[Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

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David Gerard

21 Jan 2007 21 Jan '07

4:21 p.m.

On 21/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

There is also the fact that Wikipedia is not well known in many countries. When our articles are found positively in search engines, it will slowly but surely help us get to the tipping point where Wikipedia is a household name. It is not even well known in countries like Italy. We need good relations to get us where we will be a well established movement outside of the English language as well. It helps when we have friends like Google.

On a slight variation on this topic: What can we do for countries where people routinely use the English wikipedia and ignore their own language Wikipedia? I try to push local Wikipedias when talking to the press (and far too many seem to be unaware of their own language Wikipedia) and mention the international character talking to the English-language press. That hopefully does a little, but not enough. One factor appears to be that en:wp has achieved usefulness. (If Wikipedias weren't actually useful, wikipedia.org wouldn't be a top 10 site on Alexa.) I think this is two things: 1. Incredible breadth of coverage - journalists LOVE en:wp because it's the universal backgrounding resource on any subject, if approached with due caution. 2.Very up-to-date. Britannica may have more consistent writing quality and more consistent fact-checking, but it's not there on people's desks and it's not kept obsessively up-to-date. So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public awareness? [cc: to wikien-l for further ideas] - d.

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GerardM

21 Jan 21 Jan

5:32 p.m.

Hoi, The first thing we can do is not compare it to the English language Wikipedia. The en.wikipedia.org is what the other projects can aspire to if that is what they want. If we are serious about making these other projects successful, we have to give them a priority that they currently do not get and give them the room to develop. The first thing that we can do is to make sure that the localisation is done as efficiently as possible. Practically it means that the Incubator can be used like the BetaWiki used to be used for. By making Incubator the place where we do our localisation, we will need to do this only once and, this is an improvement from the laborious way it is done on for instance the Marathi projects. It however means that this software needs to be accepted by Brion and for him it currently does not have the required priority. In order to get living and breathing language projects there are several things that help. Localisation is one. With a quality localisation we not only support one project, we allow MediaWiki to be used as a tool. This will increase the number of people that can easily help us out. A minimal amount of content for a project is the next. There have been successful projects to translate basic information that provides some infrastructure to a project. The Neapolitan Wikipedia for instance has pioneered the use of CAT or Computer Translation Tools for the creation of static content. There are organisations that share the wish with us to provide quality information in particular languages. I have had the privilege to learn first hand how this can be done in a pilot project. In this project Wikimedians were in charge of a translation project where English featured articles were translated in Persian. The list of articles that were to be translated was presented before the work started to prevent the notion that an American POV was pushed out. Several articles were removed as a result. We have learned a lot from this project and, are now able to do a similar project where a mix of translation and original articles can be written. Important is that the articles selected are the ones that will have relevance. This is why a theme of "background articles to the news" was extremely valid. It is these articles that are found to be most read; the Gerald Ford article was read a lot after his death. By consistently focusing on the background information to the news, you create the relevance that will attract other people to enrich the project with other content. Things that are in the news have a tendency to get back into the news... :) Having a mix of translations and new articles is better also because the English featured articles are overdeveloped. It is much better for the creation of a community to create a tapestry of linked articles that provide a start. Many people have a fear of starting articles. There are with some regularity opportunities for projects like this. Of importance is that they are managed well and that the core values of our projects are respected this can be ensured by having established Wikimedians play a role in this. PS This is not to say that the small projects are the only projects that could benefit from a paid for project. When projects have a bias that exists because of an under representation of specific information, it would be one way of addressing it effectively. PS There is room for the development of content in many more languages that we are exploring. Thanks, GerardM On 1/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 21/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Birgitte SB

9:01 p.m.

--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I have had the privilege to learn first hand how this can be done in a pilot project. In this project Wikimedians were in charge of a translation project where English featured articles were translated in Persian. The list of articles that were to be translated was presented before the work started to prevent the notion that an American POV was pushed out. Several articles were removed as a result. We have learned a lot from this project and, are now able to do a similar project where a mix of translation and original articles can be written. Important is that the articles selected are the ones that will have relevance. This is why a theme of "background articles to the news" was extremely valid. It is these articles that are found to be most read; the Gerald Ford article was read a lot after his death. By consistently focusing on the background information to the news, you create the relevance that will attract other people to enrich the project with other content. Things that are in the news have a tendency to get back into the news... :) Having a mix of translations and new articles is better also because the English featured articles are overdeveloped. It is much better for the creation of a community to create a tapestry of linked articles that provide a start. Many people have a fear of starting articles. There are with some regularity opportunities for projects like this. Of importance is that they are managed well and that the core values of our projects are respected this can be ensured by having established Wikimedians play a role in this.

