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

Sat Feb 12 01:02:58 UTC 2005

On Fri, February 11, 2005 4:18 pm, Anthere said:
> Hello Felix
>
> Out of curiosity, do we know how many editors would currently
> actively work on the cantonese langage ?
>
> Ant
>
Actually I have no idea.

Someone invited me to support the creation of zh-wuu (Shanghainese)
Wikipedia, and I found the proposal of Cantonese Wikipedia on the same
page on Meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages>,
so I supported both.  Then I learned about the opposition in the mailing
list and joined the discussion.  I never expected that I need to be so
vocal here, almost taking a leading role.

Someone signed on Meta.  There are some support beside opposition in the
mailing list.  Alex Kwan on this list edited my introduction to the test
site: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/zh-yue> with an anonymous
IP.  We can expect him to contribute more when he is back from vacation.

While I am writing this email, I just discovered that I had forgotten
to "Save page" after "Show preview" when I added link to the test site.
If number of editors or whether a project can be sustained is the only
issue, I think a test site should be a good indicator of potential
support of any new language project.

You may also want to review the thread "Wikipedia in Chinese dialects",
where I proposed writing 3 good articles of medium length and 20 good
stubs in any new language.  They will also serve to test the hypothesis
that written Mandarin and written Cantonese are the same, or are too
similar to deserve a separate project.

People may still disagree, but at least that will be better than arguments
without any backup.

Felix Wan