Talk:OKA/Instructions for editors

Harv citations

Harvard citations are only one type of short citation. This section should probably be renamed "Short citations", and all (or almost all) occurrences of Harv changed to short. Mentioning Harv as one of the types would be fine. Mathglot (talk) 19:49, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I've updated to reflect this 7804j (talk) 19:45, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Reusing references

There are several ways to cite the same source from several locations in the article. The original method, supported by the Wikimedia software and thus built in to all language versions of Wikipedia, is en:WP:Named references. Short citations (including Harvard citations) are not part of the Wikimedia platform, and are implemented by Wikipedia volunteers as a Module; in English Wikipedia, it is en:Module:Footnotes. The Module is widely copied to other projects, including 124 Wikipedias, thus probably includes all the languages currently being used by OKA translators; but it is not guaranteed to be present for every language. Mathglot (talk) 19:59, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Mathglot!

@Maye Fernandez @Sintropepe @Racnela21 Could you add the suggestions from Mathglot into the ES and PT language OKA guides, regarding short citations? 7804j (talk) 19:48, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I'll edit the PT version. Racnela21 (talk) 20:13, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

No problem! Maye Fernandez (talk) 06:04, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Finding gap topics

For further information, see Xtools: Not in the other language.

I saw no mention of what is very likely the best tool for finding quality gap topics. It is an xtools application that anybody can use. You provide a language pair, a category, and a category depth (use '1' to start), and then it finds all of the gap topics, i.e., a list of all of the articles in the source language for the given category, that do not have articles in the target language Wikipedia.

Example: here is a list of featured articles in Portuguese that have no article in English. If a translator has a particular interest area they would like to translate in, they can choose their own category from the SL. If a translator from French is interested in biographies of French people, then they can choose from this list of several hundred French articles to translate. English does not have to be the target language; here are all the French biographies not present on Spanish Wikipedia.

In my opinion, this tool should be front and center for OKA translators looking for articles to translate. If they have no subject preference, they should default the category to "Featured article" in the source language. This tool relies, of course, on proper linkage in Wikidata, which is not 100% foolproof, either (although mistakes and omissions are infrequent). After choosing a source article to translate, they should nevertheless not skip the § Check for similar articles in English step. The most likely hiccup is probably when a foreign Wikipedia has an article, English Wikipedia does not, but does have a broader article containing a section devoted to the topic of the foreign article, but I think your instructions already cover that case. The point being, the tool is a big timesaver, but you still have to do your due diligence in searching the target Wikipedia for similar topics. Mathglot (talk) 20:33, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

That's an amazing tool! I unfortunately did not know of it :O

I will experiment with it a bit, then add it to our instructions 7804j (talk) 19:51, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

7804j, Depending on how much work you feel like doing up front to smooth and speed the way for translators, you might consider modifying the instructions for how to set up their initial user page, to list a few of their favorite topics in their SL (source language) to translate from (which can be as general or as specific as they like), and their intended language pairs (SL ⟶ TL) where TL is either their native language (or languages) or one(s) they have level-5 professional competence in. Given those two factors, you could then add a == Suggested gap articles == section to their Talk page with few links to Xtools as described above, fine-tuned to their own language pair and fave topic(s). A bit of extra work for you, but should speed them on their way, and likely save time in the long run, and possibly yielding higher quality sources as well, in the case of the translating from the "Featured Article" category, which everybody would get by default in their chosen lang pair..

If you would like to collaborate on a dry run with this, pick two or three current and/or brand-new volunteers, ask them to list their lang pairs and fave topics on their User page (on en-wiki they can start with template {{Babel}}, but in addition they should be explicit about TL) and I will create sections on their UTP as described, and you can get back to them later after they've had a chance to try it out, and ask for feedback about whether it was helpful, and how it could be improved. If that works, you could apply it to new members. Lmk what you think. Mathglot (talk) 05:13, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Different rules for different Wikipedias

You were wise to mention the different rules for different Wikipedias at § Don’t wait until you know all the rules before publishing. I sometimes need to know the difference between rules at different Wikipedias, and one way to do that, is just pull up the rule, say, en:WP:No original research on English Wikipedia, and then scan down the language links (left sidebar in Vector 2010, top right dropdown in default view) and hover or click it. This will let you know that WP:OR is fr:Wikipédia:Travaux inédits (WP:TI) in French, or es:Wikipedia:Wikipedia no es una fuente primaria (WP:FP) in Spanish.

