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Re: Bot for French cities on...

Re: Re: Re: new request for...

Mark Williamson

7 Sep 2005 7 Sep '05

11:40 p.m.

Hi all, I would like to draw your attention to the Lingala Wikipedia http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ As you can see, the interface is not just in Lingala, but rather there is a slash after the Lingala rendering of each message, followed by a translation into French. Now, while I don't think it's a good thing, I would grudgingly accept the fact if it were real Lingala-speaking people who were responsible, however: Most of it is the work of http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Moyogo and http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bombo . Moyogo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-1" -- a basic command of Lingala, while Bombo lists his/her level of Lingala as "ln-0" -- cannot understand Lingala. Now that in itself seems like an issue to me, but there is more: There are quite a few very long pages on ln.wiki, HOWEVER nearly all of them are written ENTIRELY in French, or with only a sentence translated. Some of the longest: http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisi -- actually entirely in English, not French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili -- only page title translated, entire article is in French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto -- in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B -- entirely in French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa -- entirely in English http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!) Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default interface language. The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning. I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those few which were 100% Lingala. I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to a monolingual Lingala speaker. I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done. The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that: 1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the other two where they are either fully translated, or not; 2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're substubs; 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the administrators stated that it's important that French is in the interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to speak pretty good Lingala. Mark

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Andre Engels

8 Sep 8 Sep

7 a.m.

On 9/8/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!)

Actually, it is in Afrikaans (and a literal copy of [[af:Litaue]], including the on Lingala not working template and the on Lingala not existing internal images).

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I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.

Personally, I have little problems with the bilingual interface, although I would assume that it gets changed once the 'real' Lingala editors start getting to be the majority. However, the articles that are in English or French seem to me to not be the intention of a Lingala Wikipedia. There may be one or two exceptions (perhaps some pages about the language itself?), and one could put a page there that one intends to translate, but that latter should also not be more than 1 or 2 pages per editor. I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more information. Andre Engels

Pawe³ Dembowski

7:28 a.m.

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I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more information. Andre Engels

There are already links to those and they're called interwiki.. -- Ausir Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia http://pl.wikipedia.org

Mark Williamson

6:18 p.m.

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I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.

Personally, I have little problems with the bilingual interface, although I would assume that it gets changed once the 'real' Lingala editors start getting to be the majority.

But, wouldn't it be better if it were monolingual, and people who need to use French can select that in their user preferences? Obviously, nobody at mi.wikipedia speaks better Maori than English, yet the interface is not bilingual there -- it's all Maori. Also, the "uselang" can be added to the end of URLs and the interface will appear in that language.

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However, the articles that are in English or French seem to me to not be the intention of a Lingala Wikipedia. There may be one or two exceptions (perhaps some pages about the language itself?), and one could put a page there that one intends to translate, but that latter should also not be more than 1 or 2 pages per editor. I think the pages should be either removed, or replaced by stubs in Lingala, with perhaps a link to the English or French article for more information.

You mean interwiki liens? ;) Mark

Traroth

8:27 a.m.

I don't know what can be done as long as no lingala speaking people contribute to this wikipedia. Remove articles in french and english is a solution to the "purity" problem of this wp, but with the risk to discourage the few participants (and it's not a solution for the real problem : only 107 articles on this wp). Actually the question is: What is the purpose here ? How to improve the dynamism of this wp ? Traroth --- Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> a écrit :

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http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molongo_ya_nkot%C3%A1_ya_leta_mokili

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-- only page title translated, entire article is in French http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 -- again, entirely in English

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisakoli_ya_molongo_ya_makoki_ya_moto

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-- in Lingala, but is a verbatim copy of the UDHR

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C9%9Bl%C9%9B%CC%81t%C9%9Bl%C9%9B

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-- entirely in French

http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politiki_bya_K%C9%94%CC%81ng%C9%94-Kinshasa

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-- entirely in English http://ln.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litaue -- actually in Dutch (!) Now, even if the interface in French is really a nessecity, it can be accessed from "preferences" where one may choose a non-default interface language. The French and English articles I listed above are only the beginning. I excluded the few which were partly translated, and obviously those few which were 100% Lingala. I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to a monolingual Lingala speaker. I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done. The main reasons that this is different from mi.wiki (uses lots of English) and na.wiki (uses lots of English as well) are that: 1) interface messages are bilingual or not translated, unlike the other two where they are either fully translated, or not; 2) most pages are in English or French, unlike the other two where most pages are in the right language, even if that means they're substubs; 2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the administrators stated that it's important that French is in the interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to speak pretty good Lingala. Mark _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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Jimmy Wales

12:07 p.m.

