[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

[Mark Williamson]

There is no definitive way to find out what "readers" want.

Also, even the 'majority' of readers aren't interested, doesn't mean
there aren't a great deal of people who are: there are over 100
million Muslims in India, yet they are a minority because there are
over 1 billion people total in India.

Mark

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 12:52:42 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> 
> On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > Stirling Newberry wrote:
> >> I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
> >
> > We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet
> > poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what
> > the writers are willing to contribute.
> 
> I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large
> body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from
> Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
> standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
> in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
> notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
> research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
> one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However,
> a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular
> idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect
> within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in
> English which, never the less, are not under going the process of
> linguistic separation.
> 
> This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us
> who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be
> the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to
> be the final criterion for making decisions.
> 
> Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
> better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then
> finding a means to provide that.
> 
> 
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