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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Literary Chinese Wikipedia

< Proposals for closing projects

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal is rejected and the project will be kept open.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The existence of Classical Chinese Wikipedia outside of Chinese Wikipedia does not fulfill its duty as an independent "language" project. Classical Chinese is not a complete language, which is only the formal writing language of Chinese before the 20th century. It was not considered to be independent even in the first place. I understand some of the discussions of other languages' projects have noticed the Classical Chinese Wikipedia as a reference of the opposing side, but it is very doubtful regarding if we ever need this project in many perspectives. Nowadays, even in a conservative point of view, the most population with Chinese as their official language and Lingua Franca across multiple Chinese regions use mandarin in oral practices. Respectively, the grammar used in Mandarin took over the place of vanishing classical Chinese in terms of formal and casual writing. In this specific case, the Classical Chinese Wikipedia uses the exact same script as Chinese Wikipedia, all editors and readers among Chinese population can read and write in a faster(may be more favored) way by writing in the easy way(now formal&official) at Chinese Wikipedia. Frankly speaking, the "audiences" group of this project overlaps Chinese Wikipedia very much, this project is considered insignificant from my point of view. This is the overview of my explanation for closing the Classical Chinese Wikipedia project, I will try to follow up with more details if needed. -宋世怡 (talk) 07:54, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Comment Without going into details, this cannot be a type 1 proposal ("Regular language editions which don't have content or existing content is insignificant."). If any, it has to be a type 2 proposal. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 09:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry that I did not add in the type, I believe now it will be a valid proposal? -宋世怡 (talk) 09:07, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@宋世怡: Please can you make a formal notification about your this proposal at lzh:維基大典:會館? Without notifying community members, every one can rejecte your proposal as premature. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:15, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have notified them as requested. -宋世怡 (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment You don't even know the correct translation of "文言文".Its ISO 639 code is "lzh" (Literary Chinese).
你甚至都不知道「文言文」的正確英文名稱，它的ISO 639編碼是「lzh」，即「Literary Chinese」。-七个点 (talk) 15:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What is the Wikipedia code for this?[1]-宋世怡 (talk) 15:54, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please close this proposal speedy if possible, according to the following reason:
1. The number of articles and contributors of Classical Chinese Wikipedia are in the middle places of all the Wikipedia.
2. Classical Chinese (Literary Chinese, ISO code: lzh) is completely different from the Mandarin Chinese.
3. The Classical Chinese Wikipedia was established before the new language policy, in the same case of Latin Language.
4. There are many articles with high quality, such as zh-classical:許浚, which is much more detailed than the Mandarin one.
5. The proposer has not communicated with any members of Classical Chinese Wikipedia, most of the rationales proposed are his subjective opinions, which are insulting the contributions of the Classical Chinese Wikipedians.
6. The most important reason: No reason to transfer to Incubator; there is content, no vandalism, and this is active currently and has been active for 12 years!
Thanks for your help! --Itsmine (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Itsmine:I would not argue on the number of articles which indeed is at mid tile, but it would be better to enlighten me with an explanation of which sentence is my subjective opinion and how it affected my statement.-宋世怡 (talk) 15:35, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, I did NOT intend to insult any contributors in any way possible, I pay huge respect to those hardworking editors even some are very aggressive. I have friends who do oppose my opinion and I oppose theirs, but we try to improve ourselves during any confrontment between us and it does not affect our friendship which I hope can happen here.-宋世怡 (talk) 15:49, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to rewrite the rationales of the proposer, but for the proposal of closing the Wikipedias of all the Individual Languages (such as yue, gan, hak, wuu, cdo, nan) [2] of Chinese (zho) as following, to show that the rationales given are irrational:
"Nowadays, even in a conservative point of view, the most population with Chinese as their official language and Lingua Franca across multiple Chinese regions use mandarin in oral practices. Respectively, the grammar used in Mandarin took over the place of vanishing "ANY Individual Languages of Chinese" in terms of formal and casual writing. In this specific case, the "Cantonese (yue) / gan / wuu" Wikipedia uses the exact same script as Chinese Wikipedia, all editors and readers among Chinese population can read and write in a faster(may be more favored) way by writing in the easy way(now formal&official) at Chinese Wikipedia. Frankly speaking, the "audiences" group of this project overlaps Chinese Wikipedia very much, this project is considered insignificant from my point of view. This is the overview of my explanation for closing "ANY Individual Languages of Chinese" Wikipedia project, I will try to follow up with more details if needed."
As stated in the Closing_projects_policy, "Not meeting the current Language proposal policy requirements is not a valid reason. Keep in mind that Wikimedia/LangCom does not define what is a language and what is a dialect. We follow international ISO standards which may sometimes have a broad interpretation of language. One should generally not propose a project for closure because it is allegedly written in a "dialect" rather than a "language."
There is ISO code for Literary Chinese / Classical Chinese lzh, which is also one of the Individual Languages of Chinese (zho), thus the proposal is NOT valid in accordance to the Closing_projects_policy, and please close the proposal speedy if possible, thanks for the understanding.--Itsmine (talk) 16:03, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Itsmine: Unfortunatelly please see Meta:Snowball , snowball closure is NOT ALLOWED on Meta. Therefore a widely discussion from interests of lzh community members is needed to decide something. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:52, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226 and Itsmine: Liuxinyu, this would not have fallen under Snowball (even if on enwiki). Itsmine was suggesting that it was actually an invalid request, and I do have the authority to speedy-close invalid and spurious requests. However, I am not choosing to do so in this case. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My idea: a little Support, if this can make phab:T30443 more easier. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:56, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

