Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias/Coordination

How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca (i.e., will the http://www.nupedia.com articles be regarded as "master articles")?

Please offer your opinions here.

One idea, though I don't know if I favor it myself, is to ask the contributors to international Wikipedias to focus on those topics that directly concern the culture, language, countries, etc., that use the language in question. So, for example, http://fr.wikipedia.com might focus on all things French. But I suppose I personally am not in favor of this suggestion, for the simple reason that there are millions of French people who don't know English but who do know enough to write excellent encyclopedia articles on all sorts of topics that have nothing specifically to do with France or French. Why should they be discouraged by anyone? --LMS

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I agree with Larry that the international wikipedia don't need to be translations of the english wikipedia, but encyclopedias in that language for themselves. Contributors of the international versions that read english can look for inspiration, or simply translate from english wikipedia if they wish, but if they don't (or can't) they should be able to just write away... The only problem is that there are not international versions of the "instigator", Larry, but i hope someone will appear anyway, and if not, it means that the proyect didn't attract enough people and will die for itself... I really hope, that the international wikipedias can be in the future a source for the english version, a cross fertilization would be great...(remembering the "fertile soil" metaphora...--AstroNomer

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I agree with LMS that plenty of potencial contributors are merely blocked by a language problem, and that we are loosing something. But this, IMHO, brings to the concept of a common project, shared into linguistic sub-versions, not locally focused or with individual contents. Water is latin aqua, is french eau, is german wasser and is spanish agua. But everywhere it is H2O, and a not interconnected system could potencially allow different definitions, more salty on the seaside, more icy up on the mountains. Let's put all the salt in one page, with translations, and start boiling, so we'll get pure water.

A certain nearness among intl versions, could confirm a common sense of the content of articles, and substancially demonstrate objectivity in definitions, which should be a good reason for having an encyclopedia. Different interpretations of the same points might not: let's say, just for an example (absit iniuria verbis), UK version and Argentina's version on Falkland Islands/Malvinas would be quite different, presumedly - why should the two versions be called by the same Wikipedia name if they say completely different things??? And what should be reported in such case on a swiss (neutral) Wikipedia? What's commonly shared in these 3 versions?

More. Does National Geographic have different definitions depending on the languages in which it is translated, so that a lyon in Sweden might not be such a dangerous animal (as they locally have never seen one assaulting man), while in Rome it should be a menace on every Sunday (because several cases have been verified of lyons eating gladiators)? National Geographic always says the same thing (I do hope) in each of the languages it uses, and the lyon is still the jolly good fellow as ever in every version.

Couldn't we use this precious instrument to help editing a really international page, with volounteers' effort in translating for a resulting "common" article? This could be more in the nature and the spirit of the Net, I think.

I live in Italy and know nothing about, i.e., Sudan; reading current page, I don't know more than what CIA reports, that's certainly true, but does not describe to me if there is a litterature, and what a local poet said, or a form of art, and what a local artist painted/sculpted/singed/played/..., or many other things. Should the one Sudanese reading that page be authorised to edit it, maybe passing through a volounteer translator, or should he better edit his local page in a local language that we'll never decipher? In first case we could here something more about that country, in the other case we are gratulating ourselves we can read english and the factbook, but won't know anything farer in our learning than about English-compliant western countries.

And for non-english world: is Wikipedia intl. meant to list local groceries' opening time in Nepal, that would be the concrete last result of decentralisation?

Yet, I'm currently learning so much about English-speaking countries that, I can ensure you, it is completely enchanting to me. Why not about more cultures too?

A "common" page in different languages would be certainly harder to built, no doubt, but theorically more, more, more interesting.

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I think the fate of this lies with the polyglots who can read and "merge" materials from different language wikipedias. I do a lot of merging between the English and Esperanto ones, because those are the languages I feel confident writing in. Next year I plan to learn either Dutch or German (depending where I move), so then I'll be able to help with that one as well. I think the idea of a "common" article would be ludicrous because it would most likely be the English one and we already see too much of English-language "superiority" in the world as it is without bringing it to Wikipedia...

I'm really excited about moving the same software to encompass all the wikipedias at once. One thing I really like about Wikipedia is that even though organizations like the EU believe in equal language rights, in practice it really doesn't come out that way, but on Wikipedia every language is equal (ignoring font issues, etc)... well, when we unite them under the same software that is... but it's coming! --Chuck Smith

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someone wrote:

 But everywhere it is H2O

Sorry, but you're wrong:
Everywhere in places warmer than 0^oC and colder than 100^oC and with about 100 or so kPa of total gas pressure, water is written H₂O, not H2O, but in most places the density and pressure are much too low and H₂O does not exist. :) But it does exist in some very special, dense places like molecular clouds (where stars are born). (Since AstroNomer is here, i thought i should say that. :)

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See also : Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias