On 04/02/07, Roberto Alfonso <rpgrca(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just a thought:
I am member of over 20 different Wikipedias, and while I have no
problems with English and Spanish, little problem with Japanese, and
can understand several other languages although not well enough to
write in them (Italian, Portuguese, French, etc), only very few
Wikipedias give an "If you don't understand XXXX, see here". I believe
users from all Wikipedias should group together to create messages for
every Wikipedia in as many languages as possible, that would really
help new and existing users, especially with instructions about simple
common tasks (interwikis, speedy deletion messages, administrator's
noticeboard, etc).
Yes. I think it would be a safe assumption that a person registering
an account, that doesn't speak the language of the project, MUST be a
Wikimedian doing routine things like interwiki.
For example FR.wp links from template:welcome to
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Bistro_des_non-francophones/en
You can see on this page that they more or less assume the user is
familiar with Wikipedia. I think that is smart.
Compare to HU.wp's "welcome for non-speakers" -
http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sablon:Welcome . IMO this should be
redone. If the user doesn't know enough Hungarian to comprehend a
welcome message, what is the point of giving them Village pump links?
Here is something that RTL wikis should take note of: non-speakers
would LOVE a link that gives some tips for editing in a RTL
environment. it can be really, really scary!
OK for Wikipedia, maybe we can create a universal "non-speaker's
welcome". It should be something like...
=============
Welcome to the X Wikipedia, Y!
* Put [[Wikipedia:Babel|]] boxes on your user page so others know how
well you can speak language X. You can put an interwiki link to your
English Wikipedia userpage by writing [[en:User:Y]].
* If you are updating interwiki links, please note that we
conventionally put the links [at the start|at the end] of the article
[before|after] the categories. You can put "updating interwiki links"
in X language in the edit summary by saying "...".
* If you notice vandalism, you can mark a page for speedy deletion by
putting {{...}}
* You can ask questions in your language at [[...]] or by contacting
someone in [[category:user languages]] (equiv.)
* A popular translator for X-to-English translation is [...]. Remember
that machine translations are only a rough guide :)
* Y is a RTL (right to left) language. This page [...] has advice on
editing in a RTL environment if you're not used to it. (if relevant)
=============
anything that's VITAL that I've missed? I think it should be
reasonably easy to gather translations for this and propogate it.
cheers,
Brianna