On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:36:07 -0400, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I'd say then that either the German [[Kategorie:Sicherheit]] should be disambiguated into two different categories, or that [[Kategorie:Sicherheit]] shouldn't be linked to [[Category:Security]], because they don't define the same set. Maybe an English [[Category:Security and Safety]] could be made, with "Security" and "Safety" as subcats - then [[Kategorie:Sicherheit]] could link to [[Category:Security and Safety]].
These are all possible solutions. However, Sicherheit is not exactly security+safety. It's just much closer than to security alone. I picked that example because it's rather extreme. Here's another one: there are two German words for technology: Technik and Technologie (each has a separate category in the German WP).
More importantly, though, many translated words mean almost the same, but not exactly, and some articles will be the corner cases that will make the category in one language but not in the other.
You would need a mechanism to exclude categories that won't translate well enough even though an interwiki link exists between them. Opt-in or opt-out, I don't know.
But maybe this is a common enough thing that that's not going to be reasonable. At some point someone should look at how the en categories differ from the de ones. I figure there will be 5 major points of difference:
- Things being categorized at different levels ([[Category:Polish
women]] vs. [[Kategorie:Frau]]. 2) Interwiki links between articles on different things. 3) Interwiki links between categories defining different sets. 4) Articles categorized where they shouldn't be. 5) Articles missing from categories where they should be.
- is the reason why I call this a "longer-term solution". 2 and/or 3
are what you describe above. 4 and 5 are the reason why it would be useful to coordinate things.
It'd be interesting to get a decent size sample and sort the differences into those 5 categories. If 2 and/or 3 were significant, then I suppose this idea fails, at least initially. If 1 is
2) is significant if only because the German WP tends to merge subjects into one article, so you have several English articles pointing to the same German one. 3) Extremes are rare, but subtle differences are pretty much inevitable. 6) Different understanding of what categories should exist.
Roger