Mailing List Archive

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
> Having multiple languages in one wiki doesn't help people to come
> together. In fact, in my experience, it does the exact opposite.
> Parcipation on Meta by people from languages like Chinese or Japanese is
> minimal. I'm afraid Meta is perceived as an extension of the English
> language Wikipedia.

There is no reason why MediaWiki can't become multilingual. Since this has not
happened on its own (probably due to the use of subdomains) we could use some
of our award money to put a bounty on that. Somebody already tried to submit a
patch for this but here is my idea:

*Have /xx subpages for each MediaWiki page where xx is a language code and the
localized message is on the subpage.
*create a language tagging system for articles; pages tagged for language xx
will switch the user interface to language xx.
*create @lang=xx as a url hack for forcing such a change via links - overriding
any page tag.
*add an option in user preferences to override per page interface language tags
and url hacks.

We could also use the current category system to classify pages based on the
language they are written in. Then using related changes from a category page
would give a language-specific RC (yes, RC from category doesn't work yet, but
I consider that a major bug).

> You can't eliminate the language barrier by throwing all languages into
> one big pot. That only means that the most popular common one - English -
> will dominate and small pockets of non-English discussions will form. This
> is what has happened on the multilingual mailing lists and it is what will
> continue to happen on Meta if we stay on the current path.

Balkanization is not an answer either. Making Meta truly multi-lingual is the
key.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)



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Anthere-
> Meta is the only place where we can really meet, and find information
> that someone else left.

Can you give me a single example where splitting Meta by subdomain would
do any harm in bringing people together? I would like to move this
discussion from the general, emotional "Don't split us up!" to the
specific, rational "This is where it would cause problems" level. What
recent policy discussion or vote would have been harmed by this approach?

Let's take the "Stewards" discussion and vote as an example. The whole
discussion was mostly English as was the voting page. If we used
subdomains, we could have made it a requirement that the page be
translated into the main languages before we vote. We could have
aggregated the votes from the different language Wikimedias so that each
community could express their preferences in their language. We could have
translated important arguments from the discussion in realtime (in the
form of localized "pro" and "cons" lists, for example).

This is a lot better than having a single page with the occasional piece
of untranslated French or Japanese between a couple of participants. In
that case, the main part of the page is English - excluding those who
don't speak it - and some parts of the discussion are not - excluding
those who don't speak that language. It's a lose-lose situation.

> In my experience, it does bring people together, provided that you
> welcome the interaction.

I can't interact with someone whose language I do not speak, unless
someone translates it for me. A Wikipedia-style setup facilitates that.

> Plus, there are japanese and chinese people currently over there. We
> have Tomos, Suisui, Britty etc...

Exactly - the people on Meta are mostly the ones who speak some amount of
English. Someone who doesn't speak any English won't even understand the
user interface.

> This is what is happening on the multinlingual mailing lists, because
> each time someone DARE putting a word in a language different than
> english, he is severely told that "of course, he could write in english,
> because really, no one can understand him".

First, I must remind you that my main objection in the last debate on this
matter was using a different language in order to exclude others from a
certain comment. This is a completely separate issue, and I would have the
same objection on Meta.

Second, if you want to reach the *largest number* of people, you should
either use English or make sure that what you say gets translated into
English. That should be very obvious, no? It would be helpful if you could
acknowledge this simple point.

Translations become far easier with a consistent approach, and people feel
more welcome if the main site they navigate is in their mother tongue.
This seems to work very well for Wikipedia, I don't see why it shouldn't
work on Meta.

This is about giving non-English projects a larger voice instead of
relying on multilingual people like you to act as mouthpieces for those
who don't speak English. Just like there is a Wikipedia community for
every language, there should be a Wikimedia community for each. Once you
have something like ja.wikimedia.org, the creation of a Japanese Wikimedia
chapter becomes more likely as well because people will find it far easier
to interact when there is no constant interference by what is *effectively
indistinguishable from random noise* to them. The problem of creating
project-wide policies is addressed through board review and voting
standards.

It may be a good idea to put this issue to a Wikimedia-wide vote if we
fail to reach consensus.

Regards,

Erik

Anthere-

> The reason of wikimediafoundation site is to present a unified front to
> outside. It should be clean, with no dispute, and it should be
> consistent with the Foundation frame of mind. It should also contain a
> whole bunch of data, which should not be modified too easily by anyone
> (like financial issues).

This can be done using rights management and page approval. Having a
combined wiki helps in collaborating as a community on matters such as
press releases and general news.

