[Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

[Mark Williamson]

Jimbo, my whole point in informing an international mailinglist, and
ALL people who listed themselves as Cantonese speakers (including a
few who ended up voting against a Cantonese Wikipedia), was that it
seemed to me unfair to give Mandarin-only users an extra tip-off when
no other community got one.

And I have been quite right so far -- since Angela posted to zhwiki-l,
there have been a handful of new votes, including:

Ffootballchu, "support", from Hong Kong (a Cantonese-speaking area)

Zy26, "oppose", from "Northeast China" [zhongguo dongbei] (a
Mandarin-speaking area)
BenBenI, "oppose", from Chengdu (a Mandarin-speaking city)
Alexcn, "oppose", from Nanjing (a Mandarin-speaking city)

Now can you see why I am worried about fairness? I don't think it's
fair to let one Wikipedia vote on the creation of another Wikipedia,
rather I think it should be completely international OR up to the
people who speak the language.

Now, with this, it has been focused specifically towards zhwiki
community comment, which is giving the impression that the
Mandarin-speaking majority may have the final say on whether or not
the minority gets a separate Wikipedia. Now, from some points of view,
this may be fair (majority rules), but perhaps an analogy is in order:

If Kosovo wants to be internationally recognised as completely
independent from Serbia, who should vote on it? All of Serbia, or just
Kosovars? Certainly, if it is up to ALL of Serbia, they will remain
part of Serbia, while if it is up to the Kosovars only, they may very
well not.

It's similar with East Timor. Should all Indonesians have been allowed
to vote?? I don't think so. And they weren't -- only East Timorese
people were allowed to vote, and the overwhelming majority voted for
independence.

If Indonesians in general were allowed to vote, what do you think the
outcome would've been?

Now, currently this is largely unnessecary because "support" has more
votes by a large margin, but it's quite possible that more people from
zhwiki will come and vote. Some of them support, some of them against.

Now obviously not everybody falls within such a pattern: Hello World,
Sl, Jeromy~Yuyu, all Cantonese-speaking people, voted "against", and
Milcheflasch, a Mandarin speaker, voted "support".

But so far, I have been right: The majority of people for whom
Mandarin is the native language have voted "oppose", while the
majority of people for whom Cantonese, Wu, or Minnan is the native
variety have voted "support". In fact, even if you subtract Wu and
Minnan, the majority of Cantonese native speakers voted "support".

Now, this whole case has caused much frustration to me and all others
involved for a few reasons.

1) Quite a few users supporting on wikipedia-l, including zhwiki
members in good standing such as Milchflasch and Alex Kwan;

2) Quite a few people, including native speakers and quotes from
sources, confirming that Cantonese is indeed a very different and
largely mutually unintelligible written language;

3) Examples have been given;

4) Opposition almost entirely from non-Cantonese-speakers;

5) Test-Wikipedia articles have demonstrated just how different
Yueyubaihuawen (contemporary written Cantonese) and Baihuawen (based
on Mandarin) are, even on the most basic of levels (different words
for "is", "of", quite a few other very basic words, largely different
syntaxes, different vocabulary, etc.);

6) Jimbo said, and I quote: "I am told repeatedly by many people that
while Mandarian and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible in the
spoken form, in written form they are the same.  This is pretty
compelling for me." Who were these 'many people', we wondered (it was
discussed via PM on IRC, via private e-mails, and via instant
messaging)? What about all of the people who had come out of the
woodwork to say on Wikipedia-l that they AREN'T the same in written
form? Don't they count for anything?? For people working for a
separate Cantonese and eventually Wu and Hakka Wikipedias, this was
very confusing, discouraging, upsetting, and irritating all at the
same time.

7) Even non-Chinese Wikipedians have come out in support of a
Cantonese Wikipedia (and potentially others): Harvey Fiji, Walter van
Kalken, The Epopt, Arbeo, Nat Krause, Satyadasa, Katimawan, Chris
Sundita, Chamadrae, David Gerard, Wouter Steenbeek, Milos^ Rancic,
E2m, Oscar. The only non-Chinese who voted in opposition so far is
Elian. (if I've made a mistake and revealed someone's real name which
they prefer to keep secret, I apologise, but some are mailinglist
posters or people I know elsewhere).

Before the vote, everyone who wanted a Cantonese Wikipedia was
thinking, "what's the holdup?? how is it that andrew lih and
shengjiong ran over us with a steamroller in the court of Jimbopinion,
but we had the majority and we cited sources to support our argument
when they didn't???". That was the motivation for the vote, to have
something that screamed for attention by giving a concrete message of
how many people support it, that would be difficult to ignore.

Cheers
Mark

On 09/09/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > If I hold a vote on the creation of a Wikipedia in Venetian, do I have
> > to inform wikiit-l? No. Would it be nessecary? Probably not.
> 
> Yes, that would be wise.  I can't think of any reason why *not* to
> inform them.
> 
> > In fact, it has. Just because I didn't heed YOUR suggestions doesn't
> > mean I suck.
> 
> No, you don't suck.  He didn't say that you suck, either.  Chill, man,
> it's WikiLove, ya know...
> 
> > 4) The lack of announcement was partially intentional. I felt that it
> > was most fair to send a message to wikipedia-l, and international
> > mailing list, and then to individual Cantonese-speaking users.
> 
> To me this sounds pretty much an unfair way to go about it.
> 
> >>One reason the final (sixth) GNAA VfD was accepted after several
> >>controversial rounds of voting was because of how professionally the
> >>vote was administered. We should learn from that.
> >
> >
> > And by "we", you mean "Node", right?
> 
> I think he means all of us.  This is a tough call, and therefore in
> order to generate widespread support throughout the entire community, a
> very professionally done vote is critical.
> 
> This is why I'm opposed to rampant voting on everything.  The only valid
> purpose for a vote in Wikipedia is actually as a *poll* which seeks to
> build community consensus.  Deliberately excluding some interested
> parties is a great way to "win" a vote, but it is not a great way to get
> buy-in from the entire community.
> 
> --Jimbo
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> 


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