These two things should not be confused. And,once closed, Literary Chinese Wikipedia will not meet the requirements of reopening. By the way, Changing the domain name does not need to close the project. e.g.:be-x-old:→be-tarask:.-七个点 (talk) 14:48, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Closure is definitely NOT the way to migrate to the correct code. If this is the way, then both zh-min-nan and zh-yue should be the same case phab:T10217.--Itsmine (talk) 23:42, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I would want to say thank you to @Liuxinyu970226:, he helped us to point out the ISO code issues of the zh-classical (lzh), zh-min-nan (nan) and zh-yue (yue) Wikipedia, which has been applied for treatment for about ten years. Thanks again!--Itsmine (talk) 23:56, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@七个点 and Itsmine: The problems that about domain renaming, as per phab:T172035, are more beyond than your two comments, there are problems that about ContentTranslation, Wikidata, StructuredDiscussions, and (don't surprise) bots. So maybe C933103 says correct, "how about closing a project into incubator and then reopen it with the desired language code immediately?" --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:29, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose closure. Open, relatively active Wikipedias don't got closed for reasons like this.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:19, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose. From List_of_Wikipedias/Table, the depth of lzh.wp is 324, which should be at top 10. The number of article is 7,590. The site gets the ranking of 150 which is at the midstream. Moreover, the community is active enough. Not to mention that the site has been active for more than 10 years. I don't see there is any reason for the closure of the site like that. --J.Wong 05:21, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support Strong support the proposal. I agree to delete classical Chinese Wikipedia. The content has many grammatical similarities. It not even used in modern China, classical Chinese isn't a spoken language and only existed in books. After all, no one can speak this "Language". --Beta Lohman (talk) 21:10, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Beta Lohman: This does not make sense, and I doubt if you really have any knowledge about Literary Chinese, for anyone had ever learned Literary Chinese knows that it is ridiculous to say that Standard Chinese has a similar grammar with Literary Chinese - written Cantonese is much closer to this statement. On the other hand, even if your opinion - which is, Literary Chinese is impossible to distinguish from Standard Chinese - is correct, Literary Chinese would never be able to get an ISO 639 code, as for Sichuan dialect. Also, wikis established during the early stage of Wikimedia are not limited by the language policies of the WMF. Of course, Literary Chinese could not be “spoken”, so does every other classical language.-七个点 (talk) 14:13, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Oppose. Why it bothers to have a Classical Chinese Wikipedia? Why would you propose to close zh-classical , other than Old English or Latin? Classical Chinese used to be the lingua franca in East Asia before early 20th century. Although it is not widely used today, it is not a dead language and is still taught in the Greater China and Japan. Audience of the Classical Chinese are not Chinese native speakers only, but everyone in East Asia and those who have knowledge of Sinic languages. Here is an example of a Japanese reader who has little knowledge of contemporary Chinese, but is able to understand zh-classical Wikipedia: [3]. @Beta Lohman: First, contemporary Chinese does not share indentical grammar with classical Chinese. If you claim that Classical Chinese has a similar grammar with contemporary Chinese, I would also claim that, contemporary Chinese shares a similar grammar with English (SVO; the former is analytic, while the latter is getting more and more analytic). Next, I am afraid your opinion that it is not a spoken language is biased. Classical Chinese is the spoken form of Old Chinese, and agreed as a written language throughout the history of East Asia since Han dynasty. It is shared by space and time until the modern era (1910s). And all topolects of the Sinic language can be a spoken form of Classical Chinese (i.e. "literary reading（文讀）"), even Japanese (漢文訓読) and Korean. To conclude:
  • Audience of Classical Chinese are not Chinese speakers alone. 文言之受衆不限於華人。
  • Classical Chinese is not dead. 文言還沒死呢。
  • Classical Chinese is not Contemporary Chinese. 文言不是現代標準漢語。
  • Classical Chinese was and can be a spoken language. 文言曾/也可以是口語。
--Celestial Phineas (talk) 02:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226:Please do not blur the difference between the current request and domain problem. They are unrelated.-七个点 (talk) 23:42, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226: The question of what the proper domain should be is beyond the scope of this discussion. That has no bearing on the question of whether this wiki should stay open. Please do not bring this up again. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:19, 23 April 2018 (UTC) [reply]
Additional note: if it turns out that someday we will have to technically close this wiki in order to move its content to a properly-coded wiki, that will happen anyway. It's not to be part of this discussion. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2018 (UTC) [reply]
  • Oppose I could not see the reason of closing the Literary Chinese Wikipedia. According to the closing projects policy, a project that is proposed to be closed has to be classified into one of the two types: those projects having almost or totally no content, which obviously is not the case of Literary Chinese Wikipedia, which has 7640 articles and 73 active users; those projects which have a special case, such as Simple English Wikiquote - Simply check out the Wikipedia article of Literary Chinese to find out how big the difference is between Literary Chinese and Standard Chinese. Finally, even if Literary Chinese Wikipedia does not fit the language policy of WMF, the unfit is not a valid reason to have projects closed. --丁子君 (talk) 21:43, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose First of all, according to the closing projects policy, Wikimedia does not define what is a language and what is a dialect. Following the ISO standard, Literary Chinese is an independent language, despite it's allegedly a language or dialect. Therefore, even though the Literary Chinese could not be considered to be independent in someone's opinion, it's not a sufficient reason for proposing a project for closure.
    Moreover, some arguments are invalid in your statements.

