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

[Walter van Kalken]

Hello,

>This was not a group without expertise. Among those present -
>Lorenzarius, one of the original zh: Wikipedians; Little Alex,
>currently studying for a degree in translation; Mcy_jerry, studying
>medicine in Chinese University (an institution coping with
>Mandarin/Cantonese/English issues as the medium of instruction); and
>Simon Shek, Carlsmith, W.F. Siu, Mapocathy, all folks who've grown up
>in the mixed language school environment.
>  
>
And another time someone on this list quotes offlist people. I should 
get some celebrity names in my posts as well. It seems to be the trend 
to quote offlist people to strengthen ones arguments. I

>And to quote from Mark's previous message:
>
>"The whole point here is that Waerth and I both think it's unfair to
>let anybody but the actual language community make decisions about
>whether or not they should get a Wikipedia, with exceptions for
>artificial languages perhaps."
>  
>
Yes, and many people from that language community have voted in favour 
as well. Why are the votes of the people you quoted Andrew more 
important than those of the ones that already voted?

>[...]
>Obviously, one of the biggest issues was Cantonese Wikipedia. After
>discussing it for a while, there was consensus (in fact unanimity)
>that though there is legitimate and desirable use for vernacular
>written Cantonese in casual use, arts, film, newspaper columns and the
>like, the conclusion about Cantonese Wikipedia was - "not at this
>time."
>  
>
Ok so the concensus was that the Cantonese users found it a legitimate 
request ...... interesting.

>
>* Current state of Chinese Wikipedia. There was agreement that the
>general quality of the average article in Chinese Wikipedia is
>relatively poor, even though it has 40,000+ articles. The recent stats
>on "short articles" showed zh: contained unusually high number of
>them, and empirically Mcyjerry made the point that they are generally
>lacking in content. Folks felt that it was more important to shore up
>the existing zh: Wikipedia instead of splitting the effort.
>  
>
This is another repetition of the same argument that so many have 
rebunked. It is an argument with little to no value. You cannot measure 
a gain or downfall in activity on the Chinese wikipedia. Has Minnan 
effected it? With the same reason we could delete all languages but the 
5 major ones. I am happy this debate wasn't held when wikipedia started. 
It might have ended with .... we need to shore up Nupedia before we can 
start up Wikipedia.

>* Universities and Cantonese use. Mcyjerry and Lorenzarius, students
>at Chinese University of Hong Kong explained that their science and
>medicine classes were not done in Cantonese, and if they were it would
>be confusing. They can elaborate more as to why, but Chinese
>University was setup to promote Chinese education in a (then) British
>Colony.
>  
>
And??? We have an Esperanto wikipedia .... are there science and or 
medicine classes in Esperanto. There are many languages we support that 
do not have education in them. and why because little has been written 
in those languages because a national government oppresses it in favour 
of the "national" language.

I personally feel that while you have actually concluded amongst 
yourselves that a Cantonese is a legitimate request  but you are still 
trying to find excuses not to open it! Why are you still coming up with 
these excuses? Now I am going to draw a parallel here with Thailand.

Thailand has Thai as its national language and a couple of minority 
languages, like Khmer (Thai-Khmer) and Isaan (Lao-Thai). While big parts 
of the population speak these languages and media is being produced in 
these, the Central Thais and especially the higher educated ones either 
laugh at these folksy people (they use a Thai word that roughly 
translates to hillbillies) or rather deny its importance in daily life. 
Most would like to see it stamped out and replaced by "proper" 
Central-Thai.

I personally see the same attitude in your arguments here. Although you 
actually do recognise the legitimacy of the request ... which would give 
many educated Thais in the similar situation a fit. You are still trying 
to stop the start of a wikipedia in this "folksy" language.

Offcourse this discussion is actually useless. Because nobody wants to 
set up new language wikipedias anymore with totally hilarious arguments 
like ... but these people speak another language as wel, let them go 
there. So I am actually waisting my breath here.

I feel that the debaters/conservatives have finally won and managed to 
stall any further development in wikimedialand. If these debates had 
been had when wikipedia was started, it would never have gotten of the 
ground. What we do not need is more voting on starting new 
wikipedialanguages, but a clear ruleset so every language gets a clear 
chance because there will always be people against starting a new language!

Waerth/Walter van Kalken