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