On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Heather Ford <hfordsa@gmail.com> wrote:

So I went to the 'verifiability' articles in a few different languages to check whether there is consensus about this on Wikipedia, at least. The english version [1] states that a) english language sources are preferred because it's the English Wikipedia b) if another language source is used, then editors may request a translation of relevant sections of the source, and c) if other languages are used in quotations, then a translation must be provided.

I looked at a few other language versions of the verifiability article (only 58 language versions have a version of this page) and few mention what to do with other language sources. Afrikaans [2] seems to follow the principles of the English version but Spanish and Catalan, for example, don't mention other language versions of sources.

Anyway, I'd be really interested in what you think about this. Do you think it's valuable to take Wikipedia's (or at least Wikipedia English's) normative framework for evaluating citations or do you think there's value in using another principle?

My understanding is that most Wikipedias preference sources in their own language first, sources from languages in the region second, English third and other languages first. This may not always be stated explicitly as policy.

For example, as I understand Euskara, Argonese and Galacian Wikipedias, they prefer their native sources first but often these are difficult to find. Then they preference Spanish followed by English. Catalan Wikipedia preferences Catalan languages first, then for reasons of nationalism around the language, they preference English and then Spanish or French.

The issue when looking at minor languages with less than say 10 million speakers is there an easy preference to use English because for many people, this is the second language they speak. In terms of operating effectively inside the Wikimedia movement on a broader scale, if you don't speak English, you're linguistically disadvantaged. Patterns I have observed suggest English sourcing is easiest once native source and near spoken language areas are not available. This is especially true for topics of specific geographic interest.

The choice of language has the potential to impact the narrative of the article in ways that may not actually be 100% neutral because of the available best sources. This is especially true with biographies, politics and controversies. The preference of one language to the exclusion of another may actually result in something that may violate WP:NPOV, which I believe is a pillar across all projects. The use of multiple languages in these cases may result in a more balanced article, especially when the place language is given some preference.

In a Spanish context, the Spanish, Catalan, Euskara and English sources from Spain will probably express different political views in general as it pertains to the issue of Catalan separatism. Catalan language and English language sources will probably be much more pro-separatism than Spanish and Euskara language sources.

Also, sources are supposed to be used for the purpose of verifying sources, and preferencing sources the same based on languages seems problematic. It does make a number of sources non-veriable unless one has the language skills. That's not useful.

I think considering the language of sources is something worth considering, but any such metric for assessing quality would probably need to be fluid to a degree to address the specific broad topics being assessed. No way should political biographies be assessed the same way as physics articles. That's nuts.

Sincerely,

Laura Hale

twitter: purplepopple