Mark Williamson wrote:

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I think the question we should be asking ourselves is : what will somebody in Kinshasa think coming across this website? It claims to be the Lingala version of Wikipedia, but the interface is bilingual, and most of the articles are in French. It will be of little to no help to a monolingual Lingala speaker.

What are the odds of a monolinqual Lingala speaker coming across the site? How do those odds compare with a bilingual French/Lingala speaker coming across the site? I don't know the answer, so this isn't a rhetorical question. Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala site. No one doubts this. The question is: what's the most effective way to get there? Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic: "Few countries in the world have collapsed as disastrously by the wayside -- regressed so starkly into preindustrial ruin - as Congo. Once called Zaire, the nation was picked clean during three decades of misrule by the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then gutted by more than six years of anarchy and civil war. Today Congo is the shell-shocked colossus of central Africa - a country almost the size of Western Europe that seems to have sleepwalked into some feverish dream of the post-Apocalypse. [...] What words can be uttered about those roads? [The roads of in eastern Congo] Clogged with mud, strangled by bush, reduced in many cases to absurd footpaths, they slither for hundreds of miles through a tropical forest second in size only to the Amazon. They span a landscape where the 20th century has ebbed like a neap tide, leaving behind the detritus of modernity: towns with trees growing from roofs, factories crumbling like Mayan ruins, coffee planatations run wild."

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I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.

How about letting the people who are working there continue their work, and let's make some kind of a concerted effort to get more help for them. I wonder if we can't find a dozen or so academics who are fluent in Lingala and French (or Lingala and English). If you can find them for me on the Internet, I will personally phone the ones who speak English, and I'm sure Anthere or another French person will be happy to phone the ones who speak French.

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2) when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the administrators stated that it's important that French is in the interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to speak pretty good Lingala.

It should be left up to them to determine the best way forward, lacking some really compelling evidence that this is problematic.

Mark Williamson

6:12 p.m.

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Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala site. No one doubts this. The question is: what's the most effective way to get there? Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic: "Few countries [snip] coffee planatations run wild."

These quotes all refer to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are two Congos these days, the one to which these quotes refer is the one which was ruined by the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko. The other one is the Republic of the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville, which wasn't ruled for half a century by a despot. What _is_ the most effective way to get there? Surely, not by having it so that the sole administrator is the user with the worst Lingala out of the three?

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I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.

Again, let's take a look at the people who are "working" there: User:Bombo, lists himself as ln-0, likes to post articles in French, has made almost no contributions that could even be argued to be helping ln.wiki; User:Moyogo, lists himself as ln-1, is responsible for most of the interface but has made some significant good contributions with actual Lingala; User:Themalau, lists himself as ln-3, is responsible for the handful of articles which are completely or mostly in Lingala, and is probably the best contributor to that Wikipedia. Which of these people is the one who so desparately needs the French interface? Surely not Themalau, who seems to be able to read and write satisfactory Lingala? Moyogo himself recently said on the Village pump that the interface should be 100% Lingala, so it's surely not him. Perhaps it is Bombo, who likes to copy articles verbatim from the French and English Wikipedias? Bombo himself said on one talkpage, and I quote, "je ne parle pas le lingala". If anyone needs to use a French interface, remember that they can choose it in their personal preferences, or even by adding something to the end of each URL (uselang=fr).

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It should be left up to them to determine the best way forward, lacking some really compelling evidence that this is problematic.

"Up to them" -- it makes sense to leave such decisions up the local community in most cases, but in cases like this, the local community is little more qualified than are you or I -- Bombo, one of the three active users, doesn't seem to know any Lingala at all. If he gets to decide, why can't I? What if I start posting heaps of French articles, does that mean that suddenly I get to help with the decision because now I'm part of the community? Neither Themalau nor Moyogo seem to be in favour of keeping the etrefas bilingual, and they're the only two users with very good Lingala. Mark

Ray Saintonge

8:34 p.m.

Mark Williamson wrote:

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Air Gabon seems to have the cheapes one-way flights there out of London at £292.00. I'm sure that ther3e are many connections that would get you from Phoenix to London. Ec

Mark Williamson

11:35 p.m.

I lolled. Thanks Ray. Mark On 16/08/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:

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Mark Williamson wrote:

Air Gabon seems to have the cheapes one-way flights there out of London at £292.00. I'm sure that ther3e are many connections that would get you from Phoenix to London. Ec

-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

Jimmy Wales

10 Sep 10 Sep

1:03 a.m.

