On 6/6/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/06/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That brings up another, longer term, to-do for categories: they should be language independent. For instance [[Marie Curie]] is in de: and en: (they happen to have the same title, but even if they don't they are linked via interwiki links). [[Kategorie:Pole]] is linked to [[Category:Polish people]]. So there should be no need to categorize Marie Curie twice (multiply by the actual number of languages which have a Polish people category and an article on Marie Curie).
Hmm... it won't work well.
Basdically, there is no hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship, there's no single "meta topic" which manifests itself in specific articles in different languages. For some things, like people, it does appear so; for others, it'll break down.
I don't understand that. Interwiki links are the hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship. Are you unaware of iw links, or am I misinterpreting what you're saying? Maybe you could give an example?
This is partly due to the incomplete nature of the project, but also because different language communities - which, especially for languages like German and Polish, represent individual and reasonably distinct cultures in a way that en: doesn't - will naturally have different emphasis, there'll be different levels of coverage and different approaches to fragmenting articles.
Let's say, oh, [[History of Country]].
In one language, this might be a single article. In another, time-divided articles (overview; ancient history; history to 1500; 1500 to 1900; modern history). In a third, it might be a thematic divide (political history; religious history; military history; overview).
What combination of categories would work best for *all* of these pages?
So are you simply talking about coverage, then?
For those situations where we *don't* have an article on the same topic in multiple languages, we don't have an interwiki link, and we wouldn't link the categories.
The situations where we *do* have coverage in multiple languages, of the same articles and of the same categories, it doesn't make much sense not to share information.
I think the latter situation is much more widespread than the former. Not just people: people, places, events, years, fictional works, scientific concepts, etc. Hitting random page a couple dozen times I don't see any articles which *shouldn't* exist across all language Wikipedias, and many of them already *do* exist across a number of them.
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
OTOH, interwiki links already give us the automatic translation in terms of category information. Yes, there will probably be some article titles and category titles which don't translate well, but that's the exception and for those few titles we wouldn't have any iw links anyway.
On 6/6/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I don't understand that. Interwiki links are the hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship. Are you unaware of iw links, or am I misinterpreting what you're saying? Maybe you could give an example?
They're not always 1:1. One topic might be given a whole article on one Wikipedia and only a paragraph on another. I'm not aware of any convention for handling that atm actually.
For those situations where we *don't* have an article on the same topic in multiple languages, we don't have an interwiki link, and we wouldn't link the categories.
I suspect categories are much less comparable across languages than articles are, due to different conventions etc. But I don't really know.
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
Is there an official or even unofficial policy on this? I have wondered. IMHO, the Wikipedias should *not* be precise translations though. For example, [[en:Personal pronoun]] should give descriptions of personal pronouns in all languages, but with emphasis and examples from English. [[fr:Pronom personnel]] should similarly have an emphasis on French, because that is the most helpful for French readers. Whether that extends to cultural matters (should French articles on cartoons draw more on examples from French cartoons such as Asterix than on manga for instance) is up for debate.
OTOH, interwiki links already give us the automatic translation in terms of category information. Yes, there will probably be some article titles and category titles which don't translate well, but that's the exception and for those few titles we wouldn't have any iw links anyway.
More research needed.
Steve
On 6/6/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
Is there an official or even unofficial policy on this? I have wondered. IMHO, the Wikipedias should *not* be precise translations though. For example, [[en:Personal pronoun]] should give descriptions of personal pronouns in all languages, but with emphasis and examples from English. [[fr:Pronom personnel]] should similarly have an emphasis on French, because that is the most helpful for French readers. Whether that extends to cultural matters (should French articles on cartoons draw more on examples from French cartoons such as Asterix than on manga for instance) is up for debate.
I agree with you on the "Personal pronoun" example, though I think it's somewhat contrived (in that I was talking more about general principles).
I think the general principle that Wikipedia articles shouldn't be written for any particular culture falls fairly naturally from the NPOV policy. Perhaps this is especially so wrt the English language though, which is so widespread and used by people of so many different cultures. The cartoons example is a bit less so, but it's still an example where the culture and language is particularly intertwined.
