On 3/11/10, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, I am really happy that we want to help the smaller Wikipedias with uploading their pictures. It helps when it is made easy. One of the ways in which we can make it easy is to reduce the number of choices involved. When the only choice is cc-by-sa, we only need to explain one license.
When the software involved is properly localised in their language, confusion will be a lot less. One of the ways that makes a big difference to people is, when they know that a small number of messages provide exactl functionality.. The WikiReader and the mobile Wikimedia experience point in that direction. There are however two observations; it produces overhead at translatewiki.net and it helps when you target people who are actively translating for that language.
What you can do is make the local upload facility available once these limited number of messages have been localised. In this way it is a reward and not depended on an arbitrary number.
I think that's a bad proposal, in at least two ways: 1. It does not answer the _reason_ for this restriction. The problem is people uploading many copyright violations. Having the interface in the own language is not going to solve that problem, as is shown by the simple fact that this policy was started based on experience in English and other large Wikipedias, which have had full localization for years 2. The "reward" that you mention does not exist: Getting autoconfirmed is in general a lesser issue than translating a large part of the interface, and furthermore the first will happen automatically when one is active, the second can only be done on a special place that a random newbie will not be looking for or stumbling upon.
If we're going to make this dependant on something at all, it should be the presence on active sysops, who are willing to check for copyright violations. However, personally I would prefer some people from Commons and/or Stewards taking such a role for wikis which do not have such sysops. Localizing this part of the interface is definitely a useful thing to do, but its connection with the problem at hand is very tenuous.