1 Oct 2001 21:01
4 Oct 2001 09:20
[Intlwiki-l] intlwiki-l: making Wikipedia fully international
You might be aware that on Nupedia's interpret-l list there have been discussions afoot to make Nupedia fully international. Efforts in this direction have already begun, I'm happy to say. We also want to support more fully Wikipedia's efforts to write (and/or translate) encyclopedias in a huge variety of languages. Right now, for example, the "French Wikipedia," http://fr.wikipedia.com/ , still has the navigational links in English (words like "Home Page" and "Recent Changes" are in English). We want to change that sort of thing very soon, with your help. We also want to add "Wikipedias" in some other languages that we're now missing--we'd like your input on which ones we need to add. I and I'm sure many others would like also to get reports on how the Wikipedias in non-English languages are proceeding. We'd also like people at work on those wikis to have a place where they can feel free to ask questions and get advice. So, we've set up intlwiki-l as a place where all that business can be conducted. You can subscribe here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/intlwiki-l Let's get started! Larry
5 Oct 2001 03:20
[Intlwiki-l] Reports?
Hi all, Well, we've got some people on intlwiki-l (subscribe here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/intlwiki-l ) and I'm hoping that someone can get intlwiki-l moving by giving a report, of any sort, about a non-English Wikipedia with which he or she is familiar. Larry
5 Oct 2001 04:56
[Intlwiki-l] Dutch Wikipedia
Hi Larry, Good idea to start this list! I understand your purpose with it, but let me first get some things off my chest. I hope you don't mind me writing a page about the situation of the Dutch Wikipedia. I really feel the Dutch Wikipedia needs some help. Since the beginning of September I have been trying to get this WikiNL (as I call it for myself) rolling. However, not many people help pushing it along. Oddly enough, I feel some kind of responsibility for the project, and would really LIKE it to be a success but as you very well know working on it is time-consuming and that is my problem too - you know, full-time job and lots of other things to do. What is in it: *A lot of of Useful Wikipedia-information and how-to pages, half of it translated. *Homepage OK and RecentChanges pages OK, works allright. *Categories OK, but only 1/3 of them have entries *Articles - Just a few longer articles. To speed things up I also copied some CIA-pages, some translated/edited by now, and some info from the English Wikipedia. about 50 stubs or a little longer with lots of empty links. *Wikiwords like 'Homepage' and 'save' not translated..I was hoping someone else would pick that up, but it hasn't happened yet. *Wikipedians - Just a handful, each writing a few entries once in a while. Actually, I am the only one writing regularly, which is both fun and funny.(Continue reading)
5 Oct 2001 09:33
[Intlwiki-l] My views on the international wikipedias and what they should do
Hi there fans of the wikipediae! I have essentially two different paths that I pursue when it comes to multilingual/international wikipedia. The first path is a vision that I am pondering about and that I still have not found good enough tools and enough time to pursue. It is the idea that the information in the encyclopedia should be written in a language-independant manner and then there should be a translation layer on top of that information that adjusts to the wanted language. The biggest problem to solve is the absolute need in this scenario to find a data model that allows article authors to provide their information. At least a framework that allows "the community" to develop a data model. My idea so far is to split the concept in three parts: editing the data model by adding new classes of objects and their attributes, editing the language views so that each new class and new value on each attribute is translated into every language, and editing the contents. A framework that would allow for these three parts to be edited by anyone in the wiki spirit would be interesting but I understand that it will take a whole lot of tool development to allow people to understand the ideas and make it possible for them to contribute. This vision really satisfies the software designer in me because of the mindboggling fact that if this succeeds it shows that it it possible to model all human knowledge in a clean data model of classes and objects. However I still doubt that it is at all possible. On the other hand there is the Swedish Wikipedia that I would like to see succeed. What has happened in the last couple of days is very(Continue reading)
9 Oct 2001 03:00
Re: [Intlwiki-l] Dutch Wikipedia
On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Theodora Kemper wrote:
> Good idea to start this list!
Glad you like it!
> I understand your purpose with it, but let me first get some things
> off my chest. I hope you don't mind me writing a page about the
> situation of the Dutch Wikipedia.
No, that's exactly what I hoped you would use the list to do.
> I really feel the Dutch Wikipedia needs some help. Since the
> beginning of September I have been trying to get this WikiNL (as I
> call it for myself) rolling. However, not many people help pushing it
> along. Oddly enough, I feel some kind of responsibility for the
> project, and would really LIKE it to be a success but as you very well
> know working on it is time-consuming and that is my problem too - you
> know, full-time job and lots of other things to do.
Well, I don't know any Dutch (I can sort of figure it out since I know
English and I know a bit of German) so it's hard for me to help. Is there
any way I can help, not actually being able to go in and make edits?
I see one problem that we can do something about: the navigational links
("HomePage", "RecentChanges", etc.) are in English rather than Dutch.
What you could do is identify all such text that needs translating. Or,
actually, you can find a list of such text...I don't know if it's
complete...here:
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Non-English_Wikipedias/TextToTranslate
(Continue reading)
9 Oct 2001 03:07
[Intlwiki-l] Forking or translating?
