[Foundation-l] splitting meta in sub domains

Mon Jul 19 18:11:05 UTC 2004

Translation for french people

Erik propose de faire une collection de sous domaines
pour meta. 
Il soutient que nous serons plus efficace dans notre
collaboration globale en bénéficiant d'un sous site
personnel, chacun restant désormais bien gentillement
dans son domaine perso. Les pages de décision et
règles communes pourront être traduites.

Anthere n'est pas d'accord et préfèrerait que le
language de l'interface puisse être choisi dans les
préférences, et un système de navigation entre langues
mis au point.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> 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?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership_fees and
related pages
A lot of it was the result of online discussions, more
by email, and more on meta. I cannot really figure
spreading the result of these on 150 subwikis, and I
cannot really figure following discussion about it on
150 subwikis either. A central place is the only
option.

A central place where everyone is allowed to give his
opinion.

> 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).

We could have

Did we ?

> 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.

Spreading the discussion in 150 subwikis is the
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.

No. You will not be able to interact with the others
in both cases, but in the current case, you will at
least see that they make effort to communicate. Or you
at least give them the opportunity to try. When they
are parked in a submetawiki, you will not even know
they tried to communicate. 

>>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.

Correct.
Then what about fixing the interface so that we could
choose the interface language ? This would be the
win-win situation, not packing people in another
place. 

We could also find a way to navigate between
languages.

>>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.

I acknowledge this point.

But this is not a valid argument to technically
separate people.  

> 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.

Ah, the mouthpiece is back :-)
You have not been much on meta and mediawiki these
days Erik. Or you would have seen that now two french
people are now part of the developers, and on meta,
people like Villy, Looxix, Yann just to cite a few,
are very regularly participating. And we definitly do
not always agree. They participate to wikimedia wide
issues by being on *common* mailing list, and *common
meta*. Park us on separate meta, and on separate
mailing list, our interaction with you all will stop.

It just make no sense to try to maintain most pages on
meta in 150 languages. What makes our force is to make
them together. It would be great that they are
translated, and I intend to have a french version of
the wikimediafoundation website the more I can.
However, there are just not enough people interested
to do the translation. This is a structural issue we
can not go against, however hard we try.

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

Ah voting !

Yes, sure.

Well, you are welcome :-)
But I would be happy that this vote is not a 3 days
sampling this time, but really a wikimedia-wide vote.
With say 1 month of discussion, translation of all
relevant argument in all major languages, and at least
2 week long vote.

My, this would really be a major decision for our
future as a global community. It deserves that.

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