Stirling Newberry wrote:
We should go further, that there are signs of "poly-linguism", where the different languages are acting to support each other, where articles written in one language are being used as material or a basis for others. This will, again, serve to underline the advantages of wikipedia as a project. I know I have used German wikipedia articles at various times, and it might even be worth collecting some anecdotes about how wikipedia is forming a "research community" that is larger than any single language.
I definitely do this as well, and I think it's one of the strengths. Although some people seem to be promoting the view that the different language editions should actually be different, and not just translations of one another, I tend to think they should be as similar as possible. One useful thing, IMO, is to look at the articles on the same subject in two languages you can understand reasonably well. If they differ, try to figure out which parts of each are better, and integrate those parts into the other one.
-Mark