Hi Gerard,
The duplication of words that are spelled the same in different dialects or orthographies is inherent in the database design. This is essential if you want to have definitions and etymology in these dialects or orthographies. If you are willing to accept that definitions and etymology can be spelled in orthographies other than Sass there could be a solution but as the nds.wikipedia also has to standardise on Sass, I think this is a rather unlikely scenario.
Definition and etymology would be the same. Your approach would be a duplication of efforts. It would be sufficient to allow one entry to belong to several orthographis, as in 1:n instead of 1:1. So this is not inherent in the database design. It is the design bug that I complain about for some time. 1:n would allow us to enter the data the way we think appropriate. And it still leaves us the opportunity to add individual entries when other users really think that explanations must also be duplicated along the orthographies (which I really doubt). So they can, if they want to, but they are not forced.
Kind regards,
Heiko