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

[Mark Williamson]

> The conclusion was emphatic among the Cantonese speakers. The
> consensus was - "not at this time." In fact, it was unanimous. (See
> below for full description of the meetup).

I have a hard time believing this, since Littlalex was in fact an
ardent supporter of a Cantonese Wiki the last time around.

And these people are all welcome to vote.

> 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.

That is... 7 people? What about all of the other Cantonese speakers
who've already voted? Out of ALL of those people, the only one who has
voted is Simon Shek.

> This seems clear this idea should put this out to pasture, for now.

That seems a bit silly to me. If you take a look at the vote, and
exclude all non-Cantonese speakers (at least, as far as I am aware):

Support:
Jasonzhuocn
Bourquie
Connie
Eternal
Jogloran
Felix Wan
Enochlau
CantoneseWiki

Oppose:
Sl
Zektonic
Crosstimer
Jeromy~Yuyu
Simon Shek

That _still_ gives a majority for "support". Now, just because 7
people at a meetup agreed "unanimously", according to you (which I
still doubt, given the fact that it would mean a drastic change in
position for Littlalex), that a Cantonese Wikipedia should not be
created at this time, does not "put the idea out to pasture".

You are still spreading the silly idea that a Cantonese Wikipedia will
take away lots of people and resources from zhwiki. Why not use an
example based on experience -- zh-min-nan?? How much did that take
away?

How many potential contributors do you think a Cantonese WP would draw
away? Given all the things YOU've said about Cantonese in the past, it
seems a contradiction that you're saying that the zhwp will somehow
suffer if a CantoWP is created.

> Excerpt related to Cantonese Wikipedia:
> [...]
> 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."

It's a shame we don't have an audio or video recording of this meetup.
I sort of doubt the veracity of your claims here. And if these people
have these feelings, they're welcome to vote, as they have always
been.

> * 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.

I'd not be surprised if you were the one who brought this up in the
first place, trying to make it sound logical when it makes no sense
whatsoever. "splitting the effort" is not going to happen. There will
be no mass-exodus. This is all FUD on your part, trying to scare the
others at the meetup into opposing the creation of a Cantonese
Wikipedia by making the claim that zhwp will suffer because of it,
even though that is extremely unlikely and it's not clear how you
reached that conclusion as you've never offered anything to support
it.

> * 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.

Well, others have testified here to the exact opposite. How are we to
sort out which is correct, and which is not?

Mark