I think the answer is "Yes and No". As with any new project/concept/idea/trial there are pro's and there are con's. The real question is: Do the pro's outweigh the con's?
>From just reading what you linked (And not in any way being involved with these language projects) and my own personal experiences of how I work on Wikipedia. Yes, I think it is a good thing overall. >From what I've seen, it is much easier to convince someone who has never edited, to fix grammatical, spelling or other "simple" mistakes. Generally people don't dive in and write/translate entire articles - it is simply too high of a barrier to entry. These pre-translated articles give people an "in", they are already there, and have obvious errors that are easy to fix. More "ok" content is better than no content, at least if I have my druthers. -Jon On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 23:12, Shiju Alex <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello All, > > Recently there are lot of discussions (in this list also) regarding the > translation project by Google for some of the big language wikipedias. The > foundation also seems like approved the efforts of Google. But I am not > sure > whether any one is interested to consult the respective language community > to know their views. > > As far as I know only Tamil, Bengali, and Swahili Wikipedians have raised > their concerns about Google's project. But, does this means that other > communities are happy about Google efforts? If there is no active community > in a wikipedia how can we expect response from communities? If there is no > response from a community, does that mean that Google can hire some native > speakers and use machine translation to create articles for that wikipedia? > > Now let us go back to a basic question. Does WMF require a wiki community > to > create wikipedia in any language? Or can they utilize the services of > companies like Google to create wikipedias in N number of languages? > > One of the main point raised by the supporters of Google translation is > that, Google's project is good *for the online version of the > language*.That > might be true. But no body is cared to verify whether it is good for > Wikipedia. > > As pointed out by Ravi in his presentation in Wikimania, ( > http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpg3qwc_279ghm7kbhs), the Google > translation of wikipedia articles: > > - will affect the biological growth of a Wikipedia article > - will create copy of English wikipedia article in local wikis > - it is against some of the basic philosophies of wikipedia > > The people outside wiki will definitely benefit from this tool, if Google > translation tool is developed for each language. I saw the working example > of this in Poland during Wikimania, when some people who are not good in > English used google translator to communicate with us. :) > > Apart from the points raised by Ravi in his presentation, this will affect > the community growth.If there is no active wiki community, how can we > expect > them to look after all these junk articles uploaded to wiki every day. When > all the important article links are already turned blue, how we can expect > any future potential editors. So according to me, Google's project is > killing the growth of an active wiki community. > > Of course, Tamil Wikipedia is trying to use Google project effectively. But > only Tamil is doing that since they have an active wiki community*. Many > Wiki communities are not even aware that such a project is happening in > their wiki*. > > I do not want to point out specific language wikipedas to prove my point. > But visit the wikipedias (especially wikipedias* that use non-latin > scripts*) > to view the status of google translation project. Loads of junk articles > are uploaded to wiki every day. Most of the time the only edit in these > articles is the edit by its creator and the inter language wiki bots. > > This effort will definitely affect community growth. Kindly see the points > raised by a Swahali > Wikipedian< > http://muddybtz.blog.com/2010/07/16/what-happened-on-the-google-challenge-the-swahili-wikipedia/ > >. > Many Swahali users (and other language users) now expect a laptop or some > other monitory benefits to write in their wikipedia. That affects the > community growth. > > So what is the solution for this? Can we take lessons from > Tamil/Bengali/Swahili wikipedias and find methods to use this service > effectively or continue with the current article creation process. > > One last question. Is this tool that is developing by Google is an open > source tool? If not, we need to answer so many questions that may follow. > > Regards > > Shiju Alex > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Jon [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ http://snowulf.com/ http://ipv6wiki.net/ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