I have wondered that it would be better to encourage translations to purposely "stubify" articles rather than focus on full Featured Article translations. This would give the less developed langages something where they see a need to "edit", eliminate most cultural bias without a detailed study, and make the limited translation reasources go farther to creating a interlinked web of articles. This idea was brought up in BOF at Wikimania but I do not know if anything was ever done in this line of thinking. BirgitteSB ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091

Gerard Meijssen

10:29 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

Birgitte SB schreef:

...

Hoi, There is no one size fits all answer to this question. It depends very much on what you want to achieve. When you have translators, you can not "stubify" because that is very much against their ethos. It also requires them to concentrate on the technical aspects of wikipedia ie wikification and categories. This means that you do not use translators and or that you have to train them considerably. Creating much content in stubs is something that is done on many projects; they are all the towns of country xxx. This is of particular interest when they are also the towns of the country where this language is spoken. There are as far as I know no such lists with the information for countries like Nigeria, Kazakhstan or Ecuador. The same is true for the years information; it is very much biased to its source. There are for instance few African or South American historical figures in the English Wikipedia.. Translating this as the starting information is problematic as a consequence because of the bias that you import. For a language like Neapolitan, the Italian years information was used ... The advantage of writing background information to the news is that you work on content that is of current relevance and certainly when you base it on what can be found in newspapers of that language, you may even find articles like "Big Brother" in Indian wikipedias. :) When the aim is to make investments count, it is important to create relevance. Sex, sport and news is what people read. When the aim is to get more people to contribute to a Wikipedia, it is eye balls that you want. I am completely in favour of working on wikification because this can be one way of enticing people to try and edit. I think it should be a healthy mix of these activities. One problem in several projects is that people control how people can and cannot write. This leads often to political fights that prevent a healthy community from happening. One bad example is the Belarus wikipedia where the orthography insisted on is not the one used by people who live in Belarus. This is in my opinion contrary to what we hope to achieve with our projects. Wikipedia is not to create new languages nor is it to force particular orthographies. My conclusion is therefore, for every language, for every project there are different things to consider. There is no silver bullet or a one size fits all solution. It pays off when there is sufficient time to prepare for a content creation project. Thanks, GerardM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_%28TV_series%29

Łukasz Garczewski

7:47 p.m.

On 1/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public awareness?

Thank you for mentioning this, David. I suppose I wouldn't be a good ChapCom member if my first reply to this question was other than "START A CHAPTER!" The problem with promoting Wikipedias in languages other than English is that the promotion is not very effective if done in English. The impact is far greater if the communication is done in the native tongue of the journalists and readers/viewers. Also, some of you might be surprised how much the "hot topics" of Wikipedias may differ from one language edition to the other - the English-language press team is simply not prepared to tackle questions on a per project level. Only active contributors to that specific project can do that. So, my advice to the editors of the various Wikipedias is: If you want to help promote Wikipedia in your language, think about starting a chapter. If you have any questions regarding that, see: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Local_chapter_FAQ * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide (other helpful documents are on the way, stay tuned) Or contact ChapCom directly (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee for more info on how to do that) We hope for a Wikimedia chapter in every country on earth, and then some (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_local_chapters_map.png). And we're here to help YOU achieve that. :) -- Łukasz Garczewski [[m:User:TOR]] Chapters Committee member

teun spaans

22 Jan 22 Jan

1:48 p.m.