I've skipped over the rest of your email for now because I don't have the time to really delve into a response. As you say, more research is needed.
Anthony
Hi,
On a related note, some kind of translation system for Categories is desperately needed for Commons, as the Category system in place now is only of benefit to English speakers. It is a source of some frustration.
Jkelly
jkelly@fas.harvard.edu schrieb:
On a related note, some kind of translation system for Categories is desperately needed for Commons, as the Category system in place now is only of benefit to English speakers. It is a source of some frustration.
A patch is already submitted in bugzilla: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5638
greetings, elian
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
jkelly@fas.harvard.edu schrieb:
On a related note, some kind of translation system for Categories is desperately needed for Commons, as the Category system in place now is only of benefit to English speakers. It is a source of some frustration.
A patch is already submitted in bugzilla: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5638
And the system is available for test here (this is a demo link which will not do you much good if you're already using "de"): http://test.leuksman.com/view/Category:Geometry?uselang=de
HTH HAND
On 6/6/06, jkelly@fas.harvard.edu jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
Hi,
On a related note, some kind of translation system for Categories is desperately needed for Commons, as the Category system in place now is only of benefit to English speakers. It is a source of some frustration.
Is it? I'm pretty sure I've used categories in either German or French before? Do redirects work for categories? Would that suffice?
Steve
Well, I said I'd reply to this, so I suppose I will, even though it's going to be short and sweet.
On 6/6/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I don't understand that. Interwiki links are the hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship. Are you unaware of iw links, or am I misinterpreting what you're saying? Maybe you could give an example?
They're not always 1:1. One topic might be given a whole article on one Wikipedia and only a paragraph on another. I'm not aware of any convention for handling that atm actually.
Looking a bit into this, I agree it'll be a hurdle. How big of a hurdle I still don't know.
For those situations where we *don't* have an article on the same topic in multiple languages, we don't have an interwiki link, and we wouldn't link the categories.
I suspect categories are much less comparable across languages than articles are, due to different conventions etc. But I don't really know.
OTOH, interwiki links already give us the automatic translation in terms of category information. Yes, there will probably be some article titles and category titles which don't translate well, but that's the exception and for those few titles we wouldn't have any iw links anyway.
More research needed.
Steve
Yep, more research is definitely needed.
On 6/7/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
They're not always 1:1. One topic might be given a whole article on one Wikipedia and only a paragraph on another. I'm not aware of any convention for handling that atm actually.
Looking a bit into this, I agree it'll be a hurdle. How big of a hurdle I still don't know.
Just fwiw, one simple basic example I have dealt with.
[[fr:Carnac]] discusses both the township of Carnac and the famous Carnac stones which are found within the town.
I split [[en:Carnac]] into that article which only discusses the town, and [[en:Carnac stones]] which discusses the megalithic site.
[[en:carnac]] and [[en:Carnac stones]] both interwikilink to [[fr:Carnac]]. However, nothing (anywhere) interwikilinks back to [[en:Carnac stones]]. There is no clean mechanism for doing so. The French article *could* link twice - once to each article - but then you'd just have two interwiki links labelled "English" and only the URL would tell you which was which.
In other words, many -> one correspondances are ok. One -> many are unhandled atm. Occasionally you'll see "French Wikipedia article" given as a "further reading" link but I don't think the MoS sanctions that.
Steve
On 06/06/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Looking a bit into this, I agree it'll be a hurdle. How big of a hurdle I still don't know.
Just fwiw, one simple basic example I have dealt with.
[[fr:Carnac]] discusses both the township of Carnac and the famous Carnac stones which are found within the town.
I split [[en:Carnac]] into that article which only discusses the town, and [[en:Carnac stones]] which discusses the megalithic site.
[[en:carnac]] and [[en:Carnac stones]] both interwikilink to [[fr:Carnac]]. However, nothing (anywhere) interwikilinks back to [[en:Carnac stones]]. There is no clean mechanism for doing so. The French article *could* link twice - once to each article - but then you'd just have two interwiki links labelled "English" and only the URL would tell you which was which.
