Hoi,
Thank you for using a bad example. Thank you for using political arguments
that are completely beside the point.
The question is, what is a "Commons database" good for. It is good for
providing information in a set way in as many languages as possible. This
does not mean machine translation, it means having information in one place
make damned sure that the underlying information is correct and make sure
that this information can be understood.
The Wikimedia Foundation is about providing information. When there is
information in info boxes that can be provided in a language like Tamil,
Malayam, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Georgian to name but a few with a
completely different script, it makes sense to have at least that
information available in info boxes in those languages. It makes perfect
sense to have reputable information available in this way, a way that allows
us to prove that at least the underlying information is correct. When we are
able to provide information in info boxes, we do not "need" to provide the
same information again. This however is common practice in any project;
facts are repeated in text and extra information is provided to give it
extra depth.
The quality of machine translation is not the same for every language. This
gets you first of all broken translations and slowly but surely acceptable
language. When people complain about the big numbers of articles involved,
they should appreciate that for a machine translation algorithm the number
of articles is immaterial. For the development of machine translation it is
actually a boon when there is a lot of language to process. So people that
complain about large numbers of articles when machine is used just do not
understand the process.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Nov 29, 2007 7:29 PM, User 32X <wikipedia(a)32x.de> wrote:
Michal Rosa wrote:
Also it would make it easy for bots to create
articles
containing basic demographical data about towns and
localities based on such information.
As if there weren't already enough of these "articles" ...
user-written:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarbr%C3%BCcken
bot-written:
http://lmo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarbr%C3%BCcken
Apart from the language, which article would give your
more information? Do we really need articles that only
repeat information from the infobox in text form?
I don't think so.
--32X
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