About the map: What about Canada? Didnt they start a local chapter recently? On 1/21/07, Łukasz Garczewski <lgarczewski(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 1/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for mentioning this, David. I suppose I wouldn't be a good ChapCom member if my first reply to this question was other than "START A CHAPTER!" The problem with promoting Wikipedias in languages other than English is that the promotion is not very effective if done in English. The impact is far greater if the communication is done in the native tongue of the journalists and readers/viewers. Also, some of you might be surprised how much the "hot topics" of Wikipedias may differ from one language edition to the other - the English-language press team is simply not prepared to tackle questions on a per project level. Only active contributors to that specific project can do that. So, my advice to the editors of the various Wikipedias is: If you want to help promote Wikipedia in your language, think about starting a chapter. If you have any questions regarding that, see: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Local_chapter_FAQ * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide (other helpful documents are on the way, stay tuned) Or contact ChapCom directly (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee for more info on how to do that) We hope for a Wikimedia chapter in every country on earth, and then some ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_local_chapters_map.png). And we're here to help YOU achieve that. :) -- Łukasz Garczewski [[m:User:TOR]] Chapters Committee member _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

David Strauss

2:23 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

Yes, the Royal Canadian Mounted Wikimedia. (Hey, I'm a Canadian citizen, too.) More seriously, such a chapter seems to be in the works: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Canada teun spaans wrote:

...

About the map: What about Canada? Didnt they start a local chapter recently?

Ray Saintonge

23 Jan 23 Jan

2:43 a.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

teun spaans wrote:

...

About the map: What about Canada? Didnt they start a local chapter recently?

There was a mailing list started. Ec

Delirium

21 Jan 21 Jan

10:30 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

David Gerard wrote:

...

I'd say it depends greatly on the language. I'm most familiar with el: (Greek), whose main problem is simply not enough participants. I don't think it's that most Greek-speaking Wikipedians work on en: instead---those who do tend to also work on el: as well. There just aren't enough Greek-speaking Wikipedians in the first place. Why not? Well, partly advertising, and partly there aren't enough Greek-speaking people in the world. English has around 350 million native speakers, and over 1.5 billion total speakers; Greek has fewer than 15 million total speakers. To overcome that disparity in number of speakers requires a *huge* popularity among the speakers who do exist. This is possible, since the German Wikipedia is at least of the same order of magnitude as the English Wikipedia, despite there being considerably fewer speakers (~120 million native, ~140 million total). The harder to overcome problem is international breadth. The en: Wikipedia has editors from a wide variety of countries, which is not the case on smaller Wikipedias---many of the China-related en: articles were written by people in China, for example, which is simply not going to happen on most smaller Wikipedians, since almost no Chinese speak Greek. This is also a problem for sources, because on some topics, even very important ones, there is often only information available in one language---for example many China-related topics have information only available in Chinese. On en: this is not so much of a problem, because we have many Chinese-speaking editors. But el: has few to no Chinese-speaking editors, so cannot use such sources, except indirectly by translating the en: article. Of course one does the best with what one has, so the smaller Wikipedias simply need more people to begin with, and then will probably have to rely more heavily on translating articles from the larger Wikipedias. -Mark

Lars Aronsson

22 Jan 22 Jan

1:22 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

Delirium wrote:

...

English has around 350 million native speakers, and over 1.5 billion total speakers; Greek has fewer than 15 million total speakers. To overcome that disparity in number of speakers requires a *huge* popularity among the speakers who do exist.

This problem does exist, but the limit is not drawn anywhere near 15 million speakers. Languages with 15,000 speakers *do* have a problem. Faroese with 45,000 speakers (2124 articles) and Icelandic with 300,000 speakers (12,955 articles) have a slow start. Estonian with 1.5 million speakers is doing just fine (29,240 articles). All of these languages/countries (including Greece) are part of the western, (post-)industrial, wealthy, free world, so they do not have the handicap of poverty, illiteracy or censorship. Users from Greece could visit Estonia to meet some wikipedians there and see how they are dealing with the problems of being a small nation. However, each nation tends to look only to their bigger neighbors (Germany, France, USA) and not the smaller ones. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Andre Engels

4:04 p.m.

2007/1/22, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>se>:

...

Users from Greece could visit Estonia to meet some wikipedians there and see how they are dealing with the problems of being a small nation.

