[Wikipedia-l] Death to the comma count!

Tue Mar 11 16:55:27 UTC 2003

At 10:29 AM 3/11/03 -0600, Takuya Murata wrote

>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.
>
>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?

Agreed. The interlanguage links should be a tool, not a restriction.
If someone who knows Japanese is reading an article on the English
wikipedia and sees a link to the Japanese one, they can follow it.
But neither needs to be a translation of the other. There's no rule
against translating, of course, if a contributor finds it useful, but
the details may well differ, and of course the structure. Comma
count is an excellent example.

-- 
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org