OKA/Instructions for editors

This page contains the instructions provided to OKA grant recipients for translating Wikipedia articles. For transparency, it is publicly available. OKA editors are usually new, with no prior experience in editing Wikipedia.

Disclaimer to OKA editors: OKA is not affiliated with Wikimedia. The information below is provided as advice only – Wikipedia policies will always have precedence. When editing Wikipedia, you should make sure to comply with Wikipedia policies. In case any guidance in this document contradicts Wikimedia guidelines, please flag it to your manager.

Terminology

In this document, the following terms are used:

Source language: the language you are translating pages from (e.g., Spanish)
Target language: the languages you are translating pages into, i.e., the languages in which you will be publishing articles (e.g., English)

These instructions are primarily written for translating into English Wikipedia. For publishing or editing articles into other languages of Wikipedia, please refer to this document.

Overall guidelines

Leverage Deepl as a starting point

Even in technical articles, Deepl.com will usually correctly translate >90% of the text. Most of your time should be spent on proofreading (in particular, specialized terms), formatting, adding links to other Wikipedia pages, and adding sources. If you are spending a significant amount of time translating whole sentences, you are likely doing something wrong.

We suggest that you also use Grammarly to help you improve the quality of your translations.

Using the built-in translation tool of Wikipedia is not recommended, as it usually causes more rework efforts (e.g., due to broken templates).

Perfect is the enemy of good

There are millions of articles to translate, more than we'll ever be able to accomplish. We focus our efforts on what will be most useful for Wikipedia readers. This means we sometimes decide not to translate certain articles because they are about a niche topic and would be too time-consuming, or that we sometimes publish an article even if we are not yet 100% satisfied with some of the content (as long as they meet quality standards for publication and have no incorrect information).

The articles we publish are not final. In many cases, other Wikipedia editors (or bots) may come to improve our articles or fix some of our errors, and that’s fine – that’s how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Occasionally having small typos in an article is ok since other readers can correct them.

Don’t wait until you know all the rules before publishing

Wikipedia editing guidelines are vast and complex, which can be overwhelming. You won't have time to read all of them. The instructions in this document are self-sufficient to publish your first article. As you gain experience, you will need to read more detailed guidelines.

Wikipedia rarely has a single standard. For example, the Spanish Wikipedia has different rules than the English Wikipedia. Every editor has its own style, so articles on similar topics may be written and presented in a totally different manner. Likewise, the instructions in this guide are here to help you, but you are also free to do things differently if you find it better. Aim for consistency with other articles on similar topics whenever possible, but achieving 100% standardization is not required.

Do not limit yourself to translations

The primary goal is to have an impact and improve the quality of Wikipedia, so you are encouraged to take initiative and edit any other thing where you feel there is potential (e.g., if you see something wrong on a page that you read, or feel like important information is missing on a page). When reviewing your work, OKA will look at it holistically, and taking initiatives is an important aspect of it.

Quality is more important than quantity. So it is ok if you spend more time on an article because you've made improvements to it. If you do so, just be transparent about it with your manager, so that (s)he knows why you took longer than other editors.

Our prioritization principles

When prioritizing articles to translate, we follow a value maximization principle, based on 4 criteria:

Quality. Prioritize articles that are already well-written and comprehensive in the source language.
Gap in Wikipedia. Prioritize articles that do not yet exist in the target language, or that have barely been started.
Value for society. Prioritizing articles on important topics and/or likely to generate the most interest for readers.
Personal interest. If you are personally interested in the topic that you are writing about, that’s even better!

Pageviews (interest) are not the best indicator of value:

Some articles cover niche topics, but have a high value for society because they target decision-makers or help further creation of knowledge
Some articles have high value in the source language (e.g., Spanish) but low value in other (e.g., English), because most of the potential readers already speak the local language (e.g., articles about local celebrities). It is better to prioritize articles that are universal, i.e., not language or region-specific

To make your life easier, admins have already pre-selected articles for translation here, filtered by priority (0 = highest priority; 9 = lowest priority). However, you are free to pick any article for translation, even if not listed there. You are also free to ignore priorities and pick articles that OKA has rated as low priority, if you are more interested in these topics.

Do not translate anything with priority 6+ without first checking with an admin. These are usually of low priority because we believe that they may not be accepted by the Wikipedia community (e.g., similar articles may exist, or considered as insufficient notability in English world).

If the priority of an article seems inadequate, please flag it to your manager