On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:32:41 +0100, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
In general Wikipedias are being divided by language, not by country. Sure, Swiss users will have different interests than German, French or Italian ones, but those are I think better served by adding Swiss content to the existing Wikipedias than by creating a new, multi-lingual Wikipedia.
I agree with this philosophy entirely as it applies to Wikipedia. However, I think the poster may have a point about Wikinews.
Locale and nationality have more importance for news content than for encyclopaedic content. The sort of news relevant to a French speaker in Quebec or in Cameroon may be entirely different from that relevant to those in France.
I'm not suggesting separating wikinews sites by country or locale: that's the wrong idea. Mixing languages in one wikinews site is a bad idea, and articles in the same language should be housed together, as many can be re-used (such as those which concern international events).
Here's a suggestion to resolve some of this: have a country or locale-specific news index page on all wikinews sites, and make the URL <languagecode>.wikinews.<countrycode> redirect to this page. For example, en.wikinews.ca would redirect to a page on en.wikinews.org indexing English-language Canadian news, while fr.wikinews.ca would redirect to a similar page for French-language Canadian news on fr.wikinews.org.
regards,
Steve