[Foundation-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)

Mon Jul 19 17:00:41 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at 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