Here's my Christmas present for you all: New features for the PHP script to come!
Probably the most important one is the "interlanguage" feature. Just for German right now, but is can be easily extended for other languages as well. I set up an example at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=Vikings where I added "[[de:Wikinger]]" to the text (it doesn't matter where the link is within the text). Now, I have the "de" namespace internally defined as a language namespace, going to the German wikipedia. The "de:" link is NOT displayed within the text, but in the article header, as you can see. The "Deutsch" link goes straight to the "Wikinger" article in the German wikipedia.
This is only the first step. As I explained elsewhere, once all wikipedias are changed to the PHP script, these links can be collected automatically (say, each day or each week), and ensure all existing language versions are interlinked properly.
Another toy is the "contributions" link on every user page. Try mine, for example, at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=user:Magnus_Manske. The "This user's contributions" link at the top goes to a page with a list of all articles I ever edited, according to the database. (These are only the edits I did on the test site, of course).
Finally, a minor thing : On Recent Changes, all edits that were made anonymously have the IP marked in red; as most vandals don't have a user name, it might be of advantage to spot every anonymous edit easily.
Don't get run over by a reindeer, (why don't we have a [[reindeer]] article on the 'pedia???) Magnus
On Sat, 22 Dec 2001, Magnus Manske wrote:
Here's my Christmas present for you all: New features for the PHP script to come!
Probably the most important one is the "interlanguage" feature. Just for German right now, but is can be easily extended for other languages as well. I set up an example at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=Vikings where I added "[[de:Wikinger]]" to the text (it doesn't matter where the link is within the text). Now, I have the "de" namespace internally defined as a language namespace, going to the German wikipedia. The "de:" link is NOT displayed within the text, but in the article header, as you can see. The "Deutsch" link goes straight to the "Wikinger" article in the German wikipedia.
Something like this might indeed be the ideal *technical* solution to the language coordination problem. It allows us to sidestep the question whether articles should be translations of each other, while facilitating interlinking. I have one question about this implementation of the solution, though: we don't really want the English language as the "main" namespace, with other languages living at other namespaces, eh? After all, they too will want separate talk ("Rede") pages...shouldn't they be on completely different (but automatically interlinked) wikis?
One problem with the wording, "This article is available in Deutsch," is that it implies that the German article is the *same* article (translated) as the one in English. That might not at all be the case; but we might nevertheless like to have two entirely different articles on the same subject interlinked. Then, bilingual people can go in and adjust them so that the strengths of each are reflected in both. Better wording, anyway: "There's also an article on this topic in Deutsch" or just "Other languages: Deutsch."
I think this will work! One nice thing about it, by the way, is that it allows us easily, by hand, to go in and translate titles. This could really help the non-English Wikipedias to take off!
This is only the first step. As I explained elsewhere, once all wikipedias are changed to the PHP script, these links can be collected automatically (say, each day or each week), and ensure all existing language versions are interlinked properly.
What exactly do you mean by "these links can be collected automatically"?
Another toy is the "contributions" link on every user page. Try mine, for example, at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=user:Magnus_Manske. The "This user's contributions" link at the top goes to a page with a list of all articles I ever edited, according to the database. (These are only the edits I did on the test site, of course).
Very interesting. Why not?
Finally, a minor thing : On Recent Changes, all edits that were made anonymously have the IP marked in red; as most vandals don't have a user name, it might be of advantage to spot every anonymous edit easily.
Well, I doubt it. We can spot IPs very easily in black. Putting it in red reminds people, "Stop! Danger! Anonymous person!" While some of us might have that reaction, it's better not to so obviously flag people like this. I mean, we don't want to discourage anonymous contributors.
Don't get run over by a reindeer, (why don't we have a [[reindeer]] article on the 'pedia???) Magnus
Yep, happy holidays and all that, good work Magnus, Larry
Well, of course, you can write [[de:talk:Wikinger]] to link to the talk page of the Wikinger article on the German wikipedia! (Or whatever the German talkspace will be; I didn't really work on this yet)
With "automatic collection" I mean this: The U.S. article (should the interneation wikipedia be "us:" namespace??) links to the German article. The German one, in turn, links to the Spanish one. The Spanish article links to the French one and so on. But, we'd like to have *every* language link to *every* other verion of this article, right? So, instead of manually putting dozens of links into dozens of versions of the same article, let a script go through *all* wikipedias once a day/week/lifetime and update them. Of course, if you *insist* of doing this manually...
I'll change the IP edits back to black.
Magnus
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com [mailto:wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Larry Sanger Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 9:02 PM To: Intlwiki-L@Nupedia. Com Cc: Wikipedia-L@Nupedia. Com Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] New toys at the PHP script test site
On Sat, 22 Dec 2001, Magnus Manske wrote:
Here's my Christmas present for you all: New features for the PHP script to come!
Probably the most important one is the "interlanguage" feature. Just for German right now, but is can be easily extended for other languages as well. I set up an example at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=Vikings where I added "[[de:Wikinger]]" to the text (it doesn't matter where the link is within the text). Now, I have the "de" namespace internally defined as a language namespace, going to the German wikipedia. The "de:" link is NOT displayed within the text, but in the article header, as you can see. The "Deutsch" link goes straight to the "Wikinger" article in the German wikipedia.
Something like this might indeed be the ideal *technical* solution to the language coordination problem. It allows us to sidestep the question whether articles should be translations of each other, while facilitating interlinking. I have one question about this implementation of the solution, though: we don't really want the English language as the "main" namespace, with other languages living at other namespaces, eh? After all, they too will want separate talk ("Rede") pages...shouldn't they be on completely different (but automatically interlinked) wikis?
