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Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Larger suggestions/Wikipedia in English

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Wikipedia in English

  • Problem:

The problem is easily expressed: there is no English Wikipedia. American Wikipedia does not provide the resources needed by English and other British users. Wikimedia probably does not think it is guilty of opressive cultural imperialism but it is: educating English and other British children inevitably involves reference to Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia's cursory nods to British culture and spelling (and, vanishingly rarely, British grammar and idiom) are far from adequate. Not all parents in the UK want their children to become little Americans.

The problem, of course, is not limited to the use of Wikipedia by children. Many British people find it frustrating and demeaning to be treated as though they don't matter. I believe the British are as generous as other nations in their donations to Wikipedia. Why not reward them with the most glaringly absent resource in the whole of Wikimedia?

  • Proposed solution: The solution is simple: create an English Wikipedia.
  • Who would benefit: Sixty million people in the UK would benefit from, at last, having a Wikipedia for their language, idiom and culture.
  • More comments: Wikipedia is available for much smaller language and cultural groups that the English one that has been, so far, ignored and swept under the rug. Strictly, this proposal should be entitled, "English Wikipedia", where English is an adjective. There is already a Wikipedia in (American) English.

Discussion

  • Hello @Ordishj:, this is a really important proposal as all languages have the same right to be represented for the own language community. The wishlist survey, where you added your proposal, is specifically for technical proposals for relatively small features that you would like to see implemented, nevertheless we will make sure your proposal will be seen. KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 11:27, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your prompt response and assurance of visibility of the proposal. I have in the past tried to communicate this (obvious) need but without success. If an assurance of genuine and dispassionate consideration of implementing the proposal were forthcoming, that would be even better. Ordishj (talk) 12:22, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This can be actually solved with a plugin that changes automatically American English to British English, like Chinese Wikipedias have for traditional and modern writing. You only need a set of rules, and it's done in both directions. Theklan (talk) 15:41, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Ordishj: This would be a good place to suggest a new wiki and in the meantime we will move this proposal to larger suggestions. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • See w:MOS:ENGVAR. Articles in English Wikipedia are written in many national variants, including British and Indian, not just American. MarioGom (talk) 17:46, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikimedia is internationalist. The reference to British people being "oppressed" by "imperialism" is particularly distasteful and ahistorical. — Bilorv (talk) 20:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal is talking about the use of British English. Or more generally the use of local variant of a language. Language imperiamism can exists in internationalist enviornment. But the problem is just that Wikipedia do not intend to deal with this problem not does it appears to be a right place. C933103 (talk) 05:31, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the form it this is being proposed, it's obviously a terrible idea and not going to happen. (See Language proposal policy: The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language. If you want to do an exercise in futility anyway, the right place to propose this is Requests for new languages, not the technical wishlist.)
    That said, there might be a more reasonable way of approaching the problem: deploying LanguageConverter on English Wikipedia (T33015). @KSiebert (WMF): I'm not sure that's outsized for a Community Tech project. I don't know if it's a good idea, or even feasible, there might be all kinds of usability, compatibility and performance impacts, but investigating T33015 and turning it into a proposal that's sufficiently fleshed out that the enwiki community can discuss it seems like a reasonably-sized effort. --Tgr (talk) 21:44, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    A problem is how to implement language variants that "could coexist on a more general wiki" but is not close enough to make use of language converter. Currently some of those wiki make different pages for different versions of same article, and the result make cross-wiki and wikidata-related usage very difficult. C933103 (talk) 05:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even beyond the global policy set by LangCom here, I'm not sure what actions Ordishj has done to try and see if a consensus to create such a thing exists amongst editors - the ones who would have to maintain such a duplicate being. British spelling is frequently present on en-wiki. British "culture" is as present as the interested editor mass allows it to be - that is, creating a new wikipedia won't help in that regard because there will still be just as many editors writing about it. Finally, your proposal assumes a fairly drastic premise (that of cultural imperialism), without its sub-premises in any way logically leading to it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • British contributor of long standing here; OP does not speak for me. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:53, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • No solution that involves creating a whole other Wikipedia is "simple". There's no reason why a British Wikipedia should exist over any other variety of English, the English Wikipedia includes all varieties of English, including both British and American. Saying that the English Wikipedia is the American Wikipedia ignores that many articles are in British English, both purposely and coincidentally. Lastly, by the same reasoning, we should create a Wikipedia for every different dialect in any given language, e.g. a Spanish Wikipedia, a Mexican Wikipedia, an Argentine Wikipedia, etc., which is clearly unnecessary when all those dialects can coexist within the same Wiki. Facu-el Millo (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • What is next: seperate Wikipedias in English for India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and many other countries? In Dutch for the Netherlands, Flanders and Suriname? In German for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium? In French for France, Wallonia, Canada and perhaps some African countries? I do not hope so. And what about Commons (working language is English)? I would like to have one English/Dutch/German Wikipedia to go to for information. And yes, sometimes it is annoying (in Commons) that a Category name is in American English instead of in the British English I learned at school, but so be it. --JopkeB (talk) 13:26, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wasn't there a discussion about having separate versions of pages or even an auto-converter similar to systems used for Wikipedias in multiple writing systems (or the Chinese wiki system specifically, which in addition to simplified and traditional characters, also converts between terms and proper nouns that are rendered with different characters based on location, more similar to English spelling differences) 10-15+ years ago? From what I've heard, however, that never got off the ground as most users agreed to implement a multidialectal wiki and navigate the challenges that came with that. MSG17 (talk) 18:22, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes. See Tgr's comment above :) --Waldyrious (talk) 04:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having another English Wikipedia would be confusing to non-English speakers, and this will add more workload for people who want to tranlate articles into English, but aren't familiar with the differences between British and American English. It might be more practical to have a system akin to that of the Chinese wiki, as mentioned by MSG17 above. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 22:56, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

