Talk:Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Diversity/12

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

Most likely, new comments will not be taken into account by the new three Working Group members in their work of developing the final Recommendations. You are free however to continue discussing in the spirit of "discussing about Wikipedia is a work in progress". :)

Comment

• Harmless but seems redundant; we already have projects in tons of different languages. We might do better to focus more on recruiting editors who speak those languages to work on them. Seraphimblade (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Step 1

Wonder how long it takes to translate this recommendation into at least some major languages. Online since 4 days: so far no translation at all .oO ...Sicherlich ^Post 17:18, 12 August 2019 (UTC) no need to hurry. Its just "global" strategy and wiki means acutally nothing ^^ SCNR

What IS the actual recommendation?

Sorry, I read the document twice, but I did not understand what is the actual recommendation of this document. The topic is linguistic diversity, I get it. Something about software, too. But what exactly? Ziko (talk) 10:16, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. If you want to start a Wikipedia in a language that doesn't have one (say Sidamo, the language with the most speakers without a Wikipedia in their language), then start one. The process exists, & I believe is simple enough. If there is a problem with starting such a Wikipedia, then change the process. Beyond that, I don't know what could be done. -- Llywrch (talk) 18:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I’m also not clear what exactly (or even broadly) is being proposed here. Incidentally I spend a lot of time translating articles from other languages into en.wiki but recently I’ve wondered if there’s much point. Google provides a fairly decent translation instantaneously - not the quality we want of course but good enough to give you a decent idea of the topic. So I wonder whether we shouldn’t just concentrate on getting more stuff up in one language, any language, and worry a bit less about making all of it available in multiple languages. Mccapra (talk) 21:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

+1. Very confusing. Anthere (talk)

I believe that the Working Group must make a tangible recommendation and then present a cost-benefit analysis of the recommendation. For example, if the recommendation is that the WMF sponsor simultaneous translation at WMF staff meetings, Board meetings, Wikimania, etc. (like the UN) then which languages will be supported, and what would be the cost? The various Working Groups have proposed establishing additional governing bodies and standing committees and as the number of decision-making groups increases, the translation costs will increase as well. Are you willing to limit your recommendation to just the top 5 most frequently spoken languages, or are your recommendations extending to 7,000 different languages? Without translation services at meetings, how can a person who does not speak English function? I look forward to your clarification. Thanks, Hlevy2 (talk) 09:35, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

It is now September 1, and Wikimania is long passed, yet Q2.2 is still answered "ToDo". When will a more complete recommendation be made available for community comment? I am looking forward to working with you on this issue. Thanks, Hlevy2 (talk) 13:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Vague

The recommendations are too vague barring technical stuff.

• A strategy_working_group asking for adopt(ion) (of) explicit and focused strategic principles to ensure the movement’s language diversity is nonsense. Specifications, please.
• The organizations that support Wikimedia projects worldwide will be more representative of all humanity, according to the vision.

• Another barrage of buzzwords but w/o anything concrete.

• .... However, one type of diversity is often forgotten, despite being very important for humanity and for Wikimedia projects: diversity of Languages .... every human is able to easily find useful educational and reference information about a variety of topics without having to learn any other language ...

• We have already thought that about 15 years ago and went on to implement other-language-wikis, some of which are immensely developed/popular (de/fr/nl ... ). Sigh.

• The sole concrete stuff is present in the last line about certain technical features.

• Yet again, your ideas have been proposed by the community much ago. Global templates/modules have been asked for years but sternly neglected by WMF. Again, WMF is near-always asked to develop wiki-agnostic tools but it (almost always) doesn't happen.
• Sharing of content is vague -- commons resources/TWL are heavily shared across different wikis. What do you mean by content? Structured data is a good point .... Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 12:16, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Wish to support but can't, due to the vagueness. Seems to be harmless, though. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 11:09, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Nous have ήδη

Projekte in pluribus taals. There are at the moment 294 active Wikipedias. Cogito plurimos posse patrius sermone sui scribere legereque. Neue Sprachen können jederzeit durch das Langcom zugelassen werden, wenn sie die nötigen Kriterien erfüllen, sonst sehe ich hier nicht viel mit Substanz. Je pense — aprés lire votres propositions — que vous n'êtes pas informé de tout au les sujets de Wikimedia, c'est trés déplorable. — KPFC 💬 08:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Harassment at its best

Making a recommendation for language diversity only in English is derisive to all non native speakers. That is exactly the subtle form of harassment the WMF claims to fight against. I hope Trust and Safety will take their job seriously and sanction the people responsible for that.

