[Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

Tue Mar 11 18:41:27 UTC 2003

--- Takuya Murata <takusi at manjiro.net> wrote:
> >I am sorry Takuya but I didnot understand what you
> >meant there...
> Sorry. I see what I mean was not so clear. Some
> policities 
> such as NPOV are inalienable. We are buliding a sole
> 
> international, multilingual encyclopedia not the
> collection 
> of encyclopedias in different languges.
> 
> >Sure.
> >We can also claim we don't have exactly the same
> goals
> >as they were defined on the english wiki; we can
> claim
> >we don't use the same means; we can claim the
> >community doesnot function the same way. We can
> claim
> >each wikipedia has a set of individual references.
> We
> >may.
> >But, still, we share common software, that requires
> >common agreement on some points.
> 
> No, the goal should be the same, that is, building
> free 
> encylopedia, which is under GFDL and edited by
> everyone.

Good evening Takuya

You are right that ideally all wikipedias should
respect about three things, free (that we french
divide in "gratuit" (you don't pay) anad "libre" (no
copyright)), neutral and built in cooperation.

Well....even this goal is tough too reach...I wish you
success on the japanese wiki :-)

> I have come to see some people fear allowing more
> automity 
> might undermine the coherence in the whole project
> of 
> wikipedia. I totally agree with that.
> 
> What I don't like is that it seems to me non-English
> edition 
> tends to replicate the English edition. Non-english
> editions 
> should not be translation version of English
> edition. Comma 
> is a good example that we simply applied English
> system to 
> Japanese edition. And worse, the problem remains
> unsolved 
> for long time. Something wrong. No?

Very true of course.
You'll notice later maybe that though some articles in
japanese are translation from english, very few
english articles will be translated from japanese...
I don't think any should be mere translations. But
both should be strongly related. After all, in the
goal of complete coverage of a topic, both should be
quite similar in terms of information content. But not
necessarily so in terms of "precision" and lay out (I
mean here that it doesnot have to be displayed in the
same way, it must adapt to each type of user).
It would be great that some bilingual editors take the
time to enrich both articles with things taken from
the other.

> Oh, I got. Maybe first we should write a conrete
> mission 
> statement writtin in every language we support. It
> should 
> not be a translation from mission statement in en
> wikipedia 
> but multilingual one. Or is there any already?
> Writing new 
> one should not be a snap because there is already a
> draft.

It is a very good idea.
I am not so sure about the multilingal
statement...cause all that unite us is pretty
well-known from everyone (neutrality...)

But it would be very interesting that all languages
take care to point out at what describes their
wikipedia. It is evident there will be some
differences, and maybe a statement of what is
important to each (a mission statement) would help to
understand our differences and to take them more into
account.
I know for example that the english wiki doesnot want
to be a dictionary; but as Tarquin said one day, in
french, dictionary and encyclopedia are maybe more
strongly related than in english, so many of us say
our "mission" is to build a tool which will be an
encyclopedia AND a dictionary (in different
namespaces, but at the same place). Aoineko disagrees
with wiktionary being separated from wikipedia for
example. That means that for Aoineko (and others), the
french wikipedia could also be a dictionary...

These differences all define us, but they should not
lead all of us to disagree too strongly, and if there
was somewhere an article for each wikipedia - in its
own language - that would say "here, we believe that
wikipedia is...", it would help to negociate better
and defend better what is important for each of us.

Do you think this is coherent with what you think ?

<personal>Thanks Athymik for hunting the hidden
commas...are they many more still ? incredible, there
was even one hidden in the home page ???</personal>

> > Now there is you
> >and Aoineko on the Japanese to speak up, we are
> quite
> >a bunch from the french, germans and polish are
> quite
> >present also; there's Elian and Giskart, and
> others...
> 
> Please don't include me. I rather write an article,
> which is 
> much more fun.

oh, depends....
but if you are here on the mailing list, you are
included...

> And there is almost none of Chinese, Korean and
> never talked 
> about Arabic and so on.

Be patient, that will probably come 
I hope

Anthere

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