Talk:Interwiki synchronization/Archive 1

Extending beyond Wikipedia

I know this situation is much more than just Wikipedia, rather, between sister projects. It is most noticeably found on Wikipedia and Wikispecies. In Wikipedia, if a group of creatures only have a single subgroup, they will be placed on the same page (an example would be Tyrannosaurus, where it serves as a genus page AND a species page). However, on Wikispecies, no matter if the group has one or more subgroups, each will have its own page. So here's the problem (assuming the species we are talking about satisfied the above mentioned conditions). On Wikispecies, Tyrannosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex both link to Wikipedia's Tyrannosaurus. But Wikipedia's link to Wikispecies is only to the genus. Sometimes this also holds true between Commons and Wikipedia, where 2 different categories (or pages) in Commons points to same Wikipedia article, but Wikipedia only points to one category and not the other. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it makes sense for "all encompassing" pages (such as the combined genus/species pages on Wikipedia) to link back to the article with the most relevance; in this case, the genus, rather than an individual species. The logic is that it's easier to navigation under the same umbrella (the genus) going down (to the individual species), rather than traveling up the chain. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, this page can be used for more than just Wikipedia. It is just the beginning. By all means, be bold and improve it in any way you find useful.

Particularly about species - yes, i know the problem very well. Different Wikipedias have different policies and customs about writing and categorizing articles about species. Wikispecies is not supposed to have this problem, but if you say that it does, i'll trust you. Unfortunately i can't fix it myself, because i understand Chinese better than i understand taxonomy (and i don't know Chinese). Hopefully this page will help fixing that or at least spark a constructive discussion. --Amir E. Aharoni 21:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Assumptions

There seems to be an implicit assumption that the link between two articles is one-to-one. But that obviously breaks down when an article covers topics A and B, and in the other wiki, there are two separate articles. What could the first article possibly link to that would be correct?

For example, at the moment, en:Production leveling links to both nl:Heijunka and nl:Line balancing, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. (though now that I look, I can't see the "rule" defined anywhere...?)

What should happen in these cases? Stevage 12:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

A link from one Wikipedia article in language A to more than one article in language B is technically possible, but it is not a good thing.

(In Wikisource, for example, such links are not just possible, but actually desired, when there are several translations of one text. See wikisource:The Raven (Poe) for an example.)

There was a big and interesting discussion about this in en.wiki recently: en:Help talk:Interlanguage links#A proposal: language disambiguation pages. Basically, my point is that in a perfect world Wikipedia articles are supposed to map to real world things and linguistic differences are not supposed to get in the way. So if it is justified that nl.wiki has two articles, then it is justified in en.wiki, too; if, on the other, the topic can be covered by one article, then they should be merged in nl.wiki, too.

I already merged and split articles in English, Hebrew, Esperanto and Galician as a result of similar problems. Unfortunately i can't do it in this case, because i don't know Dutch and i am not familiar with "Production leveling", but if you are familiar with it, then be bold! --Amir E. Aharoni 20:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

This issue sometimes happens with naval ships, because projects often having different naming conventions in regards to ships that are decommissioned then reactivated and re-purposed into different roles years later. As an example, the Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi served as a light cruiser from 1936 - 1953, but was decommissioned for several years before being rebuilt as a guided missile cruiser and serving again from 1961 - 1971. Under en.wiki rules, both eras of the ship are covered by a single article, en:Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi (1936), while the it.wiki initially had two articles: it:Giuseppe Garibaldi (incrociatore 1936) and it:Giuseppe Garibaldi (incrociatore 1961) (note that the two Italian articles were later merged together into one FA). Personally I cannot say that either method is any more or less desirable. --Kralizec! 02:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikisource uses s:Template:Interwiki-info to assign additional information to individual interwiki links; in this example, it would be very helpful (and simple) to have "Italiano (1936)" and "Italiano (1961)" listed in the sidebar. (to see an example, check out s:J'accuse) EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, ships is one area (of many) which i have never edit in any Wikipedia. It will be correct to use this convention, but it will be hard to maintain it automatically with the current tools. I still believe that finding a common way for article organization is preferable. --Amir E. Aharoni 13:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That would probably require us to create a global architecture for Wikipedia, one that would totally override each project's concept of notability. I think you've got a better chance of having a snowball fight in hell, but that's just me. ;)
In all seriousness, you are correct that automated maintenance of such specific interwikis would be somewhat problematic, but I think it is still the best solution at present. I'm sure that's at least one other person that manually checks interwikis, besides you and me; all three of us could just handle it all. :D EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The bots and automated tools are another story altogether. Due to the large amount of content, en:Wonders of the World was forked from the initial en:Seven Wonders of the Ancient World article. Since most projects have a pretty general article on the topic, they should probably point Wonders of the World, however the interwiki link bots keep switching most to the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World article. C'est la vie! --Kralizec! 19:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)