[Foundation-l] [Wikinews-l] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews

Mon Mar 1 18:48:55 UTC 2010

Whilst the idea of having a truly multi-lingual Wikinews with articles
published in numerous languages is a good one, I fear that the
practicalities make this somewhat idealistic. I think infact we should
actually be rather proud that we manage to get so many articles published in
so many articles as it is, which given the circumstances is rather amazing.

As someone who is multilingual and used to be pretty active on Wikinews
(regretfully temporarily taking a break), I have been asked to translate
articles from time to time. On the rare occasion that I have had the time
_in addition_ to writing my own articles, it has been time consuming to say
the least, and on most occasions I have had to decline requests to translate
other people's articles because I simply didn't have the time to write my
own.

It should not be forgotten that contrary to other sister projects where time
is not a factor, it is a major one for Wikinews, where news that is over
three days old is not published.

Finally the number of Wikinewsies is _incredibly_ small and we truly bi-,
tri- and quadri-lingual Wikinewsies are a very rare breed indeed.

User:AlexandrDmitri on all Wikimedia Foundation projects

cc Foundation list per initial email as the replies seem only to be going to
the Wikinews list

2010/3/1 Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>

> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:59 AM, gopher65 <gopher65 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > You know, I've actually been recently considering an idea for combining
> all
> > of the Wikinews language editions into a single project. However, the
> code
> > required to accomplish this in a reasonable fashion does not currently
> > exist, and I don't think that anyone at the foundation would be willing
> to
> > jump in and volunteer the significant amount of dev time that would be
> > necessary to make such a project possible from a technical perspective...
> > even though I can see Wikipedia benefiting immensely from the same tech.
> >
> > Imagine going onto a single, non-language specific Wikipedia, simply
> > selecting your language from a list, and having every major article
> appear
> > in your selected language. You switch to another language, the same
> article
> > appears, with the same text, merely having been translated by users.
>
>
> > Translation is MUCH easier than writing a Featured Article quality
> article
> > from scratch (FA articles take a surprising amount of effort and time to
> > write),
>
> Then you don't know what translation is, or just you are no translator
> at all. It is bridging one culture to another, and as creative and
> productive as writing from scratch. I think I don't need to speak how
> it is time-consuming work.
>
>
>  so this would significantly decrease the current duplication of
> > effort that is taking place in the "separate but equal"
> multiple-languages
> > version of the mediawiki software that we currently use. In such a model
> of
> > Wikipedia much more emphasis would be placed on the translation of other
> > language's articles into every language than is currently the case. (For
> > instance, a while ago I was looking up some special type of Russian
> Perogie.
> > The article I wanted doesn't exist on English Wikipedia, but it does
> exist
> > on Russian Wikipedia... which was useless to me, because I don't speak
> > Russian. Thankfully Google Translate came to the rescue... sorta.) ;-)
> >
> > Back to Wikinews and the issue at hand. As a Wikinews specific example of
> > how this could eventually work: you have an article about something that
> > happened in France, investigated by French Wikinewies, originally written
> in
> > French, and then translated into Dutch, English, German, and Mandarin by
> > other Wikinewsies. That type of coordination is currently *possible*, but
> > it's much more difficult to manage than it would be in a better designed,
> > multi-frontpage, auto-language selection multi-lingual site (based on
> your
> > preferences for logged in users, or a per-visit dropdown language
> selection
> > system (for non-logged in users)). Right now if you try to do that kind
> of
> > thing you're attempting to coordinate 20 different people spread across
> 10
> > different sites; it's nigh-on impossible in practice, unfortunately.
> >
> > Because of the technical issues that would need to be addressed, at the
> > present time I'd have to say that a multi-lingual version of Wikinews
> simply
> > isn't practical. Combining the efforts of Wikinewies everywhere and
> reducing
> > our duplication of effort via translation of locally investigated and
> > written articles would be a great idea, but it's not something that will
> > happen soon. That's something for the far future (10 or 15 years from now
> > maybe), not for the immediate future. Wikinews as a whole has bigger
> things
> > to worry about than that, for the moment.
> >
> > Maybe though, Wikipedia doesn't?
> >
> > Gopher65
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > From: "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com>
> > Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:32 AM
> > To: "Wikinews mailing list" <wikinews-l at lists.wikimedia.org>; "Wikimedia
> > Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: [Wikinews-l] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikinews
> >
> >> I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
> >> requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
> >> need wider discussion for concluding them.
> >>
> >> One of such requests is for multilingual Wikinews [2]. Please, discuss
> >> here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to wikinews-l to poke
> >> those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].
> >>
> >> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> >> [2] -
> >>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_multilingual
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikinews-l mailing list
> >> Wikinews-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikinews-l mailing list
> > Wikinews-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
> >
>
>
>
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