Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
No technical solution will, of course, address the
differences in
vocabulary among Taiwan, PRC-Hong Kong, PRC-Mainland (and God forbid,
Singapore and PRC-Macau). The differences are sometimes considerable in
certain technical and pop cultural fields, though they should not be
exaggerated.
Within a fairly wide range, though, such differences can be avoided in
an encyclopedia. It depends on how extreme the differences might be,
of course, but mutual intelligibility is the standard that I would
use.
I can testify that when I'm in London talking to people, I have a lot
harder time understanding what's being said than I do when reading
Wikipedia, because (in my uneducated opinion) UK and US casual
speaking is further apart than UK and US formal writing. This may be
similar to when you are talking about when you mention pop culture.
--Jimbo