Mark Williamson wrote:

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What _is_ the most effective way to get there? Surely, not by having it so that the sole administrator is the user with the worst Lingala out of the three?

Eventually, of course. But it certainly depends on the particular people involved. If the sole administrator is doing a good job and is actively working to get more people involved, then why not? Better to have an experienced wikipedian assisting there than to abandon them. The point is, I see no reason for *us* to interfere. If the other users have a complaint, then that's a different matter.

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User:Bombo, lists himself as ln-0, likes to post articles in French, has made almost no contributions that could even be argued to be helping ln.wiki;

I don't know the user. Perhaps a French speaker can contact him and ask what's up?

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User:Moyogo, lists himself as ln-1, is responsible for most of the interface but has made some significant good contributions with actual Lingala;

Why say "but" instead of "and"? The work on the interface is important and good, too.

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Which of these people is the one who so desparately needs the French interface?

I'm not thinking of them. I'm thinking of newcomers. Again, it seems fairly likely to me that there are fluent French speakers who are weak in Lingala who would be happy to come and help out. Having the dual interface for a little while seems more or less fine to me. When they want to fix it, I'm sure they will. Why are you bothered about it?

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If anyone needs to use a French interface, remember that they can choose it in their personal preferences, or even by adding something to the end of each URL (uselang=fr).

I'm thinking of likely newcomers.

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*sigh* Please try to relax. A deep breath. Bombo is most likely someone who very strongly shares your core values. He's trying to help. Maybe you don't agree with what he's doing, or maybe I don't agree with it. But Assume Good Faith.

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Neither Themalau nor Moyogo seem to be in favour of keeping the etrefas bilingual, and they're the only two users with very good Lingala.

Ok, well, I'm quite sure they'll do as they see fit. Trust them. --Jimbo

Mark Williamson

9:34 p.m.

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He doesn't appear to be "actively working to get more people involved". Bombo is not a more experienced Wikipedian than Themalau or Moyogo, as far as I can tell, and as I already noted he can speak nearly no Lingala and seems to enjoy posting long articles entirely in French.

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The point is, I see no reason for *us* to interfere. If the other users have a complaint, then that's a different matter.

So, I'm not important enough? How are other users different from me? I am a user on the Lingala Wikipedia, and frankly I'm a bit insulted by that remark.

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Who is this "they"? Three out of the four recently active users seem to not want it bilingual, but we don't have sysop capabilities. Bombo does. And the same is true for many other languages -- English speakers wanting to help out on the Irish or Scottish Gaelic Wikipedias, German speakers wanting to help out on the Plattduutsch Wikipedia, French speakers wanting to help on the Breton Wikipedia, Spanish speakers wanting to help on the Basque Wikipedia... yet none of them has a bilingual user interface. Why?

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Ok, well, I'm quite sure they'll do as they see fit. Trust them.

What about what I do, and what I see fit? As a Lingala Wikipedian, I don't understand why my opinion should count for less than any other user's. Mark

Jimmy Wales

11 Sep 11 Sep

3:42 p.m.

Mark Williamson wrote:

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Have you tried asking him to stop? Or asking him what he's doing?

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The point is, I see no reason for *us* to interfere. If the other users have a complaint, then that's a different matter.

So, I'm not important enough? How are other users different from me? I am a user on the Lingala Wikipedia, and frankly I'm a bit insulted by that remark.

WikiLove, please. I'm not trying to insult you. You mentioned 3 users, you did not mention yourself as a user. If you *are* a user, then I would recommend to you that rather than complaining to the mailing list to try to get Bombo desysopped, you ask him what he's doing, and offer some helpful and kind suggestions to him that you think might be better.

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And the same is true for many other languages -- English speakers wanting to help out on the Irish or Scottish Gaelic Wikipedias, German speakers wanting to help out on the Plattduutsch Wikipedia, French speakers wanting to help on the Breton Wikipedia, Spanish speakers wanting to help on the Basque Wikipedia... yet none of them has a bilingual user interface. Why?

I don't know. It strikes me as a good idea, at least on a temporary basis.

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Ok, well, I'm quite sure they'll do as they see fit. Trust them.

What about what I do, and what I see fit? As a Lingala Wikipedian, I don't understand why my opinion should count for less than any other user's.

I wasn't aware that you considered yourself a member of that community. My apologies for that. --Jimbo

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participants (6)

Andre Engels
Jimmy Wales
Mark Williamson
Pawe³ Dembowski
Ray Saintonge
Traroth