> Now, I remember very well your CPOV proposition, which aimed at strongly
> limiting access to meta, by requesting that people identify themselves
> by real names to have the right for their edits to be claimed
> trustworthy, when the edits of non real people were labelled "untrusted
> or non representative of a so-called community point of view" by default.

Wow. This is a gross misrepresentation of what I said. I am frankly
flabbergasted. See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_point_of_view

In the *discussion* I suggested that *personal essays which deviate from
the CPOV* (such as our favorite troll pages) should be signed, and that
unsigned pages could be refactored or removed. This was a compromise
proposal towards you to not have to completely exclude such pages. Next
time you "remember something very well", you may want to look it up first.

> This CPOV proposition will have to happen over my dead body :-)

Fortunately, Wikimedia is democratically governed.

Regards,

Erik

Daniel-
> There is no reason why MediaWiki can't become multilingual. Since this has
> not happened on its own (probably due to the use of subdomains) we could use
> some of our award money to put a bounty on that. Somebody already tried to
> submit a patch for this

... which was woefully incomplete. I am completely in favor of properly
internationalizing MediaWiki and putting a bounty on the implementation.
However, such an implementation should be generic, i.e. it should allow us
to migrate Wikipedia itself into that system. This requires some way to
deal with namespace conflicts - e.g. wikimedia.org/en/Merchandising vs.
wikimedia.org/de/Merchandising (the current Merchandising page on Meta is
actually German), and we would have to set up automatic redirects for
subdomain access. Given that, setting subdomains up now while we don't
have this advanced code will put us well on the road to a nice general
solution for all Wikimedia projects once we have it.

Regards,

Erik

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
> ... which was woefully incomplete. I am completely in favor of properly
> internationalizing MediaWiki and putting a bounty on the implementation.
> However, such an implementation should be generic, i.e. it should allow us
> to migrate Wikipedia itself into that system. This requires some way to
> deal with namespace conflicts - e.g. wikimedia.org/en/Merchandising vs.
> wikimedia.org/de/Merchandising (the current Merchandising page on Meta is
> actually German), and we would have to set up automatic redirects for
> subdomain access. Given that, setting subdomains up now while we don't
> have this advanced code will put us well on the road to a nice general
> solution for all Wikimedia projects once we have it.

If there is a problem with naming conflicts, then that is a very good reason to
have separate wikis. That problem does not really exist for meta, wikisource,
and wikibooks. In short, I think we should only divide things up if there is a
compelling reason. Meta in *particular* is there for multiproject and
multilingual coordination. How is that coordination going to happen on separate
wikis?

Sorry, I will not support balkanization of Meta. We should work on improving
the interface situation instead.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)



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--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
> Let's take the "Stewards" discussion and vote as an example. The whole
> discussion was mostly English as was the voting page. If we used
> subdomains, we could have made it a requirement that the page be
> translated into the main languages before we vote. We could have
> aggregated the votes from the different language Wikimedias so that each
> community could express their preferences in their language. We could have
> translated important arguments from the discussion in realtime (in the
> form of localized "pro" and "cons" lists, for example).

This could much more easily be coordinated on one wiki so long as everybody
sees the interface in their own language. This is especially useful and
convenient for multi-lingual people, who are the glue that bind us together.
Meta is a convenient, but currently flawed, substrate. A few improvements will
do wonders.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)



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Daniel-
> If there is a problem with naming conflicts, then that is a very good reason
> to have separate wikis.

The distinction between "separate wikis" and "one wiki" is a lot blurrier
than you describe it. Having proper multilanguage support within a single
installation would lead to a setup very similar to our current one from
the user POV, but with a lot of advantages which come with having a single
database (e.g. it becomes very easy to have combined RC, watchlists,
single sign-on etc.).

> That problem does not really exist for meta, wikisource, and wikibooks.

Naming conflicts are largely independent of the purpose of the wiki; the
larger a wiki gets the more likely they will become. Right now you could
have a "Merchandising (German)" and a "Merchandising (English)" page, for
example, but that is really just a workaround for a proper design and it's
going to bite us in the ass sooner or later (e.g. template names are
usually short and likely to cause conflicts).

The current MediaWiki design - separate installation for each language -
was flawed from the start. It has served us reasonably well, but if we
redesign it, we should do it properly.

> In short, I think we should only divide things up
> if there is a compelling reason. Meta in *particular* is there for
> multiproject and multilingual coordination. How is that coordination going
> to happen on separate wikis?

