Talk:A newer look at the interlanguage link

Prologue

I think, there is a big minus in this idea. In the old system it is enough to know, like the subject of the article would be named in another language. For instance, if you create the article "Париж" in ru-wiki and you know, that the town is named Paris in french, you can try to find the article in fr-wiki to interwikilink. That's easy. In the new system you have to know, in which language the article was created first. How will you know?

Simply, copy the {{#interlanguage}} bit from Paris :) Nikola 19:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In the old system it's easy to unite two "islands", e.g. en-fr-da with bg-uk-de. How will it work in the new system?

If two "islands" appear, it will mean that there are two articles on the central wiki about the same subject. For example, en-fr-da have central wiki page X, while bg-uk-de have central wiki page Y.

As a quick fix, simply redirect Y to X. As a good fix, change en-fr-da links from X to Y. It is still less work than in current system. Nikola 19:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Now I will stop critizise, because I see a lot of pluses ;-) --Obersachse 21:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I consider all possible flaws, noted by Obersachse, as minor. But he is right in the point that this proposal is about creation of some completely new namespace, which needs to be managed by someone. What should be such a «central wiki»? What will be the keys: words of some language, arbitrary index numbers, or some classificator? Who will administrate it, e.g. split or delete keys? Another major obstacle is inconsistency of translation of some terms between some languages, even sometimes incompartible views of different wikipedias; see Interwiki conflicts and talk page. The proposed system could be used in arranging interwiki about persons, films and other well-distinguishable objects. But it will put Wikipedia in a nightmare when we will link scientific terms and commonly used words between languages. Incnis Mrsi 23:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A central wiki should be a new wiki, for example at http://interlanguage.wikimedia.org . Page names should be words of some language, I suggested article name in the first language that covers a subject, but that is on the Wikimedia community to decide. As there are people who are active in maintaining current interlanguage system by running a herd of interlanguage bots, I believe that same people will be interested in maintaining the interlanguage wiki. I'll take a longer look at interwiki conflicts, but in ways similar to those used now, they could also be solved with the Interlanguage Extension. Nikola 19:47, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support this! And I hope it doesn't get ignored (regarding its realization) like MediaZilla:4547 was/is, for example. Many thanks for your MediaWiki extension, Nikola! --- Greetings, Melancholie 01:55, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Extra possibilities

I hope that another possibility out of this is to be able to construct a language neutral Wikipedia URL to give to somebody, and based on browser identification, it will give the right language version. Now _that_ would be nice (and seems possible with the information we have here. --Alias 16:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

By itself, the extension wouldn't allow something like that, but it could make making such a thing easier in the future. Nikola 19:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Ger rid of bots at last

Once the system is implemented, we will get rid of interwiki bot edits that really ruin the "Recent Changes" page (and probably use lots of servers' resources). I wish this project all possible success. Amikeco 12:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that then other jobs can done by bots. Find and connecting islands. Solving redirects, spelling. But with the growing number of wiki's the bots without botflags are ruining the RC page. So please report the bots without flag and block them or give them that botflag. CarsracBot 14:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

about Wiktionary:Translations

If this method can be applied to Wiktionary:Translations, would be better.--Dingar 12:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that it could be applied directly. Of course, it could be used for Wiktionary interlanguage links. Nikola 19:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Interlanguage Wiki?

Just a quick question, what exactly would go on the interlanguage wiki page for an article? Just language links. Maybe a soft redirect. Because I know when you put the links on the interlanguage wiki page, the page will just come up blank. Parent5446 23:02, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

What could be nice - and helpful to find errors as well - is an automatic generated list for each language on the interlanguage page listing the first sentence or sentences of each article. For instance: (for the article Paris)

nl:Parijs

Parijs (Frans: Paris) is de hoofdstad en regeringszetel van Frankrijk.

en:Paris

Paris (pronounced /ˈpærɨs/ in English;[3] [paʁi] (help·info) in French) is the capital city of France.

ru:Париж

Париж (фр. Paris, трансл.: Пари́) — столица Франции, важнейший экономический и культурный центр страны, расположенный в северной части центральной Франции, в регионе Иль-де-Франс на берегах реки Сены.

fr:Paris

Paris (prononcé /pa.ʁi/) est la ville la plus peuplée et la capitale de la France, chef-lieu de la région d’Île-de-France et unique commune-département du pays.

gan:巴黎

巴黎（法語：Paris）係法國嗰首都，位到喺塞納河岸舷上，係法蘭西大島嗰中心。巴黎市區有到2005年估計 2,153,600人 [1]。巴黎大都會區人口有993萬 [2]，哈有條兜巴黎一圈嗰通勤帶，攏共115萬人 [3]，係歐洲人口最多嗰地區之一 [4] 。

etcetera... for all languages if possible. (While I am making this list I see the difficulties... templates... images... disambiguations which are often at the beginning of each page) Ellywa 19:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You can do it manually of course, and I'm not sure if it would be practical to make an extension that would do it automatically. Perhaps a bot could help... ;) Nikola 19:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

It would come up blank, but you would have the links in the bottom left. Just mouse-over a known language and see what it's about. Of course, it would probably be practical for a page to have some basic info. Nikola 19:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this wiki should have pages with (automatic?/template?) tables in which every interwikilink to that page is present (as overview), like:

fr	Paris	la capitale de la France
nl	Parijs	de hoofdstad van Frankrijk

A method is that it has to be entered on the pages hand by hand.

