would like you to believe, but much more than that. It is very easy to convert traditional characters to simplified, but it is much trickier to do so vice-versa. zh: is almost completely in simplified chinese.

How much "trickier" exactly?

Even if it's very much "trickier", do you think that instead of developing a way to overcome the problem, we should just avoid it?

zh: has in the past had a few different systems for interlinking articles between the two, and there are hundreds if not thousands of articles that still use the old systems instead of the current system.

In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively* traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI completely in Traditional.

Yup, this is surely a problem, which we need to _solve_ but not to _evade_.

Also, another issue is that currently the article count of zh: is inflated by the fact that many pages have two versions.

So? That's not a sufficient reason to have one TC wp and one SC wp. (Plus I don't really care about the article count anyway.)

We're currently in the process of combining pages which have two versions, in preparation for the conversion software.

Laurentius is wanting to mischaracterise (no pun intended) the difference between simplified and traditional chinese as minimal, which they most certainly are NOT.

If we are to have one dominant version, it should be traditional since traditional characters are much easier for a simplified user to read than vice-versa since they already have to learn them to read classical literature and such.

For example, any random 50 characters you choose in Simplified might map to any of 100 or so characters in Traditional chinese, as you can imagine this leads to a great deal of ambiguity.

Wrong, very wrong. Here's some fact. In the "List of simplified characters" issued by the PRC, there are 2338 simplified characters. Among them, only 32 SC can map to two TC and only 2 can map to 3 TC.

Also, Laurentius and others are trying to portray events on zh: as complete 100% consensus that a united version should be kept although this is far from the truth.

Sorry, Mark, I have never ever seen you on Chinese Wikipedia before. Nor have I seen you try to participate in our discussion on how to solve this TC/SC problem.

You just don't know or understand what's really happening/what had happened on Chinese Wikipedia.

Regards Lorenzarius

Mark Williamson wrote:

Yes, but how many articles? How many of them are unique, or significantly different from the versions in zh:? And there are 2 registered users; in addition I was planning to get up to 1000 articles and then ask people for support as I had already told many people.

The more unique or significantly different articles, the worse the problem to be sure.

The thing here is this: "One China, Two Systems" applies to HONG KONG, and not TAIWAN.

I know, and I should not have used that terminology. I was only drawing an analogy but that particular analogy is fraught with peril.

Wikipedia would be the first major website to pursue a unified zh:, with IBM, Microsoft, Linux, and just about everybody on the face of the earth having separate versions for simplified and traditional Chinese. To have a unified version is not workable.

Opinions appear to differ on this. Most people appear to think that a unified solution is workable, although it is also acknowledged that there are significant challenges.

IBM, Microsoft, and others face a different situation and so this analogy doesn't strike me as compelling. If you're simply producing content for outside consumers, you want to make it as comfortable for them as possible. But in this case, we are also trying to deal with the needs of *producers* of content, and also trying to generate certain conditions "on the ground" that support a strong community creating good NPOV content.

It is not merely a difference in characters as perhaps some would like you to believe, but much more than that. It is very easy to convert traditional characters to simplified, but it is much trickier to do so vice-versa. zh: is almost completely in simplified chinese.

Absolutely, I do understand that it is not merely a difference in characters.

In addition, the entire user interface is in simplified. This makes it extremely uncomfortable for a person who uses *exclusively* traditional to use zh:, and it will scare many users away (as Laurentius admits, sie was at first scared away because of the dominance of simplified; for every user that comes back after being initially scared away by this there are perhaps 300 that never come back). zh-tw:, on the other hand, the last I checked, had a UI completely in Traditional.

I would support the creation of two urls pointing to the same content with different UIs. The UI issue can be resolved without splitting the community.

Alternatively, I wonder if the UI could be further customized to make it more "international".

Also, Laurentius and others are trying to portray events on zh: as complete 100% consensus that a united version should be kept although this is far from the truth.

Well, it is up to the community to decide, and of course the community as well ought to respect and work with minority viewpoints to try to reach solutions that resolve problems.

The simple answer of "split into two wikis" doesn't strike me as the right one. But this is not something for me personally to decide; I am unqualified.

The reason I asked Tim Starling to shut down the zh-tw was: (1) it was only created by accident (2) only one person was actively using it (3) that person does not seem to be representative of a broader community (4) there are huge and permanent implications of splitting up the two, and such a decision must not be taken lightly

I will not stand in the way of a split, but it needs to be considered very carefully, and "softer" solutions used wherever possible.

--Jimbo