In other words, many -> one correspondances are ok. One -> many are unhandled atm. Occasionally you'll see "French Wikipedia article" given as a "further reading" link but I don't think the MoS sanctions that.
This is basically what I was talking about upthread, but Steve explained the fundamental issue better than me... the scope of articles in different languages isn't a 1:1 correspondence.
The problem with language and cultural issues isn't with neutrality, or whether-or-not something gets written about, it's how it gets written about. Indeed, the "cultures" aren't really differences between Danish culture and Japanese culture - they're differences between the internal culture of the Danish wikipedia and that of the Japanese wikipedia.
In some projects, the use of broad-scope articles may be much more popular than in others, so you have one article on X mapping to three or four on Y. And different groups have different preferences as to how to do these broad articles. In the case of [[Carnac stones]], it could rationally be part of a broader article organised on a geographic basis ([[Carnac]]), a thematic basis ([[Standing stones]]), or a historic basis ([[Prehistoric monuments]]).
I honestly don't know if this is the case. But I'm betting that, to some degree, it is... or it is enough to screw up any kind of cross-project categorisation program.
On 6/8/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I honestly don't know if this is the case. But I'm betting that, to some degree, it is... or it is enough to screw up any kind of cross-project categorisation program.
Probably the basic obscacle is that one article supposedly equals one topic. In reality it's far from the case for almost every article - articles on obscure authors cover their works, articles on cities cover their sights etc.
Also, as mentioned, when articles carve information up at right-angles to each other, you're basically just stuffed. A set of historical articles on a region mapping onto a set of geographical articles, each with its own history, for the same region, is just doomed.
Steve
Andrew Gray wrote:
The problem with language and cultural issues isn't with neutrality, or whether-or-not something gets written about, it's how it gets written about. Indeed, the "cultures" aren't really differences between Danish culture and Japanese culture - they're differences between the internal culture of the Danish wikipedia and that of the Japanese wikipedia.
The important differences are the deep one between cultures and linguistic structures. The concepts that are most significant in a culture are taken for granted by the members of that culture. It's "the way things are done", and doing things differently is well outside the box. Other cultures will take an entirely different set of ideas for granted. Different pronoun sets, the selection of verb forms, the use of inflections instead of prepositions can all be major factors in cultural differences. It's not so simple that it can be dismissed as a difference between internal Wikipedia cultures.
Ec
Steve Bennett wrote:
Just fwiw, one simple basic example I have dealt with.
[[fr:Carnac]] discusses both the township of Carnac and the famous Carnac stones which are found within the town.
I split [[en:Carnac]] into that article which only discusses the town, and [[en:Carnac stones]] which discusses the megalithic site.
Another example from a different field is [[en:Chloral]] and [[en:Chloral hydrate]]. These are two distinct compounds, and the interwiki linking quite sensibly follows the distinction. However, if you look at the articles, you'll note that there's a lot of redundant information in them: the problem is that the compounds readily convert to each other depending on the presence or absence or water, such that it's difficult to discuss the chemistry of one without also describing the other.
That might make the articles reasonable candidates for merging, and indeed many other Wikipedia have done so. However, there is no agreement on which title the combined article should have. The French article, which is the most detailed one, is at [[fr:Chloral]], despite mainly describing the hydrate. The German, Dutch, Russian and Turkish Wikipedias only have articles on the hydrate. Only the English, Polish and Japanese Wikipedias have both, and on the latter two both are stubs. So was [[en:Chloral]] before I started expanding it -- most of the info is still at the hydrate article.
I suppose the ideal solution would be to either merge or split the articles consistently across languages. But I don't really see that happening soon, and in any case the reasonability of having one or two articles depends a lot on the amount of information present, which varies a lot between different Wikipedias; most, of course, don't have any information at all on either compound.
On 6/10/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
I suppose the ideal solution would be to either merge or split the articles consistently across languages. But I don't really see that
Is there any precedent for interwiki article naming consistency? The prevailing attitude seems to be "The people at it.wikipdia chose to do that? Heh." Not sure if it's a bad thing or not.
