Template talk:Wikipedia languages/Archive 2

message: The names in parentheses are meant to be transliterations, not translations!
Remember the purpose is to allow a language user to recognise the language, not to allow English readers to identify it.
It's an interesting idea, whether we might like to give translations for the benefit of English readers, but that's not what we've done so far.
-- Toby Bartels 20:55, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

message: Is there some agreement about minimum number of articles a Wikipedia project must have before it is allowed to be added to this section ?  Because if there is I missed it.  It seems to me that the level of activity for a Wiki is more important than the number of articles, particularly when a new language project has just started.  When I started contributing to the English Wikipedia it had few articles and poor coverage of just about every area.  However by publishing links to it we got more contributors, more activity and more content.  
That's why I'd like to see some discussion before links to other Wikipedia projects are removed from this section.  User:Sj's removals at the moment seem rather arbitrary.  After all a fifty article count doesn't make an encyclopedia much more useful than a five article count. Even if the interface isn't fully translated, a link is useful for attracting people to help. So why not leave them all in with the aim of getting more exposure and hence more activity. -- Derek Ross 23:33, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amount of content needed before a page is listed on the Main Page 

message: I think the native word for the Cassubian language is "Kaszëbsczi." This seems to be the case, according to  (see the "content-language" thing at top-right). – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) w: 23:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Cassubian

message: According to Sanskrit, the Devanāgarī translation for the Sanskrit language is "संस्कृतम्". – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) w: 21:31, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Sanskrit

message: I don't know that I like taking those out of the lineup; I like being neutral about the size of the other WPs, and not trying to privilege the largest ones.  That said, if they /are/ to be separated from the rest of the langs -- let's say, to improve the image of WP's multilinguality -- they shouldn't be in order of size, but ordered the same way as the rest of the list.  +sj+ 19:31, 2004 May 6 (UTC)
*looks as if they are now not ordered at all (not alphabetically by name or code, not by size and not reverse by any criterium). IMHO it would be better if there was any ordering 195.93.66.5 21:41, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  'ten largest' section 

message: I am moving the Conlangs back into the main list for the following reasons:
# First of all, Tok Pisin isn't even a constructed language.
# Esperanto is a notable language because it contains over 12,000 articles in it's Wikipedia.
# It would seem wrong to tell the people who spent their time volunteering to make these Wikipedias that their languages aren't even real (which they are real).
# I feel like correcting it.
Hey, isn't there a Klingon wikipedia? That should be in the list too. Andre 04:28, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone can edit the parts of the Main Page, it's just hard to figure out how for the average vandal. Andre 19:50, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constructed Languages 

message: I like the new language setup too. Suggestion: How about another heading for Wikipedias that reach 100,000 articles? German is already there.
I'm about to put up a new template with commented-out space for a 100,000 heading with German under it. Not to worry: I've previewed the template, with German still visible under the 10,000 heading. I'm just putting it up so that the community can quickly put it in place if it sees fit. Dale Arnett 01:35, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the main page is already too crowded, and this section takes up A LOT  of room - as much as (if not more) than all the sister projects combined, plus the new articles and the donation banner. What you propose is only going to make a bad situation this worse. Furthermore, by breaking up the languages into a 4th section, it makes finding a particular language even hard now (with 4 alphabetical lists to go through instead of 3) →Raul654 06:07, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
I checked out the Japanese Wikipedia's main page recently and I found out it had a 100,000-article heading. Scott Gall 08:53, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The 100,000-article mark 

message: I have a question: is there any reason why were using HTML entities instead of the actual character on this page? -- anon
The English Wikipedia (like a few other wikis) only works properly with Latin-1 characters. If you actually put (say) a Chinese character into the edit box, then it will be stored as an entity in the database. (Try doing that in the Wikipedia:Sandbox, or even in a preview, and you'll see for yourself that it's so.)
-- Toby Bartels 23:50, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Entities? 

message: This template has (yet again) ballooned back up in size to 100+ languages. Let me say this clearly - this is not a good thing. It takes up well over an entire screen length on my machine (1024x768 resolution). The full list of 200+ languages is already linked - we don't need to list most of them. The language list itself took up as much space as the entire content-section of the main page. That's very lopsided.  
: Could you say that more clearly?  (:  I'm adding langs with over 100 articles back in.  If you really want langs with over 30mil speakers to show up, please add them to that smallest list, perhaps changing the subsection title or with an asterisk next to the language name.
Furthermore, extra subcategories are bad - if someone is looking for a particular language, the more lists there are, the more work they have to do to find their language. →Raul654 16:17, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)
: Thoughts on reducing subcats, while improving usability: all langs over 5000 (threshhold for more-than-bot-assisted rapid growth?) could be grouped together, and then all langs over 100 (threshhold for acceptable-browsing-esperience, with some meta- and help pages).  We could go back to bolding certain langs, but I don't like the way that displays.  Or we could slightly modify the text-color/greyscale/thickness of certain langs, which would suit my tastes better... +sj+ 19:48, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Size of this template

