\Mike wrote:
I mean, I see right now a discussion concerning
Romance languages' participles underway in
en:wikt. I see no reason, however, why a such
discussion won't arise again, in the Greek, or
the Polish, or even the Italian wiktionary.
I'm sure it will. But with an entirely new cast of characters, and
perhaps they will find different byt equally valid solutions
I see the same discussions concerning various
details on certain Swedish words being held on
both sv: and en: - and in how many more places
are these words discussed without me noticing
because I'm not active in those wiktionaries, and
perhaps unable to understand the language in
which it is held? Perhaps I (or someone else)
familiar with other wiktionaries could point out
how the same problem may have been solved already
in this second wiktionary, would I only know
about the discussion...
The discussion between those who are already fluent in Swedish will be
far different from corresponding discussions on other projects. The
things about the language and its culture which one takes for granted
when raised in that language are not at all obvious to those who learned
about the language later in life.
Someone found out a while ago that several
wiktionaries had made mistakes in their treatment
of Irish nation names - and had to rise the same
issue over and over and over again, once in each
wiktionary where this user found this particular
error.
That sort of thing is inevitable. Would you have understood what they
were talking about in Gaelic language comments? It does not get any
easier when the language is non-ino-European.
Of course I understand that there are some
serious complications with any attempt of a
"multilingual discussion" - maybe most
importantly the continuous need to translate
things, but I guess there also will be issues
with various wiktionaries wanting to arrange
things in very different manners.
Being able to arrange things differently will be important to the
longevity of the wiktionaries. If different approaches are allowed to
flourish, they will be a constant source of fresh ideas for the others.
Now the question is: would anyone be interested
in trying to follow a multilingual discussion of
their favourite language if it took place in meta
or on another site than they ordinarily work on?
Or would such an attempt be considered as an
attempt of *someone* (=outsiders) to decide how
"my" wiktonary is run?
I don't think it would even get as far as complaints about outsider
actions. People would just not bother to read comments in other
languages. Given the long-windedness of many Wikimedians providing
translation for those who might be interested would not be practical.
Already there are frequent and continuing requests for translating
documents that are important to Wikimedia in general.
(p.s. This actually makes me regret that we
basically decided to split the wiktionaries
according to the user interface language and not
according to "content language", way back in
2003/2004 or whenever the first two non-English
wiktionaries were created.... :/ Well, no point
crying over spilled milk.)
The underlying rationale was that each Wiktionary was
intended to
address the needs of speakers of that language. One could argue that
user interface language and content language are the same thing. The
content for this purpose is not so much the words that are defined, but
the way they are defined and otherwise written up. Part of the vision
is to have tools for identifying material when you don't even know what
language it's in.
Ec