[Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The language committee is tasked with other projects; for subsequent
projects for a language there is a requirement for a complete localisation
for that language and for a "substantial" sized content for that project.
The rationale for this is that many projects were created because we could
only to find that there was no community interested in making it work.

The notion of one Wikipedia per language has two grounds; people have to
cooperate within the one project. This prevents the division of an English,
Spanish, Portuguese Wikipedia in the many accepted orthographies that exist
for such languages.

When you look at "simple" Wikipedias, it is all too easy to consider them
for children. This is not necessarily their scope. It has often been argued
that encyclopaedic articles using "simple" terminology  provide information
that is easier on people for whom the language is a second or third
language.

One of the traditional arguments against simple Wikipedias is that the
language used for encyclopaedic articles should be easily understood anyway.
The problem is that many Wikipedians do not consider this to be important.
Particularly people who write English as a second or third language take
pride in their large vocabulary..

When other "simple" Wikipedias are to be considered, it become necessary to
reconsider the Wikipedia domain names. Simply assuming that "simple" is
simply English will no longer be true. Given that requests for renaming
Wikipedias are not honoured as it is, it makes this whole issue just another
one that will pop up every so often.

An issue like the one I often raise; why can we not make sure that language
like Arabic and Hindi can compete on a technical level playing field. In the
end it is about making choices, what is considered strategic. Given the
hundreds of millions of people who write in the Arabic or the Devanagari
script I would argue that this is a must have while "simple" wikipedias are
nice to have.
Thanks,
      GerardM


On 24 June 2010 15:36, Samuel J Klein <sj at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi Ziko,
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > In the discussion, the question of creating a Wikipedia in simple
> > German came up.
>
> This would be useful.
>
> > As we know, to-day Wikimedia language committee policies prohibit a
> > new Wikipedia in a language that already has a Wikipedia.
>
> To be more precise: the language committee was tasked with determining
> when to start new language projects.  It was never asked to consider
> other sorts of new projects.  So either "simple German" is a new
> language, or it's out of the current scope of the committee.
>
> Overall, we've never decided whether a "simple" or "children's
> encyclopedia" should be a separate project with its own root domain,
> or another set of 'languages' that show up as an interlanguage link or
> as FOO.wikipedia.org .
>
>
> > The existence of a Wikipedia in simple English refers to the fact that it
> > had been created before that policy of 2006.
>
> Simple English is quite useful, and used for groups developing their
> literacy skills at all ages, including many communities learning
> English as a Second Language.  Presumably the same could be true of
> any other language.
>
>
> > There are a number of ideas and initiatives to create online
> > encyclopedias in "simple language", in and outside the Wikimedia
> > world. Wouldn't it be suitable to reconsider and try to give those
> > initiatives a place? Who else is more capable to create and support
> > such encyclopedias than we are?
>
> +1
>
> My thoughts:
> * I would love to see similar projects in at least German, French,
> Spanish, and Dutch -- languages in which there are already communities
> working on encyclopedic knowledge in simplified language.
> * We should have a new process for requesting a simple-language
> version of a project.
> * We should resolve standard practice for naming them, and decide if
> this should be a new top-level Project (like wikikids) or a variation
> on the normal language code.
>
> Considering the historical role of the children's encyclopedia, we
> might consider rescoping "simple" as "for children" -- this could help
> to increase participation and use, and clarify the role of these
> projects.
>
> SJ
>
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