Not sure if it would be helpful to mention this on your instructions page or not. Also, even when the shortcuts are different, as in this case, in many cases foreign WP editors add redirect shortcuts, so that sometimes the same shortcut works there; for example, Spanish Wikipedia has es:WP:OR which also brings up their OR page. (However in French, fr:WP:OR is their Ornithology WikiProject, so it doesn't always work.)

As I work cross-wiki, I sometimes want to know these distinctions, so I created a table-generating template to show the equivalences among a brief selection of policies, guidelines, info pages, templates, and other useful pages; you can see it at my en-wiki User page by clicking '[show]' after the last user box. It is by no means exhaustive, basically just a proof-of-concept at this point, to see if it would be helpful to me (it is) but would require more work to add more rows, to be truly useful. Columns are partly parametrized, and need to be fully parametrized. The template supports 13 languages, but you only see the table columns there of personal interest to me, for example. See this page for (minimal) documentation. If you or someone wants to take it on for further development, be my guest. Mathglot (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Mathglot! That's a very good tip.

I'm not sure that our translators will need the table itself, as many of the policies are not directly applicable to them (e.g., no legal threat), but it's useful to remind them they can find the matching policy through the Wikidata links

@Racnela21 Could you add this tip to the instructions, and share it as well within our internal chat? 7804j (talk) 19:59, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do it. Racnela21 (talk) 20:09, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

What should not be linked

The following sentence appears in section What should not be linked (in the pink box):

Do not link to pages that redirect back to the page the link is on (unless the link is to a redirect).

It's a bit convoluted, but I get it, up until the parenthesis, and then I get lost. What does it mean? By definition according to the first part of the sentence, it *is* a redirect. Can you explain? Mathglot (talk) 22:35, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree, I also don't understand what is meant... I've fixed it, thanks for spotting! 7804j (talk) 20:04, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Module:CS1 translator

A tool is available at en:Module:CS1 translator which will automatically translate the most common foreign citation templates (cite web, cite book, cite journal) from more than a dozen foreign Wikipedia languages saving translators the time of converting them manually.

Citation templates such as Spanish es:Plantilla:Cita libro, French fr:Modèle:Lien web, or Portuguese pt:Predefinição:Citar periódico each contain localized parameter names which will not work at English Wikipedia (or at any other Wikipedia except their own) such as:

• {{cita libro |apellido= |nombre= |enlaceautor= |título= |url= |idioma= |otros= |edición= |año= |editor= |editorial= |ubicación= |isbn= |capítulo= |páginas= |cita= }}
• {{Lien web |langue= |auteur= |titre= |url= |date= |site= |éditeur= |isbn= |page= |citation= |consulté le= }}
• {{citar periódico |último= |primeiro= |último2= |primeiro2= |data= |título= |url= |periódico= |volume= |número= |páginas= |doi= |acessodata= }}

When users translate articles which use any of these templates, there is no need to convert them. Support exists to translate them automatically, for twelve to sixteen languages, depending on the citation template in question. The complete list can be found at en:Module:CS1 translator#Supported templates.

The mechanism is a bit different than editors are used to, as it does not involve substing a template, but rather exposing the templates and then waiting for a bot to come along and subst them later, so there is usually a short delay. The module documentation claims tat citations embedded within <ref> tags are not translated, but I'm not sure this is still the case, because I see plenty of examples of in-line foreign citations having been translated by the module, even though they are embedded in <ref> tags in the body. (If it is still an issue, there is a workaround using the |id= or |ref= params that I can explain later.)

