David Gerard wrote:
Neil Harris (usenet(a)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