On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:32:41 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In general Wikipedias are being divided by language,
not by country.
Sure, Swiss users will have different interests than German, French or
Italian ones, but those are I think better served by adding Swiss
content to the existing Wikipedias than by creating a new,
multi-lingual Wikipedia.
I agree with this philosophy entirely as it applies to Wikipedia.
However, I think the poster may have a point about Wikinews.
Locale and nationality have more importance for news content than for
encyclopaedic content. The sort of news relevant to a French speaker
in Quebec or in Cameroon may be entirely different from that relevant
to those in France.
I'm not suggesting separating wikinews sites by country or locale:
that's the wrong idea. Mixing languages in one wikinews site is a bad
idea, and articles in the same language should be housed together, as
many can be re-used (such as those which concern international
events).
Here's a suggestion to resolve some of this: have a country or
locale-specific news index page on all wikinews sites, and make the
URL <languagecode>.wikinews.<countrycode> redirect to this page. For
example, en.wikinews.ca would redirect to a page on
en.wikinews.org
indexing English-language Canadian news, while fr.wikinews.ca would
redirect to a similar page for French-language Canadian news on
fr.wikinews.org.
regards,
Steve