For how it works, see for example English template, en:Template:Lien web which has the same name as the French template, and which redirects to en:Template:Cite web/French, which invokes the module to translate the French param names into English. The others all work in the same way. See en:Module:CS1 translator#Supported templates for a complete list. This module applies to translations *to* English Wikipedia. The module exists in ten other Wikipedias for translations into those ten languages, but I don't think any of them are one of your target languages. Mathglot (talk) 02:26, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendation!

@Sintropepe Could you test the tool recommended by Mathglot and, once you're familiar with it, update our instructions so that we recommend its use as relevant? (+ send an update in the Google Chat) 7804j (talk) 13:23, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course! On it. @7804j Sintropepe (talk) 13:58, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

For a handy list of all of them, see Navbox en:Template:Non-English citation templates. If it would help, that template could be imported to meta, and then displayed directly in the appendixes of your project page. Mathglot (talk) 02:10, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Foreign versions of the instructions

You mentioned foreign versions of the instructions (es, pt) at #Reusing references above. This being meta, it should mention any and all foreign versions of this page (even if not identical) at the top of the instructions. (And there should be a page at en-wiki, too, even it is only a soft redirect.) Having a series of translated versions is not unusual for meta, and there might be a template that lets you link to all of them; check around. Mathglot (talk) 05:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

These instructions for other languages are already published in meta, and we link to this page at a few places in our general instructions doc + in the homepage on Meta. Is this what you meant? 7804j (talk) 13:25, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Translations don't have to be single-source, or complete

I had a few tips to pass along, so I thought I'd mention them here. Imho, when a translator creates a new article, there is no particular reason to translate all of the SL article, rather than just part of it. One could just as well create three short articles about three different topics, as one longer one three times as long about just one topic, for example. That's a judgment call I'll leave to you and your translators, but is something to consider. (That also leaves the option of translating only the best parts, leaving out poorer or uncited sections, or if all of it is pretty good, taking a long article with sixteen long sections, and instead of chopping it off after the fourth one, instead translating just the first couple of sentences of all sixteen, so the original overall structure is intact (but only if it is a good one!) and leaving other editors to come in and backfill and extend the section content later. So there are a lot of approaches to this.

The other aspect of this, is that there is no particular reason a translation has to come from only one source; translators who are multilingual should be encouraged to check multiple foreign Wikipedia sources. When I was translating en:War guilt question for example, I relied heavily on both the French and the German articles, and you can see plenty of evidence of that at the article. One trick I use sometimes when translating, is to create a translated version of just the section heading structure of the original foreign wiki article, i.e., all the headings, but no content. For en:War guilt question, I created one each for French and German; you can see them linked from this discussion (or just see these links: French, German). I used them as a guide to decide how I wanted to organize the section structure of the English article, which doesn't always follow the originals, and to organize what sections I wanted to translate from what source, merging it all into one article at en-wiki.

That article is a good segue for mentioning the Further ill template (Further interlanguage link) in use at that article, and a helpful tool for translators. This template is especially useful when you translate part of a section from a foreign Wikipedia article, without translating the entire section. In this case, you can signal that there is more information at the original article(s) to be translated, through the use of this template. You can see examples of it in use at that article, in sections § Landsberg project, § Potsdam Reichsarchiv, and many others.

As another example of using more than one Wikipedia source, note that in the Xtools link I listed above for pt ⟶ en, result #23 is pt:História do tempo presente. While en-wiki doesn't have an article for that topic, beside Portuguese, it exists also in Catalan, Spanish, and French. Multilingual translators should be aware of that, so they can pick and choose what sections of what originals they want to translate from. And it needn't be just Portuguese, or just French, they can mix & match, like I did with en:War guilt question. Imho, they should pick whatever foreign Wikipedia articles or sections that have the best, well-sourced content, and create the TL article from the best of the best. At least, that's how I approach it. Mathglot (talk) 07:24, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Mathglot! I've added a new section: OKA/Instructions for editors#Don't always translate the whole article

