User:Fuzheado/translation

About Chinese Wikipedia Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia This page gives an account of the history of Chinese Wikipedia. Its English version was created by Fuzheado, a professor from Hong Kong, who describes his Putonghua as terrible. We have translated the page into Chinese to encourage contributors to participate in the Chinese Wikipedia according to the wiki spirit. Objective: - Fuzheado can promote this in news magazines, with the personal experience of wikipedia contributors (Cindy: I’m not sure what they mean here. Another translation: Wikipedia contributors can gain experience in promoting things in the form of news magazine.) - findings can be written and put up to the Chinese wikipedia; - and published as news articles. Expectation: About 600 to 700 words for twenty odd days to a month Contents 1. Introduction 2. Beginnings 3. Community and conventions 3.1 List of active contributors 4. Problems and challenges 4.1 Simplified Chinese versus Traditional Chinese 4.2 Managing Cultural differences (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Overseas Chinese) 4.3 Nature of articles at present 4.4 Copyrights 5. Contents 5.1 Well-written/ special articles 5.2 Significant wars on editing 5.3 Major disputes, arguments about neutrality 5.4 Tibet, Falun Gong, Independence of Taiwan 6. Queries about Chinese Wikipedia 7. References

Introduction Chinese Wikipedia is the Chinese version of Wikipedia, the world’s largest free encyclopedia project. The English Wikipedia was started in January 2001 but the Chinese Wikipedia began its operation only until October 2002. The first page on our record (Main Page) was created on October 27, 2002. Up till January 2004, there were three thousand or more articles in the Chinese Wikipedia, ranking it the 13th among other versions of Wikipedia. Within top 20, which means a higher ranking compared with the past. Beginnings Ghyll (later appears as Mountain) was the first contributor of Chinese Wikipedia and the author of the first article. In September 2002 when Mountain was searching for some information in English, he found the results of Google search always linked to a site called Wikipedia and therefore visited it. At that time, the URL of Chinese Wikipedia was zh.wikipedia.com but the page contained only some text for testing purpose. There was no actual content. As the service procedure was an old version, putting up Chinese characters was still a problem. With the help of classmates at the laboratory, Mountain designed a programme that enabled switching Chinese characters to Unicode. After several tests were conducted, the programme was used and the first homepage of Chinese Wikipedia (i.e. the current homepage) was born. In the beginning, both Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions were available on the same homepage. The service procedure of Chinese Wikipedia was upgraded on October 27 and a new URL, zh.wikipedia.org was used. Shortly afterwards, Formulax joined the scene. They worked together on some translation work. On November 17, when the translation of interface was completed, Mountain translated an English article, Computer Science and uploaded it. It was the first real article. Community and conventions The Chinese Wikipedia is an editing and writing project of the Chinese-speaking community of the world. Contributors include Chinese people from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, U.S., Canada, France and Germany as well as non-Chinese who understand the language. Diversification of Wikipedia is reflected by the multi-cultural background of contributors. However, in the past year, there were problems raised by Chinese developers or major contributors of Chinese Wikipedia that remain unsolved (e.g. the problem of “automatic select all” on the topic of “Cultural differences”) (What does it mean?) (Cindy: I’m not sure what they mean!) The conventions of Chinese Wikipedia are adopted from the English version. (The next section is not recommended for retention.) List of active contributors The following data are the statistics as at December 22, 2003: Names irrelevant, but personal info (anonymized) can show the diversity of ZH-WP. The ten Wikipedia contributors who have done the most editing jobs: 1. Shizhao (4133) from Beijing engages in research on petroleum and chemical industry. With a wide range of interest, Shizhao has an enthusiasm for ancient Chinese culture and is one of the administrators of Chinese Wikipedia. 2. Samuel (2562) from Guangdong mainly translates English articles on biology, languages and computer science. Samuel is one of the administrators of Chinese Wikipedia. 3. Cncs wikipedia (2466) from Hunan mainly edits articles on Chinese history and politics and those related to Hunan on the Chinese Wikipedia. 4. Formulax (1585) from Mainland now stays in Singapore. Good at Java programming, Formulax mainly translates articles on information about different countries and is now one of the administrators of Chinese wikipedia. 5. Tomchiukc (1172) from Hong Kong is specialized in translation, mainly translating English articles and editing and writing Hong Kong-related articles. Tomchiukc will become an administrator of Chinese Wikipedia. 6. Menchi (1041), a Taiwanese in Canada, who mainly engages in translation and editing, is one of the administrators of both Chinese and English versions of Wikipedia. 7. Colipon (974) a Mainlander in the U.S, mainly edits articles on Chinese history and information on some countries and world history. Colipon is now one of the administrators of Chinese Wikipedia. 8. Lorenzarius (903) from Hong Kong is one of the administrators of Chinese Wikipedia. 9. Dersonlwd (796) from Guangzhou likes to write articles on interesting companies and people. 10. Mountain (675) from Beijing takes much interest in programming languages and is now one of the administrators of Chinese Wikipedia. Problems and challenges Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese Most Wikipedia contributors are from Mainland China while some are from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Due to the restrictions of the software in use, only Simplified Chinese version is available in the user interface and homepage. This has caused inconvenience to contributors using Traditional Chinese and constituted obstacles to the development of Chinese Wikipedia. Most articles in the Chinese Wikipedia are written in Simplified Chinese but it doesn’t mean Traditional Chinese cannot be used. We are having discussions on this. In future, Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions can be automatically-switched to satisfy the needs of users of either versions. We also welcome hackers to provide assistance on this. Managing cultural differences (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Overseas Chinese) Wikipedia culture comprises of different cultural backgrounds. Participants from different countries and nationalities gather at Chinese Wikipedia and contribute to its development. << Woa.. it sounds so peaceful. For those Wikipedians who have little contact with their neighbours across the straits (as many who don't travel extensively would), Wikipedia presents a forum where, at first, distrust and stereotyping would occur (sentiments such "Mainlanders are all brainwashed communists who want to invade Taiwan, so they don't care about POV"). Mainlanders sometimes feel hesistant to participate too much in writing about the Taiwanese independencist history and movement, fearing that the CPP or their colleagues would view them differently if they are too involved in describe such material. Even within the Mainland, there has long existed a provincial stereotype. For example, when encountering a POV problem regarding foreign policies, a southerner may comment that it is dangerous for northerners to comment, because those in Manchuria have a strong xenophobic tendency. Distrust dissolves when Wikipedians are willing to work together, perhaps expressing their views, but also willing to compromise and just shut up for a moment, and not take offense in other's POV. Some of what is said by extremist newcomers could actually shock other opposite-view newcomers, but if one does not take their harsh views too seriously and just lay back, it is actually tolerable. The Chinese Wikipedia has, in two years, been almost purely Han contributors (dominated by Mainlanders). There has been so far only one non-Han contributor: a French linguist, who is, however, only a very occasional contributor as well. This is merely a reflection on the reality that Chinese language has little foreign students (much less than Japanese, for example). - Comparisons of different culture. Nature of articles at present - quality: mostly stub (1 paragraphs) - origin: most of them are translation of English articles - topics: politics, history, ancient Chinese literature, famous liteary and science personalities. Lacking in comprehensive major cities entries (even in China), .....more Copyrights Copyright violations are common (once in two days?), but it is not a problem unique to Zh WP. Is it more common here? I haven't noticed. Contents Is there any special examples?