The only compelling reason for having separate wiki installations is that
it is the only way for the current setup to achieve
- see only the language you care about
- different language user interfaces (including MediaWiki: namespace)
- standard interlanguage links
- no naming conflicts

These things would be important on Meta as well to encourage international
cooperation and reduce English dominance, hence my support for subdomains.
With a properly designed system, we don't need to use separate installs
for Meta, Wikipedia or any other wiki - they are all going to behave the
same; you only see the languages you care about. (Emphasis on plural
here.)

So, for example, when you would go to www.wikimedia.org, it would take the
preferred language from your browser and show you, e.g.,
www.wikimedia.org/de/, but prominently show the other languages as well.
You could set the order in your user prefs if you want. If you create a
regular link from under de/, it would point to a German page. If you
create a link from under en/, it would point to an English page. In your
recent changes view, you would see only the RC for the languages which you
have set in your browser or MediaWiki prefs.

The only thing that would change about the effective user experience on
Meta is that it would become a lot more convenient, and that you could
easily move only in your local language if you want (this is already
possible in a half-assed way through the localized Main Pages). The
balkanization you speak of does not exist here. And if you're afraid of
too much language separation, there's no reason not to allow languages to
be used liberally, e.g. on discussion pages, even in the subspace which is
technically French, German or English.

Now, with a separate install, you lose certain functionality, which I
agree is important, such as having multiple languages in one RC view, and
having a single login. As Angela pointed out, the current interlanguage
link system is also needlessly redundant. I can agree that this creates
more trouble in the short term than it is worth, and that it leads to a
certain amount of balkanization, although I think that this is being
exaggerated for dramatic effect.

But then, if you agree that doing a proper multilingual setup for all
wikis is a good and necessary thing, we should set a sizable bounty on it
ASAP and do it the right way rather than have ever larger inconsistencies.
This can be combined with single sign-on at least on a project level,
something which a lot of people have been waiting for. I would be willing
to write up a bounty proposal which specifies the necessary functionality
if there is general agreement that this is what we should do.

Regards,

Erik

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
>>... which was woefully incomplete. I am completely in favor of properly
>>internationalizing MediaWiki and putting a bounty on the implementation.
>>However, such an implementation should be generic, i.e. it should allow us
>>to migrate Wikipedia itself into that system. This requires some way to
>>deal with namespace conflicts - e.g. wikimedia.org/en/Merchandising vs.
>>wikimedia.org/de/Merchandising (the current Merchandising page on Meta is
>>actually German), and we would have to set up automatic redirects for
>>subdomain access. Given that, setting subdomains up now while we don't
>>have this advanced code will put us well on the road to a nice general
>>solution for all Wikimedia projects once we have it.
>>
>>
>
>If there is a problem with naming conflicts, then that is a very good reason to
>have separate wikis. That problem does not really exist for meta, wikisource,
>and wikibooks. In short, I think we should only divide things up if there is a
>compelling reason. Meta in *particular* is there for multiproject and
>multilingual coordination. How is that coordination going to happen on separate
>wikis?
>
>Sorry, I will not support balkanization of Meta. We should work on improving
>the interface situation instead.
>
I really don't like engaging in me-too-ism, but I also don't llike it
when only a couple people are left to carry the can.

I too oppose balkanization of Meta and other projects. People would
certainly feel more at ease working in their own language groups, but
always at the risk of not seeing what others are doing. Once the
languages are separated there would never be any incentive to get them
back together again, even if the right software were developed.

So far having all languages in one project has worked fine in
Wikisource, which is not to say that it doesn't have interesting
challenges. Contributions have already been made in a significant
number of languages, most of which I can't read at all. There is a need
to respect other languages, especially on the part of those who speak an
imperializing language like English. Speakers of other languages are
aware of the dominant role of English, and it really doesn't require a
huge effort of Wikilove for English speakers to exercise sufficient respect.

Ec

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Anthere-
>
>
>>The reason of wikimediafoundation site is to present a unified front to
>>outside. It should be clean, with no dispute, and it should be
>>consistent with the Foundation frame of mind. It should also contain a
>>whole bunch of data, which should not be modified too easily by anyone
>>(like financial issues).
>
>
> This can be done using rights management and page approval. Having a
> combined wiki helps in collaborating as a community on matters such as
> press releases and general news.


Right management do not exist, but I think they could be very useful here.