@Sintropepe @Racnela21 @Maye Fernandez FYI, good advice that we should promote to the teams. Maybe also have a look at the other tips that Mathglot shared and feel free to distill this into our guidelines whatever you feel is helpful 7804j (talk) 16:44, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Redacted my comment above—additions underlined—for clarity. Mathglot (talk) 09:00, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Article title

Your instructions section § Find the best fitting name in English has a pink 'Important' box saying "If you have any doubt about the title, check with other translators or your Manager or start a new question topic in Google Chats, as this is the most important thing to get right and can be hard to change", but it is far from the most important thing to get right (Notability, verifiability, sufficient citations, no original research, due weight, and many other things are more important). If they get it wrong, it is easy to change. So, this section about getting the title right is over-emphasized. That said, it is one thing that if it is way off, may attract criticism, as in this example, so it's worth looking around to see what the topic is called in local language sources. But don't worry about getting it exactly right. Mathglot (talk) 09:46, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree it's easy to change, but it's been one of the topics that generated the most negative attention (as you said, because it's very visible). I've updated the wording to reduce emphasis. 7804j (talk) 19:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Check for similar articles in English

Section "Check for similar articles in English" (which should actually be named, "Check for similar articles in target language" if it is hosted here on Meta and purports to apply to all languages) says to use Google, and while that's a good idea, especially since Google will sometimes catch stuff that MW's Cirrus search does not, Google will not find Drafts, which are not indexed. But if you create distributed OKA instructions at each language that needs it (only three so far, right?) then you can also search Drafts by including an <inputbox> in your instructions page, you can search for articles and drafts at the same time, right from the instructions page, and it's hard to miss or skip the box. See for example, en:Help:Your first article#Search for an existing article, which searches English Wikipedia articles and drafts at the same time.

The limitation of an input box is that it can only search the local database (en-wiki, in that example) so I don't believe you can make that work here at Meta for different languages (or even for English). (With an offline program like WikiBlame, you could, but that would require leaving the page, and getting someone to write a program and host it; perhaps someone at Toolforge would be willing to do that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.)

We have a situation right now regarding an issue with searching for similar articles before starting a draft. It concerns en:Draft:Tulunid Emirate, which looks like a really interesting article, but afaict duplicates the topic en:Tulunids, or at least overlaps it a great deal. This must be a result of insufficient attention to or unawareness of the search step. See also en:Draft talk:Tulunid Emirate#Feedback. If there is one case like this, there are probably others, and imho more attention should be paid to the Search step, to avoid unnecessary or duplicate effort. Mathglot (talk) 23:01, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikitracker document sort

The oka.wiki/tracker spreadsheet should default to sorting on column C (source language). Translators are going to want to look for their own SL to translate from, and it makes no sense to have to scroll through the entire sheet looking for them, they should all be contiguous. Mathglot (talk) 19:17, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Red link instructions

I boldly changed instruction 1.8 in OKA/Checklist#Before publishing (or while working on your draft): from

8. Keep red links only if the page exists in the source language

to

8. If a blue link in SL becomes red in TL, use Template:interlanguage link if you can, otherwise leave it red in TL

Red links are a means of growing the encyclopedia, and are encouraged. The best thing to do, when a foreign article exists but a target language article does not, is to link both at once, leaving the local link red and the foreign link blue as an indicator that: 1) More information is available at the blue link, if you read that language, and 2) here is a translation opportunity: just click the red link, and start translating from the blue one.

The best way to do that, is with the interlanguage link template, which exists in many wikis, such as en:Template:Interlanguage link (or, en:Template:Ill at en-wiki) and notably disabled for main space in nl-wiki. As a fallback position For those editors for whom using the Interlanguage link template is too much of a burden, they should be encouraged to just leave the link red in the target language; perhaps a future editor will create the article, and hopefully they will find the existing foreign one when they do. Mathglot (talk) 19:27, 22 September 2024 (UTC)