Another method could be that the onliest thing what is needed to change the descriptionpage on the interwikiproject, is to add a kind of template/language code (or better) like {{interlanguage|<id>|<description>}} or [[interlanguage:<id>|<description>]] on the pages of the various projects in all sort of languages. <id> = the pagename/way of identification on the interlanguageproject. <description> = the description of the page in that language, in the example of Paris, that would be on the fr-wiki: la capitale de la France or France, la capitale. Just like a category, when a page is added to a category, it appears in that on the interlanguage-page (with language-code and description) without having to do anything (if the category already exists). And an interwikilanguage-page should be created when it doesn't exist yet. Just like a category it is possible (not always needed) to add more information on the page, in cases when the language isn't understandable for people like as example for Europeans the Japanese characters.

This is an interesting idea, but I guess it will be easier to just go with article introductions. Nikola 21:26, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

But the names of the pages, what should it be? Options are:

• (a) numbers like an identification-code;
  • Numbers are language independent.
  • If the name of an article/subject/town/country/etc changes, the name of the interwikiprojectpage doesn't have to change.
  • A disadvantage may be that a number doesn't say much about the subject (however there could be some sort of code present like only the first three digests for very large groups of subjects, like "400..." for topographical entities).
• (b) the name of the page in the first language who created the interwikilink;
  • A pont in Dutch (ferry) is something different than a pont in French (bridge), and this could be a problem for many subjects. Both in different languages as in the same language words that are written the same have different meanings and different pages.
  • It can or will be a rubish with all the pages in at least hundred langauges (and growing).
  • No need for determining which name should be the one for the interlanguage-pages.
• (c) a standard language which is used to create interwikilinks with;
  • As already said on this page, that there is no need for a language which is more equal than another.
  • A standard language like the English is for the MediaWiki software is easy.
  • If there isn't a page in English about a subject, it still should be possible creating an interlanguagelink, what will be become more difficult to dertermine the right name.

Perhaps more things will come up in the comming days. - I like this idea, have thought about it for years. Romaine 01:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding (a), people and numbers don't mix. I'm not sure that that would work well.

Regarding (b), yes, this could be a problem. It will be possible to disambiguate however, for example have articles "pont (nl)" and "pont (fr)". "Rubbish" will still be much better than what we have right now - we have tens or hundreds interlanguage links, each of which may be in an ununderstandable language. This way, we will have a single link which may be ununderstandable. Nikola 21:26, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Name of the interlanguage article

If I want add a link to the article that has none interwiki link jet I have to try every possible translation of the title of that article. Aspecially the chinese article names are very hard to find. If for example the zh wikipedia is imported first and then the english one, then a lot of articles are very unfindable for the english speaking under us. So I propose that it can be found under every possible translation of the article title. So on the interwiki wikipedia server it is posslble to create new entries and link articles to that. And at that moment you see the name of that article in the different names. And also it nice to still see the interwiki links to the different languages directly. If that is not possible is suggest that the article title are translated in the 10 biggest languages of the wikipedia. And that maximal 10 articles there are with the same content with those interwiki links CarsracBot 12:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

In my response i proposed using any wiki title in the group, so you could link to the group from any wiki. Platonides 09:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If I understood clearly your idea, that wouldn't work because of wikis that use same names for different concepts. Nikola 19:45, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

This is the lamest idea in wikipedia ever. Currently system is very good and why need to change to something strange? Why need other wiki? It will make a lot of confusions and nothing realy good. Let's work to solve current interwiki conflicts and all of things will be ok. Hugo.arg 07:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The interwiki system is very good when there are only a few languages. When there are 100 languages each small change of a title of an article on one of the languages requires 100 edits. A new article needs also 100 edits on other wikipedia's. Thats why the interwiki bots are getting buysier every day. Ellywa 19:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Otherwise, there are also a lot of interwikiconflicts. So leave "the very good" part, because mistakes created by bots and people occur often enough. And that will be out of date with this functionality. Romaine 19:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Translation

Talking about such an theme depending not only the english language wikipedia without using other languages is impossible. Where are the translations of the proposal? Marcus Cyron 12:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The proposal is under GFDL, everyone is free to translate it to any language. Nikola 19:43, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy: ontology

In the end this will be a test for the philosophical problem: whether there is a common ontology which lies beneath (and is independent of) the surface-language. – Kaihsu 13:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If I have understood correctly, this proposal isn’t really trying to force everything into one language-independent ontology. If we were planning to map all concepts e.g. to English, the initiative would be doomed to fail, but that is not how it would work. If a term exists only in, say, Finnish and (Finland-)Swedish, you can just use the Finnish or Swedish term to name the subject. The only difference compared to the current method is that the links would be stored in a central location. --Silvonen 10:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, but...

