You know, I've actually been recently considering an idea for combining all
of the Wikinews language editions into a single project. However, the code
required to accomplish this in a reasonable fashion does not currently
exist, and I don't think that anyone at the foundation would be willing to
jump in and volunteer the significant amount of dev time that would be
necessary to make such a project possible from a technical perspective...
even though I can see Wikipedia benefiting immensely from the same tech.
Imagine going onto a single, non-language specific Wikipedia, simply
selecting your language from a list, and having every major article appear
in your selected language. You switch to another language, the same article
appears, with the same text, merely having been translated by users.
Translation is MUCH easier than writing a Featured Article quality article
from scratch (FA articles take a surprising amount of effort and time to
write), so this would significantly decrease the current duplication of
effort that is taking place in the "separate but equal" multiple-languages
version of the mediawiki software that we currently use. In such a model of
Wikipedia much more emphasis would be placed on the translation of other
language's articles into every language than is currently the case. (For
instance, a while ago I was looking up some special type of Russian Perogie.
The article I wanted doesn't exist on English Wikipedia, but it does exist
on Russian Wikipedia... which was useless to me, because I don't speak
Russian. Thankfully Google Translate came to the rescue... sorta.) ;-)
Back to Wikinews and the issue at hand. As a Wikinews specific example of
how this could eventually work: you have an article about something that
happened in France, investigated by French Wikinewies, originally written in
French, and then translated into Dutch, English, German, and Mandarin by
other Wikinewsies. That type of coordination is currently *possible*, but
it's much more difficult to manage than it would be in a better designed,
multi-frontpage, auto-language selection multi-lingual site (based on your
preferences for logged in users, or a per-visit dropdown language selection
system (for non-logged in users)). Right now if you try to do that kind of
thing you're attempting to coordinate 20 different people spread across 10
different sites; it's nigh-on impossible in practice, unfortunately.
Because of the technical issues that would need to be addressed, at the
present time I'd have to say that a multi-lingual version of Wikinews simply
isn't practical. Combining the efforts of Wikinewies everywhere and reducing
our duplication of effort via translation of locally investigated and
written articles would be a great idea, but it's not something that will
happen soon. That's something for the far future (10 or 15 years from now
maybe), not for the immediate future. Wikinews as a whole has bigger things
to worry about than that, for the moment.
Maybe though, Wikipedia doesn't?
Gopher65
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Milos Rancic" <millosh(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:32 AM
To: "Wikinews mailing list" <wikinews-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>;
"Wikimedia
Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikinews-l] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews
I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta.
Some of the
requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
need wider discussion for concluding them.
One of such requests is for multilingual Wikinews [2]. Please, discuss
here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wikinews-l to poke
those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].
[1] -
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
[2] -
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_multilin…
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