message: I call upon Wikipedians to vote as to whether or not to keep the english translations (in parentheses after the native name). Please provide your name and a brief justification for your vote. Alternatively, if you would like to revert to the former method of using latin script transliterations, there is that choice too. Nicholas 09:17, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discusion on parenthesized translations 

message: In other words, use Name in native script (Translation in english).
# AlanBarrett -- Displaying translations of foreign names seems quite appropriate in the English Wikipedia.  There is no hard space constraint.
# Toby Bartels -- On an English wiki, including the English name is reasonable. But we should alphabetise by native name (transliterated if necessary). Fall back to transliterations if this becomes too lengthy, but it looks OK now to me.
# Node 20:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keep Translations 

message: In other words, use Name in native script, without any translation or transliteration.
# Nicholas -- Easier navigation; simpler, less chaotic-looking layout; allows room for "Wikipedias in need of attention" category
#: No, it doesn't allow room for said category since it would include around a hundred Wikipedias.
# Norm 11:27, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove Translations and Transliterations 

message: About these ranges that keep on appearing and quickly disappearing on this template: do we need a vote on this? Lately, Maveric149 and Node ue have been undoing each others' edits. (I'm inclined to agree with Node's point of view, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks about this.) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 21:40, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It is simply not-accurate to not include all language versions with more than 100 articles in a list with that name. It is much better to say exactly what that list is. --mav 06:47, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: So what? People get the idea, only incessant nitpickers will notice there is anything to it and even then they probably won't care. The information is successfully transmitted by my version, it is less confusing, and yours presupposes that the reader is an idiot while mine does not. --Node 02:03, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Mav, that's a bit silly, and we really don't need any 9999's. Nothing is unclear, and even the font sizes contribute to my intuitive understanding that some of the wikis are bigger than the others. Btw, I don't agree with the ranges; at 9999 articles, that's a 10K wiki we should put in the current first tier. ✏ Sverdrup 01:34, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: (Also, if you are really grumpy about this, let's look at it like a switch from C; since there is no break;, the upper tier includes all the languages in the list ;-P ✏ Sverdrup 01:36, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranges 

message: the 'Other-langs2.png' icon may be useful on the mainpage (but if so, near the top, not next to this list), but it should not be in this template, as it shows up on Main Page (text only), now. dab (ᛏ) 09:59, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: icon

message: If we are going to have a 50 000+ section (something that i fully support) then the others should be in multiples of 5s aswell. 5000+ and 500+. I think this is a much better idea, since 5000+ is significantly more useful than 1000+ but not significantly less useful than 10 000+. also the 500+ allows for some of the smaller wikipedias to get some diserved free publicity (if theyve managed to get 500 that quite an achivment) with out having as many as a 100+ list would. It also makes the whole thing more uniform.
comprimise people, comprimise.
thats my two cents anyway.
The bellman 12:09, 2004 Dec 28 (UTC)
why not? we could drop the 10**n bins entirely and have 500+, 5000+, 50000+. would that make sense? the bins would be shifted back to 1000+, 10000+, 100000+ at some point in the future (maybe when four or five WPs reach 1E5) dab (ᛏ) 12:43, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I could live with that. --mav 20:30, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: I'd like to hear other input, but I think that a 10K encyclopedia is _a lot_ better than a 5K one, at least thinking about those I've seen. (This means, I like the 10K binges better) ✏ Sverdrup 03:43, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: 5s

message: I have another idea. We should have 1K, 3K, 9K, 27K, and 81K tiers. I had an idea for a 243K tier, but that can wait until more WPs get to 243K articles, which might not be for another few months. Who's up for it? Scott Gall 21:23, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My answer here is "no". That's too many tiers, and I think to most people it's going to look very uneven (it doesn't to me, but you have to consider the reader - how many people will notice that it's powers of 3 and not just randomly-selected numbers?). 1k and 3k would separate Wikipedias that probably don't deserve to be separated because they still basically fall into the same class when it comes to size. 81k would be much too small, and 27k would be small too (especially if there were a separate 81k). The numbers in each category would be: 9k: 11; 27k: 7; 81k: 3; --Node 22:42, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: keep in mind that we'll have to update the template. Updating the numbers is bad enough. Moving links between tiers all the time is even worse. dab (ᛏ) 09:16, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Powers of three 

message: The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles! If you don't believe me, then take a look at the main page. My apologies if this didn't feel like the right place to tell you. Scott Gall 08:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:GD-->1000 

