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

[Marco Krohn]

wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 02.03.05 20:41:54:
> Marco Krohn wrote:
> >wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org wrote:

> >>I like to point out to people that the *German* version won in a blind
> >>test against two commercial encyclopedias, and we'd like to bring the
> >>English one up to the same standard. This points out that though en: is
> >>a remarkable achievement, at least one other language version has in
> >>fact tested even better!
> >
> >IMHO the English Wikipedia was and continues to be better than
> >the German one, both in terms of quality and quantity. This of course
> >does not hold for topics that are related to Germany.
> >
> Is it relevant what wikipedia is better ?

I did not wrote anything about the relevance of being better or not. 
You wrote that you want to bring the English one to the same standard
and I just pointed out that this is IMHO not necessary, since the English
one already is superior. Also, as Mav correctly remarked, the fact
that the German Wikipedia has been tested does not tell us anything
about the quality of the English version.

Also I doubt that the test was a blind test, at least the two tests
I am aware of were to my knowledge not blind tests, but I can
be wrong about this. Which test do you refer to?

> I think the different 
> wikipedias can not be compared because few articles are translated and 
> most articles are rewritten.

I have read dozens of articles in both versions and if the topic
is not in particular related to Germany (ICE) the English version in most 
cases was better, which does not imply that the German version is bad.
This already is a comparison - of course a limited one, because I am just one
person ;-)

> With a believe that the en:wikipedia is better, you 
> will not look into the other projects and find out what the strength is 
> of the other projects.

I like orange juice more than apple juice, nevertheless I drink
apple juice from time to time :-)

> One nice translation excercise I learned about the other day were 
> Italian students translating German wikipedia articles into Italian. The 
> texts were chosen by the teacher, the students translate the article, 
> the student corrects and does the proof reading and the translated 
> article is posted in the Italian wikipedia. When the students become 
> more able with the German language, they will translate into German. :)

This is a great idea! The copyright is a little bit of a problem, but
this should be no big deal as the students probably do not
care about this too much.

best regards, 
  Marco

______________________________________________________________
Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193