Steve
Anthony DiPierro schrieb:
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world. But somehow, this didn't work out so well.
The rest of your posting is sort of new to me (I wasn't aware that cultural distinctions between different language Wikipedias were to be regarded as accidental and against the intention of Wikipedia proper)
--elian
On 6/6/06, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
Anthony DiPierro schrieb:
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world. But somehow, this didn't work out so well.
The rest of your posting is sort of new to me (I wasn't aware that cultural distinctions between different language Wikipedias were to be regarded as accidental and against the intention of Wikipedia proper)
--elian
Take a look at the thread from July 2005 entitled "Policy clarification: separate Wikipedias for cultures, peoples, and countries, or for languages?"
Anthony
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
Anthony DiPierro schrieb:
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world. But somehow, this didn't work out so well.
The rest of your posting is sort of new to me (I wasn't aware that cultural distinctions between different language Wikipedias were to be regarded as accidental and against the intention of Wikipedia proper)
Of course it is new to you, since Anthony just made it up out of thin air. :)
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
Anyway, if we were going to use a constructed meta-language, obviously it would be Klingon or Toki Pona. ;-)
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
This seems like a strange position to me.
My view of a good encyclopedia article is that *any* reasonable person in the world would find it: 1) informative; and 2) neutral. This should include non-native speakers of the language, people from outside the typical "culture" of the language, and even people who can't speak the language at all who have the article translated for them. On en:, we make an explicit effort to have it *not* be biased towards Anglosphere culture, but instead to pull in people who speak English as a second language (whether well or not) and are generally outside of "English-speaking culture". This isn't of course 100% successful, but the *goal* is definitely to make it a global encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia only for people who are culturally in the English-speaking world.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
This seems like a strange position to me.
My view of a good encyclopedia article is that *any* reasonable person in the world would find it: 1) informative; and 2) neutral. This should include non-native speakers of the language, people from outside the typical "culture" of the language, and even people who can't speak the language at all who have the article translated for them. On en:, we make an explicit effort to have it *not* be biased towards Anglosphere culture, but instead to pull in people who speak English as a second language (whether well or not) and are generally outside of "English-speaking culture". This isn't of course 100% successful, but the *goal* is definitely to make it a global encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia only for people who are culturally in the English-speaking world.
They are probably both right. At a deep level all the differences are accidental, but that's not a reason to be compulsive about harmonizing them. In one sense too Wikipedia can be seen as a lens that converges all knowledge at the top of the Tower of Babel, but I doubt if that approach has any practical value, except perhaps in the minds of techno-geek Vulcans who believe that there is a logical computer solution for every possible problem.. So I do believe that the differences are accidental, but I see that as a good dynamic. Viewed separately the Wikipedias in different languages are bound to arrive at different NPOVs that are each strongly rooted in distinct cultural values. A language with a small concentrated geographical territory is more likely to achieve a satisfactory NPOV, without the complicated arguments that may be encountered with a widely dispersed language like English. This broad range of neutralities helps keep things dynamic.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Viewed separately the Wikipedias in different languages are bound to arrive at different NPOVs that are each strongly rooted in distinct cultural values. A language with a small concentrated geographical territory is more likely to achieve a satisfactory NPOV, without the complicated arguments that may be encountered with a widely dispersed language like English. This broad range of neutralities helps keep things dynami
I'd say the opposite, unless we redefine "neutral" in some relativistic way. IMO, it is far more likely that the English article, due to having participants from multiple viewpoints, will be neutral on any given topic than that in a language without a very diverse speaker population. For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the Serbian-language Wikipedia? The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit from nearly the same diverse population.
-Mark
On 6/8/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
population. For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the Serbian-language Wikipedia? The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit from nearly the same diverse population.
There are probably comparable blind spots in the en Wikipedia, where English speakers are insufficiently critical of themselves, or insufficiently informed on topics that don't interest them.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/8/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
population. For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the Serbian-language Wikipedia? The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit from nearly the same diverse population.