To get a comparison, here are for a large number of languages the number of native speakers (in millions, according to [[en:List of languages by number of native speakers]] where possible, from the en: page on the language otherwise) and the number of contributors in November 2006, according to the wikistats. Included are languages with either 20 million or more speakers, or 20 or more contributors. Ordering is by "contributors per million native speakers. Not included are Latin, Nynorsk and Simple English, and for Esperanto and Indonesian total speakers instead of first language speakers have been used. For each language there is millions of speakers - number of contributors - contributors per million speakers. The Scandinavian languages seem to be the ones that attract the most people to Wikipedia, with Finnish on top with about one in every 6000 Fins apparently being a Wikipedia contributor (Asturian scores even higher, but the language is so small that it must be considered a statistical anomaly). Least Wikipedia contributorship is present in languages of India, with Punjabi (100 million speakers, no Wikipedians) at the bottom. ast: Asturian 0.1 - 20 - 200 fi: Finnish 5.4 - 936 - 173.3 no: Norse 4.7 - 639 - 136.0 (speakers includes nn: Nynorsk as well) is: Icelandic 0.3 - 40 - 133.3 en: English 354 - 44000 - 124.3 (number of contributors estimated) eo: Esperanto 1.05 - 118 - 112.4 (second language speakers) lb: Luxembourgish 0.3 - 31 - 103.3 sv: Swedish 9 - 924 - 102.7 he: Hebrew 7 - 601 - 85.9 et: Estonian 1.08 - 92 - 85.2 de: German 101 - 7549 - 74.7 nl: Dutch 25 - 1652 - 66.1 eu: Basque 0.7 - 45 - 64.3 fr: French 67 - 3948 - 58.9 sl: Slovenian 2.0 - 114 - 57.0 ga: Irish 0.38 - 21 - 55.3 da: Danish 5.6 - 276 - 49.3 br: Breton 0.85 - 38 - 44.7 cy: Welsh 0.75 - 28 - 37.3 lt: Lithuanian 3.1 - 113 - 36.5 cs: Czech 12 - 433 - 36.1 pl: Polish 46 - 1597 - 34.7 it: Italian 61 - 2017 - 33.1 ja: Japanese 128 - 3842 - 29.9 sk: Slovak 5.0 - 148 - 29.6 ca: Catalan 6.7 - 195 - 29.1 mk: Macedonian 1.6 - 44 - 27.5 lv: Latvian 1.5 - 38 - 25.3 hu: Hungarian 14 - 354 - 25.3 bg: Bulgarian 7.6 - 188 - 24.7 gl: Galician 3.2 - 68 - 21.3 sh: Serbocratian 17 - 150 - 18.6 (number of contributors gathered by adding up sr:, hr: and bs:) el: Greek 12 - 132 - 11.0 oc: Occitan 1.94 - 21 - 10.8 ru: Russian 145 - 1164 - 8.0 ro: Romanian 24 - 192 - 8.0 es: Spanish 350 - 2600 - 7.4 yi: Yiddish 3.2 - 23 - 7.2 tr: Turkish 60 - 420 - 7.0 ka: Georgian 4.2 - 26 - 6.2 th: Thai 31 - 142 - 4.6 pt: Portuguese 203 - 1323 - 4.4 af: Afrikaans 6.0 - 25 - 4.2 sq: Albanian 6.0 - 24 - 4.0 uk: Ukrainian 39 - 131 - 3.4 be: Belorussian 9.1 - 30 - 3.3 ms: Malay 18 - 58 - 3.2 als: Alemannic 10 - 29 - 2.9 zh: Chinese 700 - 1527 - 2.2 ko: Korean 71 - 150 - 2.1 fa: Farsi 75 - 139 - 1.85 vi: Vietnamese 70 - 116 - 1.66 tl: Tagalog 22 - 24 - 1.09 id: Indonesian 200 - 151 - 0.76 (second language speakers) ar: Arabic 270 - 177 - 0.66 ml: Malayalam 37 - 24 - 0.65 az: Azeri 30 - 18 - 0.60 ta: Tamil 62 - 34 - 0.55 te: Telugu 76 - 39 - 0.51 uz: Uzbek 20 - 10 - 0.50 su: Sundanese 27 - 12 - 0.44 mr: Maratha 68 - 28 - 0.41 zh-yue: Kantonese 71 - 29 - 0.41 kn: Kannada 55 - 20 - 0.36 ur: Urdu 61 - 16 - 0.26 ps: Pashto 24 - 4 - 0.17 bn: Bengali 196 - 29 - 0.15 sd: Sindhi 20 - 2 - 0.10 jv: Javanese 75 - 7 - 0.09 hi: Hindi 337 - 26 - 0.08 or: Oriya 24 - 1 - 0.04 am: Amharic 27 - 1 - 0.04 gu: Gujarati 46 - 1 - 0.02 ha: Hausa 24 - 0 - 0 om: Omoro 32 - 0 - 0 my: Burmese 32 - 0 - 0 pa: Punjabi 104 - 0 - 0 -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

