Forum:Language separation

Forums: Index > Watercooler > Language separation

Multilinguism within any one wiki gets messy, and it's beginning to be noticeable here. Wikipedia is segregated by language, each wikipedia led by different administrators and governed by different policies. There exists a French equivalent to Familypedia (Wiki Familles), which is linked on our main page; however, Familypedia also houses several articles in French and other languages (see Category:Pages by language), although they are the relative minority compared to the number of articles in English. I propose making this an English-language-only wiki. Continuing to promote multilinguism on Familypedia will make administration and organization more difficult as it grows; and multilinguism here hampers the growth of non-English articles since they are secondary on this wiki [e.g., Article name (.es)]. We can still collaborate research-wise with non-English speakers by providing a link on our articles to those on the sister wikis, but I feel continuing to promote grassroots multilinguism here is counterproductive and will only create headaches as we grow. What say you? —DeGraffJE ^talk 20:30, December 6, 2009 (UTC)

You are free to contribute english articles if that is your preference, but I think you will find very little support for your proposal to bar people from entering articles in their own language. Further, I for one intend to heavily promote multilingualism here. Genealogy is inherently multilingual and this spring there will be a substantial increase in the amount of multilingual articles in Familypedia. I couldn't disagree with you more about which approach is more tidy. The idea of cross collaboration between separate wikis with separate databases is the epitome of messiness, disorganization and defeat of collaboration between researchers in multiple countries. I believe you are as mistaken about this as you are about your opposition to form based editing and to semantic mediawiki. It seems to me that your understanding of multilingual capability of this wiki is quite limited, so perhaps it would be useful for you to educate yourself more about the multilingual capabilities on this wiki before profering an expert opinion on the subject. ~ Phlox 06:54, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

I value your opinion, but your tone is incivil and inappropriate. —DeGraffJE ^talk 13:32, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

I value your opinion as well. My suggestion to you about educating yourself better about the multiligual capabilities of this wiki was not intended as a personal slight. I am sorry that you took it as such. Please assume good faith when reading the opinions of those who disagree with you. ~ Phlox 03:25, December 8, 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Phlox on this. Multilinguality is a lesser evil than multiplication of data. rtol 06:02, December 8, 2009 (UTC)

zou de aap dan toch uit de mouw komen ? Bergsmit 15:02, December 9, 2009 (UTC)

Fred, your metaphorical reference about monkey's and bags is unclear. Do you mean this is like opening a can of worms? Much as I love similes, I'd like to know your opinion whether you favor or disfavor the proposal to ban contributions that are not in English. 41.211.32.82 06:50, December 10, 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Phlox and rtol. Wikia can handle multilingual wikis, although this site may be the pioneer in that regard (and could get more attention paid to its multilinguality instruction pages). Genealogy needs to be multilingual, because we are all related to everyone else and there is no point writing several hundred articles about one person (one for each language) if you need manual ways of linking them and can't share common data and family linkages (and therefore have to update every alteration several hundred times). The French offshoot was one man's idea. He was contributing here, and seems not to have realised the difficulty of setting up your own genealogy wiki, which he did with no discussion here. Since he stopped contributing after 8 weeks, that wiki has gone practically nowhere. See its last 350 days. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:07, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

Understood. I just feel that using interlanguage links (as encouraged by Central Wikia; see Help:Languages#Interlanguage links) would help with organization (no Category:Languages and no (.es) suffixes) and help the non-English sections to grow by having a default language for communication (Bergsmit's message on this thread, no offense, is evidence of the cultural and language barriers that present themselves). With regards to the French genealogy wikia, it has 350 articles, more than any non-English language on this wikia (at least according to the static statistics page)--impressive even if mostly attributable to one user. Curious...why did that user decide to leave here?

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's input and know this is a sensitive subject, but I believe a bold change is needed to help us grow, in all languages. Perhaps Phlox can share some of the "multilingual capabilities on this wiki" he alluded to previously that might address these issues? Using separate wikias and interlanguage links is my best idea at the moment (and apparently Wikia Admin's too, since they have linked the French genealogy wikia onto our main page). —DeGraffJE ^talk 01:37, January 3, 2010 (UTC)

We can use the interlanguage links (created in the same way as on Wikipedia) as long as there are genealogy Wikia sites in other languages. See http://familles.wikia.com/index.php?title=Cat%C3%A9gorie:Noms_de_famille&diff=4751&oldid=3262, for another example of a link to us, also created by User:Cywil. There are a few from here to "familles", and anyone can create them. If Phlox and other experts manage to get our own multilingual capability fully working and documented (so that the rest of us can follow it easily), it may eventually be seen to be the best way, and the other wikis may re-merge. Until they do, I'm happy to see inter-language links to and from them. See http://familles.wikia.com/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Cywil. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:33, January 5, 2010 (UTC)