[Wikimedia-l] A proposal towards a multilingual Wikipedia

[David Cuenca]

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Denny Vrandečić <
denny.vrandecic at wikimedia.de> wrote:

> [...] It might lead to a glorious future, where we really create an open
> source system that allows
> everyone to write in every language and express a wide range of human
> thought.
>

As much as I love this proposal, I have some some reservations, namely:
http://www.xkcd.com/191/

So if there are already complains about the skewed participation in the
Wikipedia, this would be the right step to skew it even further. This is
not necessarily bad (maybe it could even work without patrolling), however
instead of stating "allow everyone to write in every language", I think it
would be more realistic to state "allow everyone, who wants to take the
extra effort in participating in such a project, to write in every
language".
Predicted demographics: 95% women from the "global south" :)


> I am personally hesitant about automatic translations, and whether we can
> achieve the coverage (in language pairs) and the quality (of Wikipedia).
> But that is only my opinion. A hybrid approach, if we can support it and
> build it, would obviously be the safest bet, as both endeavors are rather
> risky. I see a lot of possible space for a hybrid system, as you describe
> it.
>

+1000


>
> One advantage of my proposal is that it's cost is rather small. For
> supporting translation I haven't seen yet a sufficiently sketched proposal
> that allows to estimate the potential cost and potential benefit.
>

As with so many things, it will be hard to assess cost/benefits without
making some effort. A safe bet could be to try with an existing pair or
develop a pair with an estimated high demand. If that works, escalate,
otherwise stop there.

Micru