[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia again

Neil Harris usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk
Thu Feb 10 16:18:21 UTC 2005


David Gerard wrote:

>Neil Harris (usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk) [050211 02:48]:
>
>  
>
>>Here's a compromise proposal: the Chinese Wikipedia should be regarded
>>as having succeeded beyond doubt when it has reached an article count of
>>N articles, where N might be, say, 50,000. At that point, the barrier to
>>creating other Chinese-language should be dropped. At the current rate
>>of growth, that will probably be sometime next year.
>>Here's the nice, counter-intuitive consequence to this proposal: it
>>provides an incentive to alternative-Chinese-language proponents to add
>>content to the mainstream-Chinese Wikipedia, and recruit more people to
>>do so, so that it will grow as rapidly as possible. When the 50,000
>>target is reached, it is probable that many of these new editors will
>>start to concentrate on their own local language versions; however, many
>>of them will, I imagine, also continue to work on the main Chinese
>>Wikipedia, and there will be a major incentive for content to flow in
>>translation between the different Chinese Wikipedias. So it's a win-win
>>proposal.
>>    
>>
>
>
>It's a fairly easy proposal to argue against: zh: has already reached
>critical mass and will keep growing, barring the vicissitues of the Chinese
>government (which is a force orthogonal to this argument).
>
>Further argument against: it's a "compromise" with a position that is
>untenable to start with - trying to take volunteers who've come forward for
>a different idea to work on your own project rather than that one.
>
>Further argument against: there is no natural reason why someone whose
>interest is captured by a Cantonese wikipedia should be forced to work on a
>Mandarin one first.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>  
>
I'll put you down for a low value of N, then. N=1?

Note that there is nothing to _force_ Cantonese contributors to add 
articles to the main zh: Wikipedia. At N=50,000, the whole thing will 
unbung itself in a year without them taking any action. If they lobby 
successfully for a lower N, perhaps even by bargaining with their 
opponents, they get what they want sooner.

Just as with politics, there are many actual positions hidden behind 
people's ostensible positions. At the moment, we have a position where 
"yes, but only when we are happy", or even "yes, real soon now" actually 
mean "never". The key here is _breaking the deadlock_ of _indefinite_ 
opposition to other Chinese language Wikipedias, by making supporters on 
both sides commit in advance to a value of N, and automatically 
triggering the change in policy when N is reached. Making people make 
_objective_ choices always clarifies their positions.

-- Neil




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