Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[David Artman <david.artman@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Been reading some Victorian stuff lately)

I was just wondering what the Party Line or General Consensus was on accumulating foreign-language pages on the wiki. I'm of two minds about it:
* It's GREAT, and why shouldn't we have every game in every language we can get them translated to?
* Most other wikis I've seen use a different wiki entirely, for a foreign language version (Wikipedia being the Big Model).

Pros and Cons to doing it all in one:
PRO: We don't really have many (yet) and so what's the big deal, you OCD freak?
CON: Our navigation listings might become a bit... odd, with sub-lists of foreign languages.
PRO: But they're all just being tagged as Category:[language], so WHAT navigation listings?
CON: Yeah, WHAT navigation listings, indeed? Are the foreign language games only ever going to be locatable with the (alphabetic listing) Categories? What about What Can I Play?, which is probably the best way to intro games to newbies AND compel them to slowly build their collections.
PRO: ... Damn, good point...

So I guess I'm basically asking:
1) Should the one wiki install be pan-lingual, or should we:
1.a) Make duplicate wikis for other major languages? (Mike says NO! :) )
1.b) Ask other major foreign languages to host their own wikis and remain separate? (Lame, so...)
2) If we are pan-lingual, how should be structure the Main Page to "aim" folks to the foreign language navigation listings like What Can I Play? and Existing Games?
2.a) It's normally the responsibility of a page creator to make navigation links on those listing pages. Shall that remain the case?
2.b) Or do we just forget about it all and let the wiki be MOSTLY English with the occasional foreign language translation offered as "Additional Links" on a given translated game's page?
2.b.1) Is the original designer or the translator responsible for adding that link? (I'd again put that on the translator--a game page is worthless if  it can't be found by its audience.)

Sorry to be so long on the List, but trying to discuss this on the wiki is almost impossible (crazy nesting pages and edit collisions, or no replies at all for weeks and months).

Thanks for your thoughts;
David
OCD Wiki User and Daily Visitor