  •   Oppose This is not a technical work that WMF can allocate time and resources, rather a generic real-world problem just not specific to Wikimedia. Without any concrete proposals for any tools that could [potentially] help editors/readers in achieving the desired result [to a possible extent], this is simply an utopian vision — DaxServer (t · m · c) 21:33, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Significa liberdade (talk) 22:35, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose --HeyElliott (talk) 00:02, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose super trivial, IMO. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 01:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Indians, etc. all use the "American" Wikipedia and most of them are perfectly fine with it. Are going to go down the rabbit hole for each of these nations? --Jnglmpera (talk) 01:55, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose * Pppery * it has begun 04:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose en:Template:Use British English, en:Template:Use American English, en:Template:Use Australian English, etc. If an article is about a subject from a specific location, then these templates can be used to note how the article should be constructed. Aluminium is BrEng, Sulfur is AmEng. I use Br/AuEng, and I can read the sulphur article without issue. Additionally, when I create an article, it's established that DMY and Br/AuEng will be used. This isn't article ownership, it's just noting that the primary editor has chosen a style and that subsequent editors should respect that, just like how I'll use MDY and AmEng if someone else has already established this. Anarchyte (talk) 07:10, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose See the poor weeding of the Simple English Wikipedia for one reason why this is a bad idea. See the relatively poor quality of many articles on major topics in major non-English languages for another. As much as I support the continued existence of regional language variation, and certain American-standard spellings of things annoy my personal sensitivities, it is a bad idea to fork things in this way. Wikipedia is relatively low on idiom, and this is a good thing. I say use British terminology whenever you think it clearly communicates things in an encyclopedic style, but especially when it relates to matters about Britain.Transient-understanding (talk) 08:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose --//Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 10:08, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose Wikipedias are language projects, not "national" projects. CaféBuzz (talk) 11:04, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose JopkeB (talk) 13:28, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose As a Brit, I think this is a terrible idea — look at how the different language instances of the Serbo-Croatian language continuum have become polarised and contradictory on some topics, for example. The Americanisation of the English language is a battle we lost nearly a century ago and it's being supplanted by International English, where our former colonies and L2 speakers are having greater and greater impact on language. This is all fine; we're a decreasingly important island off the northwest coast of a continent we want to pretend is beneath us. And what about Welsh English, Scottish English, Hibernian English, Australian English, Kiwi English, South African English. Get over the shallow nationalism; it's all one language and different articles use different dialects. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 14:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Resolved, That the American Wikipedia is, and of right ought to be, a free and independent Project, that it is absolved from all subservience to the English Yoke, and that all administrative connexion between it and the English Wikipedian community is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. Radio-Somewhere (talk) 17:12, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose While I do think that the broader global context does prioritize certain Englishes over others based on power structures, having separate wikis for each dialect would create unnecessary barriers on a faulty presumption that speakers of one dialect should not be exposed to others and fragment enwiki's mission. MSG17 (talk) 18:22, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose "Come see the violence inherent in the system!!" NillaGoon (talk) 22:59, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose CaféBuzz explained why. And my note: the proposal goes against what does Wikipedia is it. --NGC 54 (talk｜contribs) 01:44, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose LOL. Nah. --Firestar464 (talk) 15:29, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose We should not make new Wikis for every dialect or local variation of a language ever. See MOS:ENGVAR QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 17:29, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Concerns exist but the solution should be to do something in the existing project to cater for different communities. Sun8908 (talk) 18:17, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I support further investigation of what a technical solution might entail. It is to me not at all "obviously a terrible idea". Every language community should be able to have a project in their language variety, if they want it, and make the effort to develop it. I think it is right to revisit en:wp:MOS:ENGVAR, meta:Language proposal policy, and other policies from time to time, to ensure they remain desirable and/or technically justified. And there already exist multiple Wikipedias for to-some-degree mutually intelligible language varieties, such as the regional varieties of Italian.
Most of the oppose arguments seem to be from the perspective of editors, not readers. I would guess that many readers would prefer to read Wikipedia in their own language variety. I am perfectly fine reading the mixed Englishes in the English Wikipedia, but I don't think my comfort in that should inherently dictate the ability of others to read Wikipedia in the language form they prefer.
An additional possible use for a technical solution to this issue would be to display Wikipedia text at appropriate reading levels for children and other language learners.