One problem with the wording, "This article is available in Deutsch," is that it implies that the German article is the *same* article (translated) as the one in English. That might not at all be the case; but we might nevertheless like to have two entirely different articles on the same subject interlinked. Then, bilingual people can go in and adjust them so that the strengths of each are reflected in both. Better wording, anyway: "There's also an article on this topic in Deutsch" or just "Other languages: Deutsch."
I think this will work! One nice thing about it, by the way, is that it allows us easily, by hand, to go in and translate titles. This could really help the non-English Wikipedias to take off!
This is only the first step. As I explained elsewhere, once all wikipedias are changed to the PHP script, these links can be collected automatically (say, each day or each week), and ensure all existing language versions are interlinked properly.
What exactly do you mean by "these links can be collected automatically"?
Another toy is the "contributions" link on every user page. Try mine, for example, at
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml?title=user:Magnus_Manske.
The "This user's contributions" link at the top goes to a page with a list of all articles I ever edited, according to the database. (These are only the edits I did on the test site, of course).
Very interesting. Why not?
Finally, a minor thing : On Recent Changes, all edits that were made anonymously have the IP marked in red; as most vandals don't have a user name, it might be of advantage to spot every anonymous edit easily.
Well, I doubt it. We can spot IPs very easily in black. Putting it in red reminds people, "Stop! Danger! Anonymous person!" While some of us might have that reaction, it's better not to so obviously flag people like this. I mean, we don't want to discourage anonymous contributors.
Don't get run over by a reindeer, (why don't we have a [[reindeer]] article on the 'pedia???) Magnus
Yep, happy holidays and all that, good work Magnus, Larry
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"Magnus Manske" Magnus.Manske@epost.de writes:
Well, of course, you can write [[de:talk:Wikinger]] to link to the talk page of the Wikinger article on the German wikipedia!
I think namespace and language should be orthogonal. Unless we can unambigously discern language codes and namespace names, a different delmiter should be used. One could mandate namespaces to have at least four letters, though.
With "automatic collection" I mean this: The U.S. article (should the interneation wikipedia be "us:" namespace??) links to the German article.
Eh, eh, its an /English/ article, so its code should be en.
I think this automatic collection that runs off-line once a day/week is flawed. Imagine pages [[en:A]] and [[de:A]]; someone points to the second in the first. The collection will add a link back from [[de:A]] to [[en:A]]. Later [[en:A]] is split into [[en:A1]] and [[en:A2]] and the link to [[de:A]] is put into A1, not A2. What will the robot do with this situation? What if [[de:A]] were also split before the collection takes place forming something like:
en:A -> en:A1 =====> de:A -> de:A1 =====> en:A -> en:A2 -> de:A2
IMO it is easier to just keep the equivalence information in an area separate from any specific language and always up-to-the-minute. So if someone changes the information "en:A is equivalent to de:A" to "en:A1 is equivalent to de:A" all consequences are propagated immediately.
I think namespace and language should be orthogonal. Unless we can unambigously discern language codes and namespace names, a different delmiter should be used. One could mandate namespaces to have at least four letters, though.
I'd prefer to keep the : as delimiter for both. This is, of course, only my opinion, based on the fact that it would mean a major rewrite of some parts of the software;) Really, I think mostly "old folks" will do the interlinking anyway, and they'll know the differences. I doubt many people will come in, have a look, and make an interlink as their first try. I'm not saying "f**k the newcomers" (we all were, once), but this *is* a little more difficult than fixing a typo, no matter how you design interface and data structure.
With "automatic collection" I mean this: The U.S. article (should the interneation wikipedia be "us:" namespace??) links to the German article.
Eh, eh, its an /English/ article, so its code should be en.
Yeah, someone mentioned this already (I think Larry?).
IMO it is easier to just keep the equivalence information in an area separate from any specific language and always up-to-the-minute. So if someone changes the information "en:A is equivalent to de:A" to "en:A1 is equivalent to de:A" all consequences are propagated immediately.
My idea was to give the crowd a way to interlink the articles at all, if only manually, in the beginning. An additional script could then bind them together (no, I didn't overdose on "Lord of the Rings";) The obvious way is to use these "fake namespaces" for normal links within the article. But, any automatic interlinking then means to alter one or several article bodies (usually, appending links) across wikipedias. Doing this in runtime might prove much more difficult than doing it once a week in one "flush".
So, what I'm trying to say is, IMO we should switch scripts (soon), have the "manual mode", wait until things are running smoothly again, and then we'll see.
Saying "running smoothly": Is wikipedia currently switching servers? I get lots of 400 errors...
Magnus
--- Magnus Manske Magnus.Manske@epost.de wrote:
I think namespace and language should be orthogonal. Unless we can unambigously discern language codes and namespace names, a different delmiter should be used. One could mandate namespaces to have at least four letters, though.
I'd prefer to keep the : as delimiter for both. This is, of course, only my opinion, based on the fact that it would mean a major rewrite of some parts of the software;)
I suggest we reserve two-letter namespaces for interlinking to other language wikipedias. Thus, we should stop anyone from creating a two-letter namespace. Also, I suggest we use alpha-2 ISO 639 language codes (en, de, fr, etc.). ISO 639 alpha-2 codes can represent all the major modern languages. (Of course, if someone wants to start up a Wikipedia in some obscure language like Old Avestan, then you'd need to use an ISO 639 alpha-3 code to represent it. So maybe we should also reserve three letter namespaces as well, for languages without alpha-2 codes.)
[snip] Simon J Kissane
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