There are probably comparable blind spots in the en Wikipedia, where English speakers are insufficiently critical of themselves, or insufficiently informed on topics that don't interest them.
There are blind spots to be sure, but I certainly don't think they're "comparable", simply by virtue of the fact that English speakers don't comprise only members of one ethnicity or nationality. If it were an encyclopedia edited solely by Americans you might have a point, but it isn't. We have, in addition to people from all the English-speaking countries in the world, substantial numbers of speakers of English as a second language who contribute regularly.
Which isn't to say it's perfect, but as far as the potential to be a global, neutral, thorough encyclopedia, I think en.wikipedia is the structurally best placed by far, simply because so many people from such diverse cultures speak English.
I think that's basically a historical accident, but I'll take it. For my part as an American, I'm quite glad that the U.S. doesn't speak its own separate language and have its own separate Wikipedia, because it would almost certainly be worse.
-Mark
On 6/8/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
There are blind spots to be sure, but I certainly don't think they're "comparable", simply by virtue of the fact that English speakers don't comprise only members of one ethnicity or nationality. If it were an encyclopedia edited solely by Americans you might have a point, but it isn't. We have, in addition to people from all the English-speaking countries in the world, substantial numbers of speakers of English as a second language who contribute regularly.
Well I'll wait to hear whether the Bosnian war really is portrayed so badly on the Serbian Wikipedia. Anyway, comparable <> equivalent or even similar.
Which isn't to say it's perfect, but as far as the potential to be a global, neutral, thorough encyclopedia, I think en.wikipedia is the structurally best placed by far, simply because so many people from such diverse cultures speak English.
You're probably right. I never notice much of an Indian presence surprisingly enough...
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
I never notice much of an Indian presence surprisingly enough...
I've wondered about that on and off. Perhaps less access to technology locally amongst most of the population?
Interestingly, we have a ton of editors from some countries where English isn't typically spoken. For example there are a *lot* of Polish editors on en:, ranging from fluent English speakers to people who write barely-understandable English (but even the latter contribute usefully, since grammar and wording can always be cleaned up).
-Mark
On 6/8/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
I never notice much of an Indian presence surprisingly enough...
I've wondered about that on and off. Perhaps less access to technology locally amongst most of the population?
I dunno. I seem to run into a good Indian contingent fairly often. Perhaps not quite the level we would like, but it's there. --LV
Steve Bennett wrote:
Which isn't to say it's perfect, but as far as the potential to be a global, neutral, thorough encyclopedia, I think en.wikipedia is the structurally best placed by far, simply because so many people from such diverse cultures speak English.
You're probably right. I never notice much of an Indian presence surprisingly enough...
Steve
Eh? I've seen lots of Indian editors around, and the Indian community is very active.
John
On 6/8/06, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Eh? I've seen lots of Indian editors around, and the Indian community is very active.
I was hoping someone would say that. Anyway I'm obviously just not in the right areas. I love the different flavours of English that you see. I've been working a bit on [[Comparison between cricket and baseball]] and in the process been reading lots of articles on baseball (written almost exclusively by Americans I think) and cricket (mostly Australians and Brits, though some Indians, Pakistanis etc). The difference is striking, even if I can't put my finger on it. Similarly when I once found myself reading some of the articles about the Singapore MRT system.
That's all stuff essentially written by locals. Working on articles about French topics is very different - it's mostly either expats like me, or French people wanting to share their knowledge with the Anglophone world.
Which I suppose all leads me to think that in places en.wikipedia *does* reflect local cultures, for articles where that makes sense, and for more global topics, it has a more global perspective, or at least a wider one.
Steve
Delirium wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Viewed separately the Wikipedias in different languages are bound to arrive at different NPOVs that are each strongly rooted in distinct cultural values. A language with a small concentrated geographical territory is more likely to achieve a satisfactory NPOV, without the complicated arguments that may be encountered with a widely dispersed language like English. This broad range of neutralities helps keep things dynami
I'd say the opposite, unless we redefine "neutral" in some relativistic way. IMO, it is far more likely that the English article, due to having participants from multiple viewpoints, will be neutral on any given topic than that in a language without a very diverse speaker population. For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the Serbian-language Wikipedia? The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit from nearly the same diverse population.