Well-written/ special articles The name of writers can be omitted but it is important to state the reason why the articles are picked: Formulax: One of the political articles written by Formulax. It represents the result of translation from English - 911? Shizhao’s article on Chinese studies. It is an example of creative writing about ancient China. - A certain piece written in ancient Chinese language? Gboy: An article from the series on homosexuality written by Gboy. It reflects the tolerance of Wikipedia. - Homosexuality and medical science or Homosexuality and morality The Ancient Observatory in Beijing: an original article with pictures also taken by Wikipedia contributors. Significant wars on editing

Lixiangyu (理想语): Some woman and her friend insist to advertise their obscure conlang in WP. Some admins tried to delete, other admin say that they mustn't...Revert, protect, insistent re-posts by conlang-people..... It dragged on for like 2 months...

Major disputes, arguments about neutrality - China

Tibet, Falun Gong, Independence of Taiwan

There has been hesitation on writing about Tibet too flamboyantly, in fear that PRC would censor WP as a result. Falun Gong and ROC articles among the most often vandalized (replaced by words like "WP is lying, Falun Gong is a cult" or "Taiwan is a province, part of the Ancestral Nation of China!!!"

Queries about Chinese Wikipedia: - the nature of Chinese Wikipedia (It is in Chinese, not about China or PRC) - about the quality standard (this has been mentioned in some sections of the article written by Fuzheado): - Linus’s law - dealing with destroyers - handling disputes - neutral point of view - decision-making References - Wikipedia: Statistics - Wikipedia: Simplified Chinese characters versus Traditional Chinese characters