Chinese Wikipedia
This page is a descriptive article on the Chinese Wikipedia, feel free to add any comment.
Facts
Started: May 2001; content in Chinese added since October 2002
Areas of strength
- Multiple writing systems for simplified/traditional Chinese (see below)
- Popular culture of Greater China
Areas of weakness
- Blocked in the People's Republic of China (see Wikimedia projects blocks)
- Due to the cultural difference and the difference in translation among PRC, HK, TW and other communities, two or more articles coexist for describing the same thing. Thus, the time consuming process of merging articles is required.
- Absence of software robots for vandal fighting.
- Most users good at translation do not have sufficient time, and those who have sufficient time are weak in translation. As a result, many articles are left partially translated.
Who is the competitor?
- Online
- Baidu Baike (百度百科)
- Britannica Online (大英在線)
- Wordpedia (智慧藏百科全書網)
- Yahoo! Answers (雅虎知识堂 / Yahoo!奇摩知識 / 雅虎知識+)
- various websites using content from the Chinese Wikipedia without attribution
- Print
- Encyclopedia of China (中国大百科全书)
- Taipedia (台灣大百科全書 | Grand Taiwan Encyclopedia)
Prominent milestones/events
- Blocked and unblocked by the People's Republic of China
- January 2005 - new Chinese mapping software
- August 2006 - First ever Chinese Wikimedia conference in Hong Kong
What has its impact been?
- Cooperation among Taiwan, HK and PRC users, has created better understanding of respective viewpoints.
Features
What language features are challenging?
- At least two main writing systems exist -- traditional and simplified Chinese. Until January 2005, zh.wp was a mix of articles of both types depending on the origin of the article creator/editors. User:Mountain helped create a generic automated mapping system which has helped other languages as well, such as Serbian. See the article: Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese
What would surprise the outside reader about the community?
- Even though it is generally blocked in the PRC, a significant number of core contributors are able to use proxy software to get to Wikipedia.
- Community makeup -- one quarter from Hong Kong, one quarter from Taiwan, and the rest smaller numbers from China, US, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and other locations. (As of end of 2006, see CWMC 2006)
- chapters
- Wikimedia Taiwan (Existing)
- Wikimedia Hong Kong (dissolved at 1 Feb 2017)
- Wikimedia Macau (Existing)
- Wikimedia Mainland China (Ideas)
- User Group
- Wikimedia User Group China (Existing)
What are some unique practices/characteristics?
- TK
Who were the earliest participants, who started it?
- Mountain & Formulax
Other prominent Wikipedians?
- KJ
- Shizhao
- Theodoranian
- Ting Chen