message: :see, I think this is what happens: one of the smaller WPs has 900-something articles. Somebody says, hey, big en: will link us if we get above 1000, heck, just create a few dozen random empty articles. And behold, after they do that, they are linked on big en:. Apologies, I have no idea if this actually happened on gd:, but the tendency is there, and click here a couple of times. Now this is why word count is superior. If they want to reach 250k (or 100k, or whatever) words, they actually have to sit down and add value to the article (well, they could just copy-paste the Bible, but I think that would be reverted on any half-decent project). 
:now, the 'word count' template has been rejected because it was 'confusing', not because people are adamant about counting articles, not words. Could we not just make Template:Wikipedialang (word count) less confusing, and try again? dab (ᛏ) 19:02, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I find article-count is a better metric; it involves comprehensible numbers, and is a fine measure of breadth if not of depth. +sj +
how about now:
; Wikipedias by size: 
more than 4 million words:
English (146) – Deutsch/German (54) – 日本語/Japanese (25) – Français/French (22) –  Nederlands/Dutch (11) – Español/Spanish (10) – Polski/Polish (10) – Italiano/Italian (9) – Svenska/Swedish (7) – עברית/Hebrew (4) – Português/Portuguese (4) – 中文/Chinese (4) 
more than 1 million words:
Български/Bulgarian – Català/Catalan – Dansk/Danish – Esperanto – Eesti/Estonian – Suomi/Finnish – Magyar/Hungarian – Norsk/Norwegian – Română/Romanian –  Русский/Russian –  Slovenščina/Slovenian – Српски/Serbian 
more than 250,000 words: 
Afrikaans – العربية/Arabic – Hrvatski/Croatian – Česká/Czech – Simple English – Gallego/Galician – Bahasa Indonesia/Indonesian – Interlingua – 한국어/Korean  – Kurdî/كوردی/Kurdish – Lëtzebuergesch/Luxembourgish – Lietuvių/Lithuanian –  Bahasa Melayu/Malay – Nynorsk – Slovenčina/Slovak – Basa Sunda/Sundanese – Türkçe/Turkish – Tatarça/Tatar – Українська/Ukrainian – Walon/Walloon – Cymraeg/Welsh …
Complete list –
Multilingual coordination –
Start a Wikipedia in another language
recognize that 250,000 words correspond to ca. 500 printed pages. We could include WPs down to 100k, I suppose, but we have to be honest about their usefulness: they are more like a booklet than an 'encyclopedia'. dab (ᛏ) 19:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: I do not like these word-count templates.  Even if it were easy to automatically update such counts (as it is we have to wait for weekly statistics to be run) and easy to unify their meaning across languages (arguments presented elsewhere), and even if the use of word count were not confusing to the average reader (this can be debated), I personally find article count a more useful metric... just as I care about our coverage of WP:LET. +sj + 20:28, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and so do the majority of the participants in the oh-so-meaningful straw poll. If we're so obsessed with polls and them being the final word, we can't make exceptions just because the results disagree with us. You can't have your cake and eat it too. --Node 00:08, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: word count, again (sorry)