To be sure some degree of relativism is inevitable in NPOV, no matter how we define it. The broader community that participates in the English WP is bound to bring in more diverse viewpoints. The Serbian and Croatian WPs are likely to diverge in certain political areas with most contributors to either being satisfied to leave the other alone. Attempting to enforce some kind of absolute NPOV would involve confronting the majority viewpoint. This creates a situation quite different from what would have been if we had insisted on a single Serbo-Croation WP. I'm not arguing that the reality is ideal, just for recognizing that neutrality may be more difficult to attain on some WPs than on others.
Ec
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/6/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/06/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
That brings up another, longer term, to-do for categories: they should be language independent. For instance [[Marie Curie]] is in de: and en: (they happen to have the same title, but even if they don't they are linked via interwiki links). [[Kategorie:Pole]] is linked to [[Category:Polish people]]. So there should be no need to categorize Marie Curie twice (multiply by the actual number of languages which have a Polish people category and an article on Marie Curie).
Hmm... it won't work well.
Basdically, there is no hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship, there's no single "meta topic" which manifests itself in specific articles in different languages. For some things, like people, it does appear so; for others, it'll break down.
I don't understand that. Interwiki links are the hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel relationship. Are you unaware of iw links, or am I misinterpreting what you're saying? Maybe you could give an example?
This is partly due to the incomplete nature of the project, but also because different language communities - which, especially for languages like German and Polish, represent individual and reasonably distinct cultures in a way that en: doesn't - will naturally have different emphasis, there'll be different levels of coverage and different approaches to fragmenting articles.
Let's say, oh, [[History of Country]].
In one language, this might be a single article. In another, time-divided articles (overview; ancient history; history to 1500; 1500 to 1900; modern history). In a third, it might be a thematic divide (political history; religious history; military history; overview).
What combination of categories would work best for *all* of these pages?
So are you simply talking about coverage, then?
For those situations where we *don't* have an article on the same topic in multiple languages, we don't have an interwiki link, and we wouldn't link the categories.
The situations where we *do* have coverage in multiple languages, of the same articles and of the same categories, it doesn't make much sense not to share information.
I think the latter situation is much more widespread than the former. Not just people: people, places, events, years, fictional works, scientific concepts, etc. Hitting random page a couple dozen times I don't see any articles which *shouldn't* exist across all language Wikipedias, and many of them already *do* exist across a number of them.
Jimbo and others have also made it clear that any cultural distinction between different language Wikipedias is accidental and in fact goes against the intention (this in the context of which languages should have a Wikipedia, but the idea carries here as well). We don't have a British Encyclopedia and an American one, because we can both understand each other well enough to communicate. If it were *possible* to automatically translate all articles into every language while keeping the content the same, we'd do so. It just isn't, at least not with current technology.
OTOH, interwiki links already give us the automatic translation in terms of category information. Yes, there will probably be some article titles and category titles which don't translate well, but that's the exception and for those few titles we wouldn't have any iw links anyway.
"United Kingdom" and related terms have presented a bit of a problem with the Vietnamese Wikipedia in the past. Whereas English has articles on "United Kingdom", "Great Britain", "England", etc., Vietnamese doesn't have terms that correlate 1:1. We have:
*"Vương quốc Liên hiệp Anh và Bắc Ireland" for "United Kingdom"
*Its shortened form, "Vương quốc Anh", which is literally translated "Kingdom of England" but is used to refer to the UK as a whole or to England, Wales, and Scotland
*"Đảo Anh" (Island of England) or "Đảo Britain" for the island of Great Britain
*"Anh" for England proper
We've oscillated between which interwiki links we apply to "Vương quốc Anh", for example; for now, it's linked to "Kingdom of Great Britain" at the English Wikipedia, meaning that all our UK-related articles have just one set of interwiki links for now. But that also means that our interwiki links aren't entirely accurate, and we have to note the differences in terminology in our articles, since the interwiki relations we've made don't reflect actual usage in Vietnamese.