[Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

Apparently, you underestimate the power of nationalism.

I am well aware they do not read SC exclusively. HOWEVER, SC is by far
their prefered script and in most cases their edits are around 99% or
95% to Simplified articles.

Jin Junshu/Mark

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 14:44:36 +0800, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 21:43:55 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Chances are, someday there will be a way to synchronize en: and jp:
> > easily too. How is that relevant?
> 
> You are using an inappropriate comparison. How can one compare the
> difference between English and Japanese to the difference between TC
> and SC? Linguists would laugh to death on hearing this.
> 
> > Yes, I tried it. So what?
> 
> So what? That means we are solving the problem. While you're evading
> the problem, by simply splitting zh into zh-tw and zh-cn.
> 
> > "Community consensus"? Let me give you a scenario here which I find
> > comparable to the "community consensus" on zh:
> >
> > The People's Republic of China decides to hold a vote on the fate of
> > Taiwan. Taiwanese people as well as mainlanders get to vote. The
> > result is an overwhelming majority in favour of immediate
> > "reunification" using force if nessecary. This is not a fair vote,
> > because since the PRC is by far the majority here their opinion is
> > much more well-represented than that of Taiwan. I think this is
> > similar to the situation on zh:, with a group of simplified users -
> > including you - and a mere handful of traditional users who agree with
> > them reaching a "consensus" to keep a unified zh:.
> >
> > So, you have two choices here: we can run Wikipedia like it is the PRC
> > and hold a sham vote where one group of people gets to decide the fate
> > of another group of people, or we can run it *fairly* where we have
> > private e-mail discussions between Traditional users and the relevant
> > Wikipedia people, ie Tim Starling, Jimbo, etc etc.
> 
> This is not a comparable scenario.
> 
> Mainland Chinese does not live in Taiwan. They are not the people of
> Taiwan. Thus they have no right to decide whether Taiwan should do
> anything.
> 
> However, wikipedians from mainland does not only read SC exclusively.
> Most of them can read both TC and SC. That makes them eligible to vote
> on this TC/SC issue.
> 
> And why do you think mainlanders would vote in favor of unification?
> Is that because you have some prejudice against people from mainland?
> If this is so, this again shows you that you don't understand the zh
> community.
> 
> Lorenzarius
>