Till Weber

5:29 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

André, thanks for the list of all languages. IMHO the spread of wikipedia in small languages would be better, if all these languages appear in the left menue-bar of the wikipedia for each article. Then users see, if an article is already existent in their or other language and they can translate one from another language,. so the bi-languists can help to get the number of articles bigger, and then other users in the original language can complete or expand the article. If the article exists, then search engine swill attract more users. To read an edit again. So please ask the technicians, to add these languages to the side menue bar and as well a the html code under each language, that the article in all languages exist, event there, where the article page is empty or does not exist, then we can translate each article. So these languages you mention above 20 Mio users should be default on each wikipedia article in each countryor language. thanks. -------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:04:24 +0100 Von: "Andre Engels" <andreengels(a)gmail.com> An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

...

2007/1/22, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>se>:

Users from Greece could visit Estonia to meet some wikipedians there and see how they are dealing with the problems of being a small nation.

-- "Feel free" - 5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS/Monat ... Jetzt GMX ProMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail

David Gerard

5:35 p.m.

On 22/01/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

...

IMHO the spread of wikipedia in small languages would be better, if all these languages appear in the left menue-bar of the wikipedia for each article. Then users see, if an article is already existent in their or other language and they can translate one from another language,. so the bi-languists can help to get the number of articles bigger, and then other users in the original language can complete or expand the article.

This would become very large, annoying and unhelpful for almost all users of the wiki. Perhaps something that can be switched on by those who want to see whether their own wiki has a given article? That may be possible just in personal CSS. - d.

Till Weber

5:39 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

at the moment each wikipedia is shwon in the left side menue, if the accodring edit is done for the page, or the server is adding it automatically over night, right? Why then not for all languages over 20 mio? have no problem with it looking up the article in french and english and a thrid language and see, how ative each country was, how different the subject view on it is and which focus is made... So why not japans and germans hybrid language users shodul do the same, so that each keyword generates a link to the same keyword in all other languages as well? this is growing "in the network-field", not just one article or one country.. -------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:35:11 +0000 Von: "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

...

On 22/01/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

IMHO the spread of wikipedia in small languages would be better, if all

these languages appear in the left menue-bar of the wikipedia for each article. Then users see, if an article is already existent in their or other language and they can translate one from another language,. so the bi-languists can help to get the number of articles bigger, and then other users in the original language can complete or expand the article. This would become very large, annoying and unhelpful for almost all users of the wiki. Perhaps something that can be switched on by those who want to see whether their own wiki has a given article? That may be possible just in personal CSS. - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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geni

5:42 p.m.

On 1/22/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

...

at the moment each wikipedia is shwon in the left side menue, if the accodring edit is done >for the page, or the server is adding it automatically over night, right?

They are added manualy for the most part. -- geni

Till Weber

5:49 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Datum: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:42:18 +0000 Von: geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

...

On 1/22/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

at the moment each wikipedia is shwon in the left side menue, if the

accodring edit is done >for the page, or the server is adding it automatically over night, right? They are added manualy for the most part. -- geni

see here, for example "Madonna" can we have this automatically for each keyword added in each language? ok, the cryptic languages need manual advice, but we can do a link already.. then the index will grow... That´s all we need for promotion !!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer) [[ar:مادونا]] [[bg:Мадона (певица)]] [[bs:Madonna]] [[ca:Madonna]] [[cbk-zam:Madonna]] [[cs:Madonna]] [[da:Madonna]] [[el:Μαντόνα]] [[en:Madonna (entertainer)]] [[eo:Madonna]] [[es:Madonna]] [[fa:مدونا (خواننده)]] [[fi:Madonna]] [[fr:Madonna]] [[gl:Madonna]] [[he:מדונה]] [[hr:Madonna]] [[hu:Madonna (énekesnő)]] [[id:Madonna]] [[it:Madonna (cantante)]] [[ja:マドンナ (歌手)]] [[ka:მადონა (მომღერალი)]] [[la:Madonna (cantrix)]] [[lt:Madonna]] [[mk:Мадона (пејачка)]] [[nds-nl:Madonna (zangeres)]] [[nl:Madonna (zangeres)]] [[no:Madonna (artist)]] [[pl:Madonna]] [[pt:Madonna]] [[ro:Madonna]] [[ru:Мадонна (артистка)]] [[simple:Madonna Ciccone]] [[sk:Madonna]] [[sl:Madonna]] [[sq:Madonna]] [[sr:Мадона]] [[sv:Madonna]] [[th:มาดอนน่า]] [[tr:Madonna]] [[vi:Madonna (ca sĩ)]] [[vls:Madonna (zangeresse)]] [[yi:מעדאנע]] [[zh:麥當娜]] -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

Andre Engels

23 Jan 23 Jan

1:04 a.m.

