On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:59 AM, gopher65 <gophe...@hotmail.com> wrote: > You know, I've actually been recently considering an idea for combining all > of the Wikinews language editions into a single project. However, the code > required to accomplish this in a reasonable fashion does not currently > exist, and I don't think that anyone at the foundation would be willing to > jump in and volunteer the significant amount of dev time that would be > necessary to make such a project possible from a technical perspective... > even though I can see Wikipedia benefiting immensely from the same tech. > > Imagine going onto a single, non-language specific Wikipedia, simply > selecting your language from a list, and having every major article appear > in your selected language. You switch to another language, the same article > appears, with the same text, merely having been translated by users.
> Translation is MUCH easier than writing a Featured Article quality article > from scratch (FA articles take a surprising amount of effort and time to > write), Then you don't know what translation is, or just you are no translator at all. It is bridging one culture to another, and as creative and productive as writing from scratch. I think I don't need to speak how it is time-consuming work. so this would significantly decrease the current duplication of > effort that is taking place in the "separate but equal" multiple-languages > version of the mediawiki software that we currently use. In such a model of > Wikipedia much more emphasis would be placed on the translation of other > language's articles into every language than is currently the case. (For > instance, a while ago I was looking up some special type of Russian Perogie. > The article I wanted doesn't exist on English Wikipedia, but it does exist > on Russian Wikipedia... which was useless to me, because I don't speak > Russian. Thankfully Google Translate came to the rescue... sorta.) ;-) > > Back to Wikinews and the issue at hand. As a Wikinews specific example of > how this could eventually work: you have an article about something that > happened in France, investigated by French Wikinewies, originally written in > French, and then translated into Dutch, English, German, and Mandarin by > other Wikinewsies. That type of coordination is currently *possible*, but > it's much more difficult to manage than it would be in a better designed, > multi-frontpage, auto-language selection multi-lingual site (based on your > preferences for logged in users, or a per-visit dropdown language selection > system (for non-logged in users)). Right now if you try to do that kind of > thing you're attempting to coordinate 20 different people spread across 10 > different sites; it's nigh-on impossible in practice, unfortunately. > > Because of the technical issues that would need to be addressed, at the > present time I'd have to say that a multi-lingual version of Wikinews simply > isn't practical. Combining the efforts of Wikinewies everywhere and reducing > our duplication of effort via translation of locally investigated and > written articles would be a great idea, but it's not something that will > happen soon. That's something for the far future (10 or 15 years from now > maybe), not for the immediate future. Wikinews as a whole has bigger things > to worry about than that, for the moment. > > Maybe though, Wikipedia doesn't? > > Gopher65 > > -------------------------------------------------- > From: "Milos Rancic" <mill...@gmail.com> > Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:32 AM > To: "Wikinews mailing list" <wikinew...@lists.wikimedia.org>; "Wikimedia > Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: [Wikinews-l] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews > >> I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the >> requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they >> need wider discussion for concluding them. >> >> One of such requests is for multilingual Wikinews [2]. Please, discuss >> here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wikinews-l to poke >> those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2]. >> >> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages >> [2] - >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_multilingual >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikinews-l mailing list >> wikinew...@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikinews-l mailing list > wikinew...@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l > -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
