[Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?

[Mark Williamson]

Two things:

1) Please define "junk articles". Do you mean articles that you think
nobody in your community wants to read (like, say, an article about an
American singer or actor, for example [[Lady Gaga]]), or do you mean
articles that are written in such a way as to be incomprehensible, or
are filled with linkspam, etc? Or do you mean something else entirely?
Please explain.
2) Community is certainly important, but aren't we here to write an
encyclopedia? I don't think having all links turned blue is a bad
thing at all. In fact, it seems to me that over time, a larger article
base will result in more users joining. Note that I said over time; in
the short term, it may not have much effect.

-m.


On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 11:12 PM, Shiju Alex <shijualexonline at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the
> translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The
> foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not sure
> whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community
> to know their views.
>
> As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised
> their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other
> communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community
> in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no
> response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native
> speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia?
>
> Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community to
> create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of
> companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages?
>
> One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is
> that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the language*.That
> might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for
> Wikipedia.
>
> As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, (
> http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google
> translation of wikipedia articles:
>
>   - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article
>   - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis
>   - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia
>
> The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google
> translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example
> of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in
> English used google translator to communicate with us. :)
>
> Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect
> the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we expect
> them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When
> all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect
> any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is
> killing the growth of an active wiki community.
>
> Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But
> only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many
> Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in
> their wiki*.
>
> I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point.
> But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin scripts*)
> to view the status of google translation project.  Loads of junk articles
> are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these
> articles is the edit by its creator and the  inter language wiki bots.
>
> This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points
> raised by a Swahali
> Wikipedian<http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/>.
> Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some
> other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the
> community growth.
>
> So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from
> Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service
> effectively or continue with the current article creation process.
>
> One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open
> source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow.
>
> Regards
>
> Shiju Alex
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex
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