[Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

yuanml yuanml at pku.org.cn
Fri Sep 10 20:36:19 UTC 2004


>Answer me this question: Are you a traditional or a simplified user,
>primarily? Your e-mail address ends in .cn so I am just assuming you
>are primarily a Simplified user, please correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, I’m from Beijing, a mainlander. But just as you said, 
how is my *nationality* any more relevant to /this particular issue/ than 
the number of pets I have or my favourite colours?

>The reason there was only one active contributor is because zh-tw: was
>not being advertised at all. I assume if I had really looked for
>contributors there would have been at least one or two other people
>working on it w/me.

Yes, if you setup zh-tw, people will go there and write articles. 
But the split of the community will only weaken the growth of the small project
and bring more difficult in the future. Suppose two project zh-cn and zh-tw now, 
and someday we want to synchronize them, and you will find it is very difficult.

Yes, if you don’t want synchronize the two, there is no problem. 
But why we write the same things twice, we just have the same language.
It’s really true there are some terminology are different in technical and
pop cultural fields. But how about the same part of zh-tw and zh-cn?
We have the same universe, the sun, the planet, species,
and same mathematic, logic, and the same thousands-years history.
Because these knowledge are formed into their modern shape
mostly before 1950s when Jiang’s government retreat to Taiwan.
Even in pop cultural fields, I don’t think the difference is so big. 
Please notice the fact that A-mei has more fans in mainland than in Taiwan.



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