message: I think 100,000 is clearly the better division, but agree that it would currently be too small a category to be useful.  Perhaps in another few months we can move to having 100,000 and 10,000 categories. 
For the record, I liked having the list of "over 100" languages on the main page, in very small font, in part because that removed the prime motive for active WPs to add lots of stubs just to get onto the main page.  Moreover, there was recent support for only counting non-stub articles, and listing WPs once they had attained 100 non-stubs...  +sj + 20:23, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The recent straw poll showed broad support for keeping the lowest category at 1000+. There was no support for changing it to 100+. GeorgeStepanek\talk  23:47, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We have already discussed the extreme problems with your straw poll. For all I know, you rounded up all the people you expected would support your side and told them to vote, and kept the information from all other interested parties. You did not mention it here, thus the results are meaningless. You keep saying there was no support for KEEPING it at 100+ (yes, keeping, NOT changing - you and your insurgent buddies are real revisionists), but obviously that is invalid because so far at least 4 logged in users have expressed support for keeping 100+ as the smallest category on this page. Again, please see here - POLLS ARE EVIL and mean that in the end, there is no compromise - one side goes home 100% happy, the other side goes home 100% sad. This is an anti-wiki idea. The appropriate Wikipedian thing to do is seek consensus, and if you have not reached it try finding a reasonable compromise - I already made a compromise in my proposal in an effort to make it smaller but still have the 100+ category. You did not like it, but you didn't propose any alternatives. You basically said "I don't like it. Resistance is futile. My version or no version." --Node 00:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My vote was to remove the template entirely, but I accept that it did not receive popular support. The straw poll remains open, so if there are individuals who are passionate about keeping the 100+ section, then I would encourage them to vote. GeorgeStepanek\talk  09:12, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You still have not made any sort of official announcement here (when in fact the proper location for the poll itself is HERE), and as I said before POLLS ARE EVIL and basically everything else I said in my response you responded to but didn't really respond to. --Node 01:23, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I write when I feel that there is a good point to address. Regarding the rest, I am sorry, but I think the most powerful argument I can make is to let your words speak for themselves. GeorgeStepanek\talk  03:43, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What I find especially inflammatory is that you have alleged on Meta that I have made comments on this talkpage that imply I have some sort of problem with community consensus in general, and in addition you have "told on me" to Raul654 for my actions on a Wiki that you're not even registered on - I think that this, if anything, qualifies as trolling: searching for places to bash me, given you probably wouldn't normally be concerned with that (you have only edited 5 pages on Meta, all regarding the portal and in the last 24 hours). I have nothing against community consensus when it is reached according to en.wikipedia policy (which does NOT apply at Meta), which you have NOT done here. This is a Template:Wikipedialang issue yet instead of holding a poll here or at RfC, you have held a poll at a third talkpage without announcing it here in a timely fashion. My reason for not voting there is that I wish to protest your blatant disregard for polling conventions. For one, neither I nor anybody else on "my side" had any part in formulating poll options nor are they ordered in a "logical order", for two you didn't even notify anybody from "my side" that this was going on when you first started it yet you went OUT OF YOUR WAY to notify people who had previously expressed support for your views on this talkpage. This is unacceptable and underhanded.  --Node 03:20, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I notifed Raul654 of the vandalism to the poll. (It was subsequently removed by Tim Starling.) Yes, I "told on you." So? This isn't a playground. Reporting problems, or potential problems, to people with the authority to do something about it is something that we should all be doing. GeorgeStepanek\talk  11:48, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, you have completely missed the point of the great majority of what I just said. --Node 04:21, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: About "50,000"

message: It's me again. And I'm not saying to donate to the tsunami victims. I am appealing to get some of the smaller Wikipedias added to. If you have any knowledge of Slovenian, you can help the Slovenian Wikipedia reach 10,000 articles. It's already got 8,600 and could do with some more work. Also, you can help the Japanese Wikipedia, which had nearly 94,000 at last count, reach 100,000 articles. And see if you can't add more articles to the other Wikipedias as well. And speaking of adding to Wikipedias, thanks to all the Scottish Gaelic speakers for helping gd: reach 1000 articles, and I hope it reaches 2000 by the end of 2005. Scott Gall 21:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Scott Gall, you put forward a powerful argument for not measuring wiki size by the number of articles. Yes, lets add lot of stubs to make wikipedias look larger than they actually are, instead of making the existing articles better. Frankly, I like the German approach best. Leave off the numbers, and just put links to the biggest wikipedias in the left column (where they really should be). GeorgeStepanek\talk  23:58, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And you put forward a powerful argument for offering all parties involved a nice cup of STFU! --Node 01:25, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm with George on this one.  We have quite enough stubs masquerading as articles already (especially on the Swedish Wikipedia!)  Why not concentrate instead on making them useful?  I still gotta say the word-count thing seemed way more sensible.  Next best thing would be to only count articles over 5K bytes.  (Why an arbitrary limit?  Well, there are already arbitrary minimum and maximum sizes for articles, (see stub) they're guidelines, why not use them?) Steverapaport 02:07, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: also agree (obviously, I'm the word-counter, here...). Ok, why not just put interwiki links on the main page, say to all WP's with >100k words (corresponding to ca. a 200 pages booklet). Smaller WP's than that are simply not useful for readers. We will obviously always link to the complete list prominently, and we could also link to a list organized by numbers of article. It's just bad to make article count matter like it does now, as Scott makes very clear above. dab (ᛏ) 09:04, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  APPEAL! APPEAL! 

message: No, en: hasn't reached 450,000 yet, but today is Wikipedia Day and en: could reach 450,000 articles - on Wikipedia Day! I don't think it will reach 150 million WORDS on Wikipedia Day, but I'm SURE it will reach 450,000 ARTICLES. So keep your eye on the Main Page, and use the Refresh button regularly. Scott Gall 09:14, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:EN-->450,000 - ON WIKIPEDIA DAY! 

message: The dutch wikipedia just reached the 50000 mark. There are now 50011 articles.
ADJUST THE PAGE !
Thank you, Raul654, for noting that and yes, someone has adjusted the page. But someone needs to do the same thing on this site - there are now 50,030 (50030) articles on nl:. And in the future, PLEASE sign your posts. Scott Gall 09:43, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: this wasn't Raul, Scott. Raul signs. It was 213.119.139.82. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dutch wikipedia Reached 50000 articles, ADJUST THE PAGE !!!