Project talk:Languages/Meeting Agenda

Alissa's opinions

Firstly, I want to state my preference to follow ordinary Mediawiki conventions on wiki namespace usage. One of the consequences of this policy is that the page Project:Languages/Meeting Agenda should not be in the project namespace; it should be either in the default (unprefixed) namespace or in the project-talk namespace, because project namespace is dedicated for the meta information regarding the wiki site itself, and discussion on the meta information should be on project-talk namespace. At the same time, the page is on an in-world activity, and it can be in the default namespace. Well, this may seem somewhat off-topic, but one of the discussion item here is related to a page of the name "Project:I18n", that I believe is not appropriate for the project namespace and being there makes some confusion. (I'm writing my opinion on this issue in more detail later.) I'm raising this issue here because I'm afraid that putting this page in project namespace makes yet another confusion for future readers... Please be sure to note that the page Project:Languages is not on any project at all; it is on this SL wiki. See Project:Editing Guidelines#"Project" namespace if you are not familiar with the concept.

Secondly, I believe the SL wiki guidelines should be set primarily to facilitate readers first. Writers' benefits are less important than the readers', where they conflict. I'm stating this because I have a feeling that some discussion items are related to this policy.

My opinions on specific issues follow:

Should translated pages link to other translated pages or to the english (possibly more up-to-date) parent?

At this moment, translated pages have links to all available translations. I see no problem with it. Why is this an issue?

In case there is no translated page available to link to, should a link to a non-existing page be implemented or a link to the english parent?

I prefer linking to the English page. I believe it is more convenient for a reader than writing a dead link, in both of the following three cases:

1. if a reader prefers, say French, but is capable of reading English, seeing an English page is better for him/her than seeing an empty edit page,
2. if a reader prefers French, is not capable of reading English, but is capable of, say, Spanish, and the target page has no French translation but has English and Spanish, then linking to English page is better since he/she will be able to find the Spanish translation on the top of the English version of the target page, and
3. if a reader prefers French, and it is the only language he/she can read, there are no difference between linking to the existing English page and linking to the non existing French page.

On the other hand, I guess linking to a non existing translation page has following advantages:

1. It is easier for a translator who is looking for pages that need his/her help to find one, since the link appears in red if it points to a non existing page, and
2. When a translator created a new translation, if other translated pages points to the English page, the translator (or somebody else) needs to fix the links to point to the newly translated page. If those pages pointed to the non existing translated page, the links need not to be modified.

Both advantages of linking to a non existing translation page are for translators but readers. Hence, I don't support this. I have no alternate idea for the first advantage, but I have one for the latter; I suggest using Mediawiki Special:Whatlinkshere feature so that the job of finding links to be fixed is easier.

Should a link to an english parent become marked in any way? How?[1]

Hmm. I thought just write a link (anchor texts) in English if it points to an English page. (I implicitly assumed it when I wrote "it's better to link to the translated page. Such links are better to have translated anchor".) Do readers prefer seeing anchor texts in the page's language even in case the linked page is only available in English?

How to implement categories for each language?[2]

My original intention was simply follow the www.mediawiki.org policies' on pages under help namespace, that was, when I first wrote Project:Languages, just put all translated pages in the same category as the English page. That implied no localized/language-specific categorization. Early complains I heard regarding this policy was "Seeing non English pages in a category page is just harmful; I have no interest on pages written other than English," and I just ignored those voices... However, I later foud that most people don't want to see pages written in languages other than his/her own preference... Well, I was wrong guessing what's best.

I have a feeling that the current convention that is common to both SL wiki and www.mediawiki.org regarding this issue is to create a category of the name category/language where category is the category name in English and language is a two letter language code. Why a language specific category name sould be in English? (Well, I know the answer; it is because our cross language reference tool (Template:Multi-Lang) assumes that convention. So, this is not a question really. :-) This of course relates to the next issue.

How can articles become categorized with a translated articlename?[3]

I'm not exactly sure what this issue really means. I guess many readers prefer to see article names in their preferred language. I guess many readers also prefer their pages are categorized in translated category names. Anyway I have no good idea how we can achieve them...

Merge or distinguish Project

Languages & Project:i18n (discussion)

I remember the debate I had with SignpostMarv Martin regarding this issue. I don't understand why someone raised this issue. The Project:Languages contains information for (primarily) all SL wiki readers and writers. So I believe it is very appropriate for project namespace. On the other hand, the contents under Project:I18n is not really suitable with the project namespace; it is on a project called "Project:i18n" and is not intended for a meta information reagarding SL wiki.

If I were a writer of the page, I would change the name of the page as Project i18n, putting it under the default name space. One of the activities of the project seems being translation of SL wiki pages, so the guidelines of the actual translation work can points to Project:Languages. I don't think it is appropriate to merge the contents in Project:Languages into Project:I18n since they are both for members of the project i18n and for non participants of the project. I don't think it is appropriate to merge the contents in Project:I18n into Project:Languages since they primarily contain something outside of SL wiki itself.

Please note again there are no project called Languages or Project Languages. The thing written in the page Project:Languages is the SL wiki policies on language uses.

-- Alissa Sabre 08:26, 7 July 2008 (PDT)