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Requests for new languages/Wikinews multilingual

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Multilingual Wikinews

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submitted verification final decision
  This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

According to the Language proposal policy, Language committee may approve just a project which intends to be written in one language. Thus, this proposal is invalid. If you want to create multilingual Wikinews, please create a page Multilingual Wikinews and start discussion about the idea at wikinews-l. --Millosh 06:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal summary
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With all you know,Wikinews had with main purpose to be an alternative news source "for big news sources", like CNN or Reuters and to write news of all the world. But Wikinews didn't happen this? Why this? I have 2 main answers:

1.The project didn't happen to attract new users and this project only is a small news bulletim (OBS:In geral.There are versions that Wikinews is very active,like English and Polish).
2.There are many inactives or small Wikinews, that don't have any structure.

If we add all the communities in only one wiki, this will be the one that will be "publish news of all the world". Let unite us! This is the idea behind this proposal.Tosão 21:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments in favour

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  • Support Support Tosão 21:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support OK - to be honest I don't support the the idea the way Tosao put it above. But I've long had a similiar idea in my mind, that I've been reluctant to go forwards alone with though (+ my time is constrained). But I think a reformulated proposal might find more support and actually fly - I might try to go to it the next few days :). Sean Heron 19:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

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  • Oppose I don't think, that this „uniting“ will help. --Ragimiri 18:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose no test, and like Ragimiri said: it will divide more than it will unite. --OosWesThoesBes 18:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Thanks, for saying that we "don't have any structure" on de.wikinews *angry*. You can't merge different (language) communities in a big one. But I am not against a coordination wikinews, if it's really needed. --Berliner Schildkröte 18:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm sorry, but I can't see the logic here. What will be the benefit of a site that has 4 English stories, 4 French ones and 2 Italian ones? Readers will just read whatever language they know and ignore the rest, which will only be the way for them. I would point out that we've succeeded for a while in he.news when understanding that we do not, in fact, need to replace other media, but to add to it, and constructing some sort of co-operation with Wikipedia. We've transfered details that were too much of a news item for an encyclopedia from the articles on wikipedia and made them into news articles on our project. It worked for a while, but then some key members had to take some time-off and it all went dead. But think about it. Havelock 19:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I believe that is bad idea. The coordination in one site would be a cats bug. Other argument in oppose is that the joint all wikinews only come detrimental to all languages except English, because not-English new users of other languages will not be attracted to edit a page in English, despite the fact that be multilingual, becuase the english would be the base language. And thanks for think in perform the project. Shooke 20:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It'll create more problem that it'll solve. The policy of every language projet is different. (Cela engendrera bien plus de problèmes que cela en résoudra. En outre, la politique d'un projet à l'autre est sensiblement différente.)--Bertrand GRONDIN – Talk 22:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There is not a test yet, actually each Wikinews has a different way of working and I think that a language mixing can discourage new users. Regards, --Baiji --> (Opinión) 07:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This policy was not thought through in my opinion, because the different Wikinews communities were not even gauged, much less consulted. I've worked with the French, Spanish and German Wikinews communities, and each has a distinctive flavor and way of running things. Just like a normal news website would not publish news from different languages together, this would not be feasible. Mike Halterman 12:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak oppose Not sure how we could coordinate our operations if everybody was speaking different languages? That would be very difficult, if not impossible. Plus the policies of the different language editions are different, it would be hard to merge them. An interesting idea, though. ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 16:33, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I think it will make integration very difficult. In addition, it will not attract new users from languages which its Wikinews edition is inactive. There will be many articles in English or Polish, but only two or three in Spanish or Portuguese. The Spanish edition must have one or two active editors per day. Who will make the review needed by the English Wikinews? (I'm sure that if there were a single edition, it would take the same policies as the English version). Tosão, thanks for your efforts to improve our community :), but your proposal will not help Wikinews. --R. Nicolás "Lopecito" López - Talk - Talk (Wikipedia Spanish) - Talk (Wikinews Spanish) 00:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose All wikinews site have different content, and the translation effort is hard to organize. --Dereckson 18:31, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikinews cannot be unified like that. They have different content, different aims and as such, such a single edition will be difficult to run. PmlineditorTalk 08:33, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose--Reality006 23:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose this "armchair quarterbacking" was brought up without any apparent attempt to contact the English Wikinews community - one of the active examples the proposer cites. It is a recipe for disaster. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other discussion