--Heinrich Reuhl (talk) 10:43, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Ironisch, nicht war? -- Llywrch (talk) 17:04, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Irony? Good point. I so far assumed that these are serious recommendations. I have to think about the possiblity that they are an insider joke I did not get. --Heinrich Reuhl (talk) 06:59, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Humor is often lost in translation. -- Llywrch (talk) 21:19, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

This recommendation is confusing

It's really not clear what you're getting at here. Are you saying "we should have more projects in more languages"? Are you saying "everything should be made available in every language"?

Aside from the need to be more clear in this recommendation, one significant risk that you have not considered is that there's plenty of evidence already that just creating a project in a language does not mean that the project will thrive, grow, or be useful even to readers/users of that language. We have an awful lot of projects today that have few participants, few readers, and few articles. It is difficult to justify using limited resources to add even more such projects, when those same resources could be focused on supporting a wide range of existing diverse projects that have industrious communities and show steadily increasing growth, participation and use. Risker (talk) 03:00, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Better tools for Incubator / test wiki sites, not auto-generated content

Incubator needs to have editing tools equivalent to major languages. The link structure requires prefixes, which makes it way too difficult to add links. There's no pageviews tool so you can see what pages are popular. The articles don't link to English, so it doesn't look like a "real Wikipedia."

Relying on templates and auto-generated articles can just put people off in the beginning stages of a new encyclopedia. People from two indigenous communities have told me that they'd seen auto-generated content from unknown people, and had "no comment" on it. One person expressed hope that the spammer would eventually go away, so the content could be removed.

What language learners from a small community need are a few well-written pages that are worth reading, and specific to their interests. (For an example of a wiki with just a few pages, but useful content, see Pipil Wikipedia.) Oliveleaf4 (talk)

Comment on Q 3.2 - Indigenous communities may have better things to do than rewrite software documentation

The requirement that communities with lesser-spoken languages translate software documentation into their language can be a barrier. Members of my language community are simply not interested in spending their time translating technical material, and they tell me if they can't have a real Wikipedia, just an Incubator site, then they don't want to participate. If a small language community prefers to use existing documentation in a more widely spoken language, such as English or Russian, is this really a problem? Adding a brief list of local language terms to documentation such as "computer", "internet", and "save" should be sufficient. -- Oliveleaf4 (talk) 21:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment on Q 5

The material an indigenous community needs for its purposes may be different from what you would write for English speakers. Simply providing more text to improve machine translation isn't an appropriate goal for all languages. Am wondering if any indigenous language communities were consulted for this section. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 21:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment on Q 3.1 - What will change

Regarding WMF practices, are we really in a position at this point to expand to multiple languages of record for meetings, like the UN? An easier initial approach could be holding regional meetings in regional languages, and providing English language translation with video. We could also provide professional or semi-professional simultaneous interpretation at Wikimanias upon request, so that presenters can express themselves in whatever language is most comfortable for them. A serious commitment to multi-lingual meetings would require equipment, and a financial commitment, not just asking random volunteers to translate. Perceptions of second language speakers aren't always accurate, and many have much more sophisticated content and analysis than we realize. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 21:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia France

Be vigilant to the linguistic diversity of the main events of the movement (Wikimania, Wikimedia Summit) and encourage social and income diversity of the movement:

• events: a difficult question to treat but almost never raised, no serious thought; there are scholarships but the system itself is humiliating (being forced to apply to participate in an inclusive movement is problematic)
• projects: develop actions in the area of social diversity, non-graduates, poor, single mothers, isolated peasants, disadvantaged neighborhoods...

On behalf of the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia France, Pierre-Yves Beaudouin (talk) 11:20, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

New draft

In the new recommendation drafts, this one was merged with others: Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Sprint/Diversity/5 (Talk). --MarioGom (talk) 17:25, 22 September 2019 (UTC)