2007/1/22, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net>et>: see here, for example "Madonna"

...

can we have this automatically for each keyword added in each language?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is: How are you going to decide automatically what the title of the page in some language will be? That you use "Madonna (entertainer)" in English but "Madonna (cantante)" in Italian, "Madonna (artist)" in Norwegian and "Madonna Ciccone" in simple English? That it's "Мадона" in Serbian, but "Мадонна" (with the "(артистка)" added) in Russian? There's no automatic way to make those decisions. It might be possible to do it by hand, but even then there is a danger of someone not realizing that something is a homonym in their language, and create a link which, when filled in, becomes incorrect. Also, I doubt whether the use of this would be so great. It might get people to the other languages, it might also make those interwiki links even less used than they are now - after you have found 5 times "there is no article on this subject in <insert language here>, you can write it" when clicking on the link to your own language, you might well turn away from clicking it at all. ok, the cryptic languages need manual advice, but we can do a link already..

...

then the index will grow... That´s all we need for promotion !!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer) [[ar:مادونا]] [[bg:Мадона (певица)]] [[bs:Madonna]] [[ca:Madonna]] [[cbk-zam:Madonna]] [[cs:Madonna]] [[da:Madonna]] [[el:Μαντόνα]] [[en:Madonna (entertainer)]] [[eo:Madonna]] [[es:Madonna]] [[fa:مدونا (خواننده)]] [[fi:Madonna]] [[fr:Madonna]] [[gl:Madonna]] [[he:מדונה]] [[hr:Madonna]] [[hu:Madonna (énekesnő)]] [[id:Madonna]] [[it:Madonna (cantante)]] [[ja:マドンナ (歌手)]] [[ka:მადონა (მომღერალი)]] [[la:Madonna (cantrix)]] [[lt:Madonna]] [[mk:Мадона (пејачка)]] [[nds-nl:Madonna (zangeres)]] [[nl:Madonna (zangeres)]] [[no:Madonna (artist)]] [[pl:Madonna]] [[pt:Madonna]] [[ro:Madonna]] [[ru:Мадонна (артистка)]] [[simple:Madonna Ciccone]] [[sk:Madonna]] [[sl:Madonna]] [[sq:Madonna]] [[sr:Мадона]] [[sv:Madonna]] [[th:มาดอนน่า]] [[tr:Madonna]] [[vi:Madonna (ca sĩ)]] [[vls:Madonna (zangeresse)]] [[yi:מעדאנע]] [[zh:麥當娜]] -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

Gerard Meijssen

22 Jan 22 Jan

7:04 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

David Gerard schreef:

...

On 22/01/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

Hoi, A personal CSS is not the panacea where you can put things under the rug. For most people this is not an issue. Most people are simple, such a "solution" is at best something for one percent of our editors if that. Thanks, GerardM

geni

5:38 p.m.

On 1/22/07, Till Weber <peterpanini(a)gmx.net> wrote:

...

André, thanks for the list of all languages. IMHO the spread of wikipedia in small languages would be better, if all these languages >appear in the left menue-bar of the wikipedia for each article. Then users see, if an article >is already existent in their or other language and they can translate one from another >language,. so the bi-languists can help to get the number of articles bigger, and then other >users in the original language can complete or expand the article. If the article exists, then search engine swill attract more users. To read an edit again. So please ask the technicians, to add these languages to the side menue bar and as well >a the html code under each language, that the article in all languages exist, event there, >where the article page is empty or does not exist, then we can translate each article.

How are we meant to know what the articles should be called in that language?

...

So these languages you mention above 20 Mio users should be default on each wikipedia >article in each countryor language.

Have you any idea how much that would suck in the classic skin. -- geni

teun spaans

5:38 p.m.

