[Wikipedia-l] Re: multilingualism (was Q1 drive)

[Delirium]

Stirling Newberry wrote:

> We should go further, that there are signs of "poly-linguism", where 
> the different languages are acting to support each other, where 
> articles written in one language are being used as material or a basis 
> for others. This will, again, serve to underline the advantages of 
> wikipedia as a project. I know I have used German wikipedia articles 
> at various times, and it might even be worth collecting some anecdotes 
> about how wikipedia is forming a "research community" that is larger 
> than any single language.

I definitely do this as well, and I think it's one of the strengths.  
Although some people seem to be promoting the view that the different 
language editions should actually be different, and not just 
translations of one another, I tend to think they should be as similar 
as possible.  One useful thing, IMO, is to look at the articles on the 
same subject in two languages you can understand reasonably well.  If 
they differ, try to figure out which parts of each are better, and 
integrate those parts into the other one. 

-Mark