[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia again

Fri Feb 11 00:30:48 UTC 2005

This policy, Felix, would also disallow prestigious languages, such as
Catalan and Frisian, which although they have many speakers are spoken
almost exclusively by bilinguals, and I would remind everybody to keep
in mind that Cantonese and Wu have far more speakers than either
Catalan or Frisian.

If you raise the similarity argument, this would be a blow against our
having separate Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu Wikipedias, against separate
Danish, Swedish, and Bokmål Wikipedias, and against separate Bosnian,
Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias.

The difference with Singlish and Ebonics -> English and Cantonese and
Wu -> Mandarin is that there is decidedly a continuum between Singlish
and Ebonics -> "Standard" English, but not between Cantonese and Wu ->
Mandarin, and that Singlish and Ebonics have no widely agreed-upon
written form and that nobody would want to write a Singlish Wikipedia
anyways (it is very low prestige and thanks to gov't campaigning it is
regarded by most Singaporeans as poor English although experts
disagree). [an exception is that Singlish is often used in instant
messages and internet postings, but even tabloids don't use it and it
has a relatively small number of native speakers when compared to
Cantonese and Wu].

This is not to say that if somebody proposes and Ebonics or a Singlish
Wikipedia I will be totally opposed, but I do not feel that the case
is as strong as with Cantonese and Wu.

I do not see why we need a restrictive language policy when in the
past our policy has been any and all - if the speakers of a speech
variety want a separate Wikipedia, they are granted it, no matter how
similar the two are, with the general exception of conlangs with few
speakers. Our policy so far has worked fine.

The perception that it hasn't worked derives from the fact that
critics of the current policy, who have little justification for their
criticism, are still very vocal.

I personally don't see what would be wrong with allowing speakers of
Ebonics or Singlish their own Wikipedia, as long as we could be
certain it wasn't simply desired because the parties involved wanted
to be able to insert their POV into articles.

I hope that people will take this e-mail at least somewhat seriously
instead of saying "We do not value anything Mark says even though
others have expressed similar concerns and nothing he is saying is
very outrageous".

Mark

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:32:40 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Thu, February 10, 2005 11:14 am, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales said:
> > David Gerard wrote:
> >
> >> The thing is you're still presupposing that an existing wikipedia has
> >> a right to block the existence of a new Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> I ask the Board: is this the case?
> >
> > Not speaking here for the board, but only offering my own tentative
> > opinion, the answer to this is "no" in the general case, but that such
> > factors can be a part of the overall decision.
> >
> Nice to hear that.  I have never taken the resource argument seriously,
> and no one here should. But I do take the similarity argument very
> seriously.
> 
> > 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.
> >
> I don't know how to convince you, but even the written forms are not the
> same.  They are just similar, perhaps 80%-90% intelligible, depending on
> the subject matter.  The written form eliminates phonetic differences,
> leaving only differences in vocabulary and grammar.  Who told you that
> they are the same?
> 
> > If there is a significant population of people who can not read/write
> > standard written Chinese, but *can* read/write Cantonese in some writing
> > system that is different, then I want to learn about that, because that
> > would be a very compelling factor in the other direction.
> >
> The fact is, every literate Cantonese speaker can read standard written
> Chinese, because that is what is taught in schools, not because written
> Cantonese and written Mandarin are the same.
> 
> Do we want to set a language policy to disallow a Wikipedia if almost all
> the literate speakers of that regional speech can read the written form of
> another prestiged regional speech?  I am OK with that.  That may be good
> for Wikipedias to limit the number of versions.  We just need to make it
> clear and apply it consistently.
> 
> That policy will disallow Ebonics (African American Vernacular English)
> and Singlish (Singaporean English) even though some linguists classify
> them as creoles, but will not disallow Tok Pisin (we do have tpi:), which
> is a creole with a distinct writing system.
> 
> I am not familiar with the European languages.  I remember I heard about
> Catalan and three versions of Dutch, or something else.  Can other people
> fill me in on how the language policy is applied to other regional
> speeches?
> 
> Perhaps this is a good time for us to set a fair and workable language
> policy.  We want our decision to set a good precedent, not a bad one.
> 
> Felix Wan
> 
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