...how to make the first link to a "central wiki", and what exactly is the "central" wiki for interwiki linkng? Surely, it has to be something new, because an exisiting wiki would be unacceptable, since all wikis are equal, and we don't want some wikis to be more equal than others.

One thing I would like to see, is that all index information (categories, interwikis) move to another namespace. This would reduce the errors introduced by newbies who remove those strange lines they don't understand, and it would make it possible to maintain the interwikis on protected pages. It would also reduce the long list of edits in my watchlist, and make the work of automated systems to maintain the interwikilinks easuer and faster. Since each page has its own talk page, creating an index namespace doesn't seem a technically difficult thing to do to me - Quistnix 00:52, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The proposal suggests a central wiki ("interlanguage.wikimedia.org"). giggy _(:O) 03:42, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

When you first translate a page (or notice that there are two unlinked pages about the same topic), you would have to create a page on the central wiki with interlanguage links to both pages. I am thinking about modifying the extension so that it would display a red link to the central wiki if the page is not there, which would ease the process, but is otherwise not necessary. Nikola 20:47, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Central database and types of objects

It may be useful to create and manage some central database, but I strongly oppose to relaying on terms in natural languages. It will make English more equal than others if English will be used in the central database, but in essentially multilingual database will me a lot of confusion (word collisions, duplicates etc.).

I agree that there are potential problems, but I don't see how could it be done otherwise, and anyway it won't be worse than the current system. Nikola 21:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

We should start to use such a centralized system only for some classes of objects, like persons, organizations, some types of works of art, chemical substances, astronomical and geographical objects, some type of historical events, biological species. The criterion should be: such objects must be well distinguishable and, possibly, hierarchically ordered.

Also, we should supply an additional information for that objects, to make incorrect binding almost impossible. Persons have birth dates, organizations – official names, films and books – year of release, astronomical and geographical objects in some cases may be identified by approximate values of coordinates. Also, we should use existing (external) keys as strong as possible, such as latin names for species, IMDB index for films, CAS registry numbers for substances. We should obtain not only a piece of syntactic sugar for interwiki, but a semantically useful system. Incnis Mrsi 22:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Full support. --Obersachse 15:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Why no start with for example species which are described with their Latin names added? Romaine 20:57, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, instead of always using the name in the first language, this is another possibility: use the "most basic" name if possible. Plants and animals could go by the Latin name, chemicals by their chemical formula or CAS number, astronomical objects by their catalogue number, people and places by their name in their language (though the last two may be a point of contention). Nikola 21:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Numbered system and possibilities

To avoid problems related to language-neutrality, we could use a numbered system by sequentially numbering the pages as they are added. Inter:1226, for example, might link en:Blue iguana, eo:Blua igvano and es:Cyclura lewisi. This would avoid problems of over-dependence on one language and semantic drift caused by pages titles being pegged to one language. The name of the page could be displayed as the user's preference language (as a user with English as the preference language, Inter:1226 would be displayed as ":en:Blue iguana"). Potentially, en.wikipedia could place [[inter:Blue iguana]] at the bottom of their article and this would automatically link to Inter:1226 based on the inclusion of en:Blue iguana on that inter page (or this could be entirely automated based upon the presence of a link to the article on an interwiki page). This would make for very low maintenance of links to the interwiki on individual language Wikipedias.

Each inter page would effectively describe a relationship between articles in different languages ("en:X:is the same topic as fr:Y"). It might be useful to use modified MediaWiki software such as Semantic MediaWiki or that on OmegaWiki to make the pages more dynamic and easy-to-edit. This would also provide software more appropriate for, essentially, a database project. Further, relationships between topics could be described (if software like Semantic MediaWiki were used). This would provide another way to browse Wikipedia, and present a useful semantically-meaningful hierarchy of topics on Wikipedia. It would also allow the contents of different language Wikipedias to be linked in more dynamic ways and for the emphases of different language Wikipedias to be compared.

Finally, where appropriate, links to different Wikimedia projects such as Commons, Wiktionary and WikiSource could be added to these interpages. Inter:254 might list en:William Shakespeare, de:William Shakespeare..., and then link to Commons:William Shakespeare, books:Author:William Shakespeare, books:de:William Shakespeare... Samples of each link (such as the first two sentences or the first image) could be included on the inter page.

We should probably aim low at first and create a project that does the basic job of providing lists of related interwiki links. Once this is of a sufficient completeness, it could be integrated into other Wikimedia projects at their discretion. The project could be later embellished with semantic relationships and other features if there were community consensus and developers interested in the project. --Oldak Quill 05:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)