[Foundation-l] Language Review Committee

Thu Apr 5 05:45:19 UTC 2007

That's what all the debate is about. Some people, such as Jeff and
most of the people on the Langcom, seem to feel this is necessary.

Others, such as myself, Arbeo, David Gerard, yourself (Robert) and
several others seem to be having difficulty understanding why this is
necessary for precisely the reasons you have outlined.

Nobody seems to be making any new arguments.

Suffice to say, from discussions I have had with people who had
_formerly_ *approved* Wikipedias, they cannot understand why they are
required to do this, many of them don't know what exactly it is that
is required of them, and they are confused. It should be the
responsibility of the LAnguage Committee, not of me, to explain to
them what is happening here and give them a tutorial on how to edit
the messages file and give them help dealing with the problems like
the ones Fulup encountered.

We need to be amicable and try to make this process easier for these
people, not make it some sort of obstacle course.

Mark

On 04/04/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > On 04/04/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Mark Williamson wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> They *are* the ones doing this. The discussion here is about
> >>> restrictions being placed on these people.
> >>> What we *are* discussing is whether or not these people should be
> >>> burdened with translating LanguageBat-ltg.php before they even get
> >>> their own Wikipedia. Nothing more, nothing less.
> >>>
> >> Completing a language file is reasonable and must be done.  Period.
> >> There are XML dumps and other
> >> logostics reasons why this makes sense.
> >>
> >
> > Nobody in the past was required to do it _before_ they could start a
> > Wikipedia. I'm not sure why we need that requirement now. It's
> > certainly possible to extract the messages from
> > http://###.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php
> > post ipso facto. Translating the messages via the MediaWiki namespace
> > is certainly a lot less 'technical' and is going to be a lot easier
> > with little technical experience to do.
> >
> > I remember when a user wanted to translate the LanguageXX.php into
> > Breton, I had to walk him through certain parts (for example, the
> > Breton language uses an apostrophe as part of a trigraph, c'h, and you
> > have to type c/'h or it will think that's the end of the message).
> >
>
>
> I'm having a hard time trying to understand this one as well.  Certainly
> any such translation that already exists (for example, creating a new
> Wikibooks/Wikisource/etc. when a Wikipedia in that language already
> exists) perhaps ought to be carried over, but why would it be so much
> harder to simply open a new Wikipedia in a given target language and
> encourage early supporters and community members to simply make the
> appropriate changes to the MediaWiki namespace?  This sounds like a
> technical problem that is forcing people into doing things to suit the
> technology than trying to be amiable to people who very likely are not
> technically inclined.
>
> -- Robert Horning
>
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