I expect that someone at some point will develop a technical approach to solving this problem. I would rather that solution be developed within the WMF community than elsewhere. Libcub (talk) 05:52, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Libcub See en:Abstract Wikipedia — DaxServer (t · m · c) 07:50, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose //   DE: Ablehnung des Aufwandes. Ich verstehe den Wunsch, halte aber den Aufwand für unangemessen, der dafür betrieben werden müsste. Es ist ein schwieriges Problem (de:Turmbau zu Babel). Es wäre meiner Ansicht nach unrealistisch, in dieser Hinsicht zufriedenstellenden Erfolg zu erwarten. Ähnliche Probleme gibt es auch in anderen Sprachen. //   EN: Effort rejected. I understand the wish. But I guess the effort to be unreasonably high. It is a difficult problem (en:Tower of Babel). In my opinion, it would be unrealistic to expect satisfactory success in this regard. Similar problems exist in other languages as well. --Dirk123456 (talk) 09:30, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support FlagNerdGreen (talk) 13:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Spanish, Chinese, French and Portuguese wikis have more language and cultural differences than English language and still have a single wiki, ifr we do it with english he would need to do with all those languages as wellMeganinja202 (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 10:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support Obviously, separate Wikipedias for each dialect is silly. But maybe templates for each idiomatic use, eg, {{idiom|aluminum}}, and a user preferences setting indicating which spelling is preferred. Doktor Züm (talk) 15:29, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Hey man im josh (talk) 16:52, 16 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose I think this is a rather silly issue, it is not important what english dialect is used. On top of that, at least where I'm from, wikepedia is not used in schools because everyone can edit it. It's the free encyclopedia, are you going to restrain what dialects we can use ? Alien333 (talk) 18:02, 16 Ferbruary 2023 (UTC)
  •   Oppose, per OwenBlacker. As a British person I have never felt there has been a problem with the English Wikipedia being too American. I think w:WP:ENGVAR deals with different variants of English fairly. --Ferien (talk) 20:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Lightoil (talk) 03:27, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose: Firstly, out of scope for CWS; and secondly and most importantly en:WP:ENGVAR. What variants articles are written in largely depends on who writes them. Maybe Americans are writing more articles than the British. Now, when you split the project into American/British, why should Indian English not have a separate project, what about South African English, or Australian English? When we split the project into a dozen different projects, we split editor time & resources across several projects. The entire administration system needs to be set up, the deletion processes, the anti-vandalism framework, and many more. We can't afford that. In fact, among the biggest losers will be the British English Wikipedia, more so than the American English Wikipedia, because of a smaller userbase. —‍(ping on reply)—‍CX Zoom (A/अ/অ) (let's talk|contribs) 08:29, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose. Perhaps enwiki could convert spelling and units automatically with a solution similar to en:Chinese_Wikipedia#Automatic_conversion_between_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters, but articles should offer both units and unmistakeable language anyways as per en:WP:ENGVAR. Trimton (talk) 15:39, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not yet. Finish Wikipedia first, then translate into the various English dialects. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:11, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I support language variety. It’s weird we have a Simple English Wikipedia. Unfortunately the English Wikipedia has grown so much and become such a cesspool, it’d possibly benefit from some dismantling. Kays (talk) 03:57, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose (1) Out of scope. (2) Separating dialects with minor differences (such as British/American English) would fracture the community and lead to two Wikipedias of inferior quality compared with the present state of affairs. (3) If this was extended to all regional varieties of English there'd be dozens of English Wikipedias which is not tenable (see comments by Anarchyte, Transient-understanding, CX Zoom, Meganinja202 above). Stockmausen (talk) 13:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose English Wikipedia benefits from having contributors from the wider community. We are better together. Constant314 (talk) 18:21, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Neutral, as someone who prefers to stick to en-gb (though as a non-native speaker of the language my own English is quite a wild mixture of everything seasoned with terrible accent on top of it) I would welcome having a possibility to enforce British spelling at the least. I guess someone could write a userscript that will do just that, potentially package it into a browser extension too so that it can be shipped to non-registered users. On the other hand I agree that it is not something that I want WMF spending money on. It can be something WMUK could help with though, potentially at least (and it should not be impossible for them to secure funding through some external grant givers for such project). --Base (talk) 12:36, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose If a Wikipedia existed for every single dialect of English there would be over 160 English dialect Wikipedias, let alone every dialect for languages such as Chinese, Spanish, etc. I think WMF should focus on other priorities first, then maybe this will follow. NPRB (talk) 14:00, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose --Morten Haan (talk) 18:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose This is inconsistent with the LangCom's requirements. Thingofme (talk) 01:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose - If implemented, we'd double the number of articles to maintain, and each Wikipedia would have a smaller set of interested editors. GoingBatty (talk) 03:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose I really, really thought this proposal was a joke. Daniel Case (talk) 05:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I thought English Wikipedia follows British grammar rules. Like Spanish Wikipedia follows Spanish grammar rules, not Mexican. If it's not happing it's up on community discussion on that language mutation. We are here not to represent nations, but to ease delivering knowledge and I guess the British could understand American English. So I   Oppose this. Juandev (talk) 11:46, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose Shellwood (talk) 11:08, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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