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"If we add all the communities in only one wiki" are You suggesting to close all other languages of wikinews therefore? Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 21:46, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No,is only to meet the comunity.My idea is to stimulate the Wikinews Community for a new way for the project,a new way to edit in Wikinews.Tosão 18:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please start a test? That will bring the idea much better to the people. --OosWesThoesBes 19:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes,I'm going to prepare right now.Tosão 19:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree a test is a good idea - I'll see if I can set something up over the next few days (no guarantees).
Perhaps some notes on how I'd envision it: as people have rightly stated above, no normal news site has multiple language versions. So that is a weakness, but also something that would be special ! I do see the main point in having a cross-wikinews place to hang out/communicate, see what others are doing - because lets be honest, who checks out the other language sites - speaking for me, I only ever look by the two I'm a native speaker of. But I believe precicely because in every language we're relatively small projects, it would be nice/ could be helpful to have a bit of a congregation. Plus, when I do chance by one of the other language wikinewses, I often see they have some sweet articles !
Ok, the way I have two ways I could envision things. In either case I'd have the talk/watercooler/village pump whatever in english - it's simply the only viable lingua franca. You might be able to have people write in other languages and then get that translated to english, but that doesn't change all the replies being in english (or most people being excluded). OK, the more important bit - the article space. As realisticly I don't see much time being invested I'd do no more than use articles from the various language sites (obvious I guess, but just making sure :P). The question would be whether to actually import the articles or to just link to them on the sister sites - and I'd lean to linking to the sister site (with possibly a more prominent link going back than the one in the sidebar? I'm sure the enthusiasm for that might be limited in the respective places ;D). If you did want to import, you run into all kinds of trouble, ie different versions of the same article on two different sites (the solution at hand for that is disallow editing here, and force changes on the home-site), but more importantly that you need to have regular imports (which I'm sure something similiar to the "commons-ticker" might be able to do, but it sounds like a big pain in the ass to me). So of those two models, I'd at first , for ease of implementation, go for linking to the "mother-sites". Now - so far, so boring I hear you say.
Where I see the shine of the project is in presentation - of course especially if you go for the "link away" version, for outside viewers you have no more than one page really. This page I would mostly dedicate to prominent article teasers/ leads of the style that the english wikinews has (but perhaps sorted/structured by some criteria, if there are more). To explain how I'd put these together I first need to say what articles I'd use - again, as resources are presumably going to be limited, plus we only have one page, I'd go for just a selection of articles, rather than everyone published on a wikinews. I'd select for two or three things - outstanding articles - these would definitely go in, regardless of language; articles that are available in numerous languages; and articles that are of global interest, ie mainstream press headlines (which the previous category will usualy be).
Each of these would include a number of things in my view: the title, which I would do in the native language of the article (or the outstanding/main article, or english, depending), and smaller, the title's in all the other languages the article is available in (+ english if it was none of them, and is not clear from picture). Then the teaser itself, in the same language as the main title. Perhaps split with two languages where appropriate ? (adding an english teaser for every article put up would be a nice thing - but having say a french and german one, if those are the two language versions available might be a good way to do it) - not sure on that though. And of course even more than elsewhere - a picture !
The neat thing I think you could do with this, is sort the articles from of international interest to more national and local ones - with different languages appearing in each. I do think you'd get quite an enriched perspective just by seeing what's news in other countries :D. Plus you have a better chance of the global headlines being covered in at least one language - so you see what's going on, even if you don't have the benefit being able to read the article.
Of course, like I said I also see it as a nice thing for us editors/contributors - especially bilinguals like me that get more of a home :D - and a place to communicate with others that might be doing translations - even if it is in different languages from our own.
P.S. Universal log in was what in my eyes was holding up this entire concept untill relatively recently - with that implemented I think it could be a breeze ! Sean Heron 20:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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