    Classical Chinese is not a complete language, which is only the formal writing language of Chinese before the 20th century. It was not considered to be independent even in the first place.

    The written language for Modern Chinese is Standard Written Chinese, which is completely not the Literary Chinese. Literary Chinese is a written language based on Ancient Chinese, and is experienced thousands years of evolution. Literary Chinese and Modern Chinese are parallel each other, not contained. Therefore, Literary Chinese can be considered to be independent.

    Respectively, the grammar used in Mandarin took over the place of vanishing classical Chinese in terms of formal and casual writing. In this specific case, the Classical Chinese Wikipedia uses the exact same script as Chinese Wikipedia,

    Standard Written Chinese does share some grammar with Literary Chinese, but it's not able to deduce that the two language are identical. Actually, they are both originated from the Ancient Chinese, which leads to the common part of two language. Balthild (talk) 13:02, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nonsensical. Anyone with any knowledge of lzh could know immediately that lzh wikipedia is certainly under lzh. --丁子君 (talk) 12:52, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect. It is not extinct as it's well documented, and it was the written form of Chinese until early 20th century. In fact it still appears in contemporary textbooks of Chinese schools. -★- PlyrStar93 →Message me. ← 18:30, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Agusbou2015: Please read my vote above. This language has never been extinct, but kept in use for thousands of years. It has lost its official status in East Asia in the early 20th century, but still remains for ceremonial uses and as a part of high school education in Greater China and Japan. Most Classical Chinese Wikipedians hava a good command of this written language. You cannot judge based on a false fact. --Celestial Phineas (talk) 09:00, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Celestial Phineas: There are still valid points that e.g. langcode of domain, abuse of FlaggedRevs, etc. --117.14.243.241 03:13, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re above: As per Closing projects policy, there are two types of closure proporsals: one is that the project doesn't have content or existing content is insignificant; the other is that the project is controversal. IMHO, your comment is out of the scope of discussion. Abuse of MediaWiki's functionality has nothing to do with the closure. --Celestial Phineas (talk) 08:10, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let me repeat: Langcode issues are out of scope here. They will be dealt with administratively. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:59, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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