The low representation of Indian citizens surprises me. I met one or two at the english wikipedia / commons, perhaps they tend to prefer the english wiki above their local languages? India, despite having a large population suffering poverty and even hunger accordint to slashdot today, also has a fairly large programmers community and other hightec sectors. The low numbers of Hausa volunteers does not surprise me at all. Funny: The english, german and french wikis do not seem to have an article on the omoro language. Yet from this stat I gather they have 32million native speakers. teun On 1/22/07, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2007/1/22, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>se>:

Users from Greece could visit Estonia to meet some wikipedians there and see how they are dealing with the problems of being a small nation.

David Gerard

5:47 p.m.

On 22/01/07, teun spaans <teun.spaans(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The low representation of Indian citizens surprises me. I met one or two at the english wikipedia / commons, perhaps they tend to prefer the english wiki above their local languages?

This appears to be the case. The educated classes tend to learn in English and to talk to each other in English. There are many native languages in India, but the one that all educated people are likely to speak is English, so that's the one that gets spoken. English is regarded as higher status than the local languages. These are languages with tens or hundreds of millions of speakers, by the way. I'm not sure how to approach this. We'd need people who know the local situation to work on it. Presumably it would need a core of language advocates to push the local language wikis along. Are there any plans for a local chapter in India? I know the UK chapter is all for advocating both UK-relevant content and the local native languages that aren't English. -d.

Ray Saintonge

23 Jan 23 Jan

9:02 a.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

David Gerard wrote:

...

On 22/01/07, teun spaans <teun.spaans(a)gmail.com> wrote:

The low representation of Indian citizens surprises me. I met one or two at the english wikipedia / commons, perhaps they tend to prefer the english wiki above their local languages?

That and by being foreign English is not seen as giving an advantage to a ny particular part of the country as would be the case with a native language. Ec

Andre Engels

12:55 a.m.

2007/1/22, teun spaans <teun.spaans(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

Funny: The english, german and french wikis do not seem to have an article on the omoro language. Yet from this stat I gather they have 32million native speakers.

That's my fault, I made an error - the language is not called Omoro, but Oromo, and as such has an article in these language as well as (according to the English page) 10 others. -- Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels

Jon Harald Søby

22 Jan 22 Jan

6:12 p.m.

On 1/22/07, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Least Wikipedia contributorship is present in languages of India, with Punjabi (100 million speakers, no Wikipedians) at the bottom.

Actually, there are several Wikipedians who speak Punjabi as a first language, but they all work in the English Wikipedia [1]. This is, IMHO, really sad, because I believe that they would be much more useful for our mission (you know, to "create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language" [2]) if they worked on the Punjabi Wikipedia; the English Wikipedia is crowded enough already. Perhaps an appeal could be made for them? (Oh, and this goes for all languages where the natives work on the English Wikipedia instead of "their own"; like several Indian languages, and Dhivehi, and probably several more.) I feel it would be better if it came from someone familiar to them, though, and not an "outsider" like me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_pa-N [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html -- Best regards, Jon Harald Søby Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/ Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs MSN messenger - jhsoby(a)gmail.com Skype - jon.harald.soby

Marco Chiesa

6:50 p.m.

New subject: [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

Jon Harald Søby wrote:

...

Well, I'd say it is a rather complicated issue. I think contributors from every culture should be welcome on all wikipedias, particularly the English-language one which, willing or not, is the biggest one and the one most people translate from. So, the best thing would be to invite Punjabi (or whatever other language) to contribute both to en.wiki (to spread their culture to the rest of the world) and to the their own mother tongue wikipedia (to give quality content to the local people). I know very little of the situation in India, especially how many people which have access to the internet are not fluent in English since, for the time being, these would be the people who would benefit most from a wikipedia in their own language. I know it's not the most appropriate example, but it looks to me a situation comparable to many regional languages wikis (Italian regional languages for example): in most cases people won't get more information that what they would get from the national language wiki (and they're probably more fluent in the national language as well). If the contributors from India/Pakistan/... almost consider English as their own first or second mother tongue, it doesn't surprise me that they read and write on the en wikipedia. Marco (Cruccone)

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participants (15)

Andre Engels
Birgitte SB
David Gerard
David Strauss
Delirium
geni
Gerard Meijssen
GerardM
Jon Harald Søby
Lars Aronsson
Marco Chiesa
Ray Saintonge
teun spaans
Till Weber
Łukasz Garczewski