I fully intend to respond to Linus Tolke's very interesting post...probably tomorrow. The following seems to me to be extremely important, though. Laurent Le Guillou <leguillou.laurent@...> wrote (on nupedia-l): - Wikipedia is a fantastic source of contents. It can become the main source of content of Nupedia, without changing a lot of things. (Adding a true multilingual support is needed : to split between wiki.fr, wiki.de, wiki.es... is completely stupid. Each node should be visible in each language, and all available translations should appear on each node. Internet is a way to share between people from different countries and with different languages : it's stupid to separate them like this : "you speak german, go to this room ; you speak spanish : go to this other one...". Contents in all languages should be mixed and linked in an intelligent manner.). What do you think of this? I'm not sure that it's such a good idea to have one version of each article, translated into all other languages. This would be incredibly difficult to coordinate. But should we try? In ten years, suppose there were a well-developed English Wikipedia and a well-developed French Wikipedia, with different articles on the same subjects. Is that a good situation or one that we should work now to avoid? Or is it a situation we should look forward to in order to (in the future) create an integrated, "international" Wikipedia? Larry(Continue reading)
9 Oct 2001 15:07
Re: [Intlwiki-l] Forking or translating?
> - Wikipedia is a fantastic source of contents. It can become
> the main source of content of Nupedia, without changing
> a lot of things. (Adding a true multilingual support is
> needed : to split between wiki.fr, wiki.de, wiki.es... is completely
> stupid. Each node should be visible in each language, and all
> available translations should appear on each node. Internet is a way
> to share between people from different countries and with different
> languages : it's stupid to separate them like this : "you speak
> german, go to this room ; you speak spanish : go to this other
> one...". Contents in all languages should be mixed and linked in an
> intelligent manner.).
>
> What do you think of this? I'm not sure that it's such a good idea
> to have one version of each article, translated into all other
> languages. This would be incredibly difficult to coordinate. But
> should we try?
I'm a newcomer, but I strongly disagree with the idea to keep the
international wikipedias in sync by technical measures. I think that
the benefits are rather theoretical ("satisfying the software-engineer"
in us), but it would complicate the whole system painfully - and
simplicity is wikipedia's greatest strength.
I want to contribute to wikipedia, but my english isn't good enough to
write english articles. So I'm glad that there's the german section
where I can write in my native tounge. When I find an article in the
english section that is useful for my own work, I translate and extend
it - or I use just the information there and write a completely
different article. This is interesting work; stupidly translating isn't
(at least not for me). I don't want to care about the english original,
(Continue reading)
9 Oct 2001 23:27
[Intlwiki-l] International Wikipedia (was: Re: Forking or translating?)
On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 lsanger@... wrote: > I fully intend to respond to Linus Tolke's very interesting > post...probably tomorrow. The following seems to me to be extremely > important, though. > Laurent Le Guillou <leguillou.laurent@...> wrote (on nupedia-l): > > - Wikipedia is a fantastic source of contents. It can become > the main source of content of Nupedia, without changing > a lot of things. (Adding a true multilingual support is needed : > to split between wiki.fr, wiki.de, wiki.es... is completely > stupid. Each node should be visible in each language, and > all available translations should appear on each node. Internet > is a way to share between people from different countries > and with different languages : it's stupid to separate them > like this : "you speak german, go to this room ; you speak > spanish : go to this other one...". Contents in all languages > should be mixed and linked in an intelligent manner.). > > What do you think of this? I'm not sure that it's such a good idea to > have one version of each article, translated into all other languages. > This would be incredibly difficult to coordinate. But should we try? > In ten years, suppose there were a well-developed English Wikipedia and a > well-developed French Wikipedia, with different articles on the same > subjects. Is that a good situation or one that we should work now to > avoid? Or is it a situation we should look forward to in order to (in the > future) create an integrated, "international" Wikipedia? We are not in ten years, we are now, today. And it seems to me that the "English" Wikipedia is(Continue reading)
10 Oct 2001 08:46
RE: [Intlwiki-l] Forking or translating?
Hi again! Travelling around europe (well actually my experience in that part is rather slim with Turkey, Spain (Mallorca and Catalonia?), and Scottland, I have gotten the impression that the new generation of Europeans care less about the language and cultural differences than I do. This "observation" is perhaps not so much based on facts but probably the work of my wishes and imagination. From this, very dubious base, I have then imagined a world where a tool/community like Wikipedia can develop with nobody caring about what language things are written in. It was a disappointment for me when I took the first steps in the Wikipedia and found out that it was more or less necessary to build contents in English since the tool did not provide functions to handle things in several languages. It then evolved into the "Helmut? Go left! Manuel? Go right!" that Laurent describes below and that was something new and interesting but alas, even further from my vision of a united world speaking *anyall* language. In the "new and interesting" I have never had any ambition to translate. I have thought it to be a waste of time. I have a "Leave the boring translation work for the computers to do! Alas there are not any good enough programs right now. So what? They will eventually catch up!"-approach. Instead it is the creation of information that I consider a contribution to some world-wide common goods. One big problem with the world-wide common goods is the collection of information. In order to get this rolling everybody needs to be able to work with good tools. One good tool is their native language. If enough(Continue reading)
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