>>Now, I remember very well your CPOV proposition, which aimed at strongly
>>limiting access to meta, by requesting that people identify themselves
>>by real names to have the right for their edits to be claimed
>>trustworthy, when the edits of non real people were labelled "untrusted
>>or non representative of a so-called community point of view" by default.
>
>
> Wow. This is a gross misrepresentation of what I said. I am frankly
> flabbergasted. See:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_point_of_view
>
> In the *discussion* I suggested that *personal essays which deviate from
> the CPOV* (such as our favorite troll pages) should be signed, and that
> unsigned pages could be refactored or removed. This was a compromise
> proposal towards you to not have to completely exclude such pages. Next
> time you "remember something very well", you may want to look it up first.

Tatata, we already fought enough on this Erik.

You wrote to me :

But if you want to write a paper or essay on a subject related to
Wikipedia, and do not want it to be edited into CPOV form, then you
should have the courage and conviction to stand for it with your real
name. Alternatively, put it on your user page. -Eloquence 13:28, 29 Apr
2004 (UTC)

Given the number of editors who accept to edit under their real name,
and given the risks associated with using our real name on the net,
***requesting*** from people to sign their comments and participation
with their real name in order to have those allowed in the main space is
just something bad.

We are allowed to write fabulous article under ip, why would not we be
allowed to write what we think of Wikipedia under the same procedure ?

I say, if we request from editors on meta to sign their participation
with their real name, then we'll cause dramatic drop down in collaboration.




>>This CPOV proposition will have to happen over my dead body :-)
>
>
> Fortunately, Wikimedia is democratically governed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Oh, yes, thank god, it is democratically governed :-)


------

Btw, how are the new projects building going on ?

ant

Hi,

I think that projects in different languages should have their own subdomain,
but meta is different.
I think it's better to have only one domain with many languages.

Yann

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http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre
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Anthere-

> Right management do not exist, but I think they could be very useful here.

Wrong. See $wgWhitelistEdit, $wgWhitelistRead and $wgWhitelistAccount in
includes/DefaultSettings.php of the current MediaWiki code. I currently
run one MediaWiki which uses a whitelist for certain pages.

> But if you want to write a paper or essay on a subject related to
> Wikipedia, and do not want it to be edited into CPOV form, then you
> should have the courage and conviction to stand for it with your real
> name. Alternatively, put it on your user page. -Eloquence 13:28, 29 Apr
> 2004 (UTC)

> Given the number of editors who accept to edit under their real name,
> and given the risks associated with using our real name on the net,
> ***requesting*** from people to sign their comments and participation
> with their real name in order to have those allowed in the main space is
> just something bad.

You still don't get what I wrote. You are free to include your opinion in
a regular CPOV article, e.g. "Some community members feel that .." You're
free to comment on talk pages in any matter you want. But if you want to
write an essay like

"Why Wikipedia is doomed"

.. *with no counterpoints allowed*, then you should sign it. That is
completely different from your representation of my opinion, and I would
appreciate it if you could stop distorting my proposal. There are two
reasons for requiring this type of page to be signed: 1) reduce trolling,
2) make it clear that the article in question is not official Wikimedia
policy.

> We are allowed to write fabulous article under ip, why would not we be
> allowed to write what we think of Wikipedia under the same procedure ?

We are not allowed to write what we think of the latest Hollywood movie on
Wikipedia. We are only allowed to do it as NPOV (film critic Roger Ebert
said ..). The CPOV proposal *extends* this by allowing 1) community member
opinions, i.e. what would be called "original research" or "idiosyncratic"
on Wikipedia 2) signed personal essays. Most pages on Meta meet the CPOV
requirements *already*.

> I say, if we request from editors on meta to sign their participation
> with their real name, then we'll cause dramatic drop down in collaboration.

Again, stop misrepresenting the actual proposal.

Regards,

Erik

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Meta in *particular* is there for multiproject and multilingual
> coordination. How is that coordination going to happen on separate
> wikis?

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I too oppose balkanization of Meta and other projects. People would
> certainly feel more at ease working in their own language groups, but
> always at the risk of not seeing what others are doing. Once the
> languages are separated there would never be any incentive to get
them > back together again, even if the right software were developed.

Full ack. The German Wikimedia Association settled at meta and not at
de.wikipedia because we do not want to be seperated. We startet to write
short abstracts for german pages at meta. Naming problems can be solved.
For instance [[Merchandising]] could point to [[Merchandising (en)]] and
[[Merchandising (de)]]. What is missing is the possibility to change the
interface's language but not dividing the pages.


Jakob