On 4/25/06, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: That would be true, except that I have a pretty good idea of the nationalities of various editors, and the non-native ones are noticeably worse. And besides, as others have pointed out, a crappy native speaker's writings are just plain *different* (as I know all too well from their frequent contributions to Star Wars pages) than a crappy non-native speaker's. To me, the difference is fairly striking. ~maru

I don't use it, but I suspect en-5 was originally supposed to be used to denote those who write English professionally, such as journalists, writers, and editors. My own profession would probably qualify. However, I only use the native English one to point out that, yes, I know English as a native, but I find it really unnecessary from a Babel point of view to point out that I can write professionally (especially when my quality of edits on Wikipedia is often subpar). I don't really see a need for en-5, but I don't begrudge those folks who want to use it.

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote: I've used them on non en wikipedia's when I've needed to find people who will understand me. -- geni

On 02/05/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Now that's a good point - WP's other than en. So perhaps someday a French speaker will realise he can chat to me in French on en, rather than in English. Probably a more likely scenario with less common languages though. I have to say, editing a Wikipedia where you don't speak the language at all is a pretty interesting experience - and not quite as pointless as it sounds. When you a good free image, it's probably worthwhile adding it to several different wikipedias, but it can be a real challenge for the following reasons: * the interface is totally in the foreign language (could this be a user setting?) * it's hard to know what to put as an edit summary - do you just leave it in English? * different WPs seem to have different conventions on Wikitext markup. For example, French WP seems to put category and stub tags up the top, rather than at the bottom. * no single login ;) It would be good if the barriers to English speakers contributing to non-English Wikipedias could be reduced somewhat. Or even if some mechanisms whereby in one hit you could alert all the talk pages of all the interwiki articles that link to/from this article that there is some juicy new image/chunk of text/piece of news that they might want to add. Steve

On 02/05/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: I can understand that, particularly if the people in question do both speak English to an acceptable degree. But, in terms of "getting the encyclopaedia written", I don't see a major problem with two editors carrying on a conversation in Lugandan while debating how best to write an article about Ugandan culture, literature etc... Perhaps the unspoken ban on languages other than English contributes to the "systemic bias"? Oh, thanks! What a pity that babelfish, in the 6 or 7 years I've been using it, hasn't added any significant number of new languages. Yep. Minefield. Definitely, but learning 20+ languages is no easy task! Other than French, I can read Spanish more or less, and can pick out bits of German. But even to get to basic textual conversational competency is a fair challenge. I'm keen to have a go though :) Steve

On 5/2/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote: Try the hebrew wikipedia. The interface is reversed. Generaly -- geni

Steve Bennett wrote: The Classic skin also has the category tags at the top. Personally, I like it like that. Ec

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote: The reasons Jimbo gives are pretty valid. I know a few other languages, but I find my skills in those are largely useless in the context of Wikipedia, therefore I don't list them. :-)

On 4/26/06, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: You've completely missed my point. My point was that the distinction was valid because on average native speakers are better than non-native speakers for whatever language we are talking about, an observation that meshes with common sense and my personal observations. ~maru

This might apply to writing novels or translating films or something, but surely not to Wikipedia. Timwi

Timwi wrote: I don't have any good real-life examples to put up here, but likely cases would include judgement whether a particular phrasing is neutral or slanted, or what is the most common term for something. For instance, native US speakers have a finely-tuned sense of when the "N-word" is offensive or not (as our article explains in some depth), and considering the number of our articles that use the word, it would be good to have editors that know how to use it appropriately in articles. I suspect that even an average high-school senior from Arkansas would get it right more often than an anthropologist from Sweden. Stan

On 5/2/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: The worst thing about it is that I'm speaking and using English so much that it's taking a toll on my German. Whenever I speak at a conference in Germany, people later come up to me, with a slightly confused look, and ask me: "That was very interesting, Mr. Möller, but I have just one last question. Where are you _originally_ from?" The Brits tell me I sound American, the Germans tell me I sound like a foreigner, and the Americans tell me I'm "German flavored". And you still didn't get the umlaut right, you insensitive clod! ;-) It's Möller, not Müller. Unless you were talking about some other guy, in which case you can disregard this posting. ;-) Erik

Stan Shebs wrote: Although I have found them to be remarkable accurate overall. The other day I almost teased someone who was en-2 that she should change it to en-3 or even higher, because her english was good, but after further discussion I realized that the assessment was valid. :) -- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################