Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Intertranswiki

Interlang notice template

FYI, {{Polyglot RFD}} has been nominated for deletion. This may be of interest to users here -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 04:28, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Recent deaths update

It looks like Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki#Recent deaths hasn't been updated since 2016. Could someone automate this? It'd also be nice if we could automate reports like FAs in other languages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

{{Xlate-fr-en}}

FYI Template:Xlate-fr-en (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 15:46, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Proposed change to template uw-translation

A proposed template change to alter the message emitted by user warning template {{uw-translation}} is being discussed at Template talk:Uw-translation. Your feedback is welcome at the discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Expand Bashkir

Template:Expand Bashkir has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 02:41, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Template:Expand language has an RFC

Template:Expand language, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --N8_wilson 22:25, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Dropping focus of the month

@Charles01: Any objections to dropping the focus and round of the month and simply just listing any article you want to translate from another Wiki and archiving what is done each month as before? I looked at the list and saw potted bios and FAs, but wanted to transwiki a park in Berlin. You wouldn't want to have a round with 10 articles translated on parks for instance. I think if we just keeping it to all articles that'll make it more interesting and varied.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:54, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

No objection to anything, Dr.B. If you have ideas to reinvigorate the page and thereby the project that is good for me. I am sure that a lot of the good things still happening on wikipedia in respect of translation only happen - and some of the people involved are wholly and/or in part involved as they are - only because of the last time you reinvigorated this project. However, there is the ticklish business of doing the monthly updates, assuming that is still to be part of it. I'm afraid that for my own reasons I'm not up for that. I flounced off a few months ago after some self appointed wiki admin troll deleted one of my (admittedly more questionable) contributions without comment or explanation: and I decided the time had come to take what I think is called a wiki-break. I've seen other folks do it, and I like to think that if these self appointed amateur police knew how destructive they are of the project, as they gratify their own less wholesome urges at the expense of it, they'd think more carefully about their actions. Then again, one can really only judge their motives from their actions. In my darker moments I catch myself wondering how many of them are on the payroll of commercially motivated media moguls. And at the margins there are no doubt as many sets of explanations as there are trolls. For my part, I thought I'd be back after a couple of weeks, but for various (in part non-wikipedia related) reasoms two weeks became two months, and I'm happily engaged elsewhere just now. I don't imagine I'll be able to stay away for ever. How many times have you announced your own retirement? For now, if I find myself unable to resist the temptation to react when you "ping" my identity, I reserve the right to resurface. But don't expect me to be a regular wiki-contributor at present, please.

Stay well. Charles01 (talk) 14:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that you have had trouble. You definitely get burnout on here, my enthusiasm for the project has changed dramatically at various times. I still intend to keep some distance from editing too frequently here. I'll do a few articles a week to help with my language learning I think. OK what we'll do then is scrap the monthly focus and simply list articles we've translated or intend to translate. When the list gets too big we'll archive it, so it'll probably be only a few times a year. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:40, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I share Charles' sentiments but would encourage him to stick around in case something turns up. For example, I'm here because I've recently been engaging with the organiser of a new initiative to get articles translated -- the Open Knowledge Association (OKA). They seem to be starting from scratch and so may benefit from your experience. As such initiatives often attract pushback, you might share your own war stories and show them your scars! Andrew🐉(talk) 17:21, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Andrew Davidson for the connect!

I can absolutely relate to what @Charles01 is saying. We have indeed been facing a lot of pushback on our translation work (example, but also in the talk page of some of the translators of the project), and this has definitely affected my morale and led some of our translators to drop because they felt harassed. The problem with translating on Wikipedia is that we are dependent on the quality of the source page, and because we are not content experts, what often appears to be high quality content (often featured articles in the Wikipedia language) can sometimes considered as poor quality in English (e.g., because sentences in Spanish / Portuguese tend to longer / more prosaic, or because English Wikipedia has different guidelines on the optimal size/structure of an article). But rather than sharing this feedback or looking for ways to improve translated articles, other users often delete the page without much explanation and blame it on the translator with unnecessarily harsh words. Also, the feedback is usually focused on the 1-2 articles with issues, but disregards the other valuable quality work.

If you or anyone else is interested in joining forces, such as providing feedback on our translation process or getting involved in the process (e.g., selection of articles, quality control), we are very open to it. We have currently 5 full-time translators, which I am happy to re-allocate to the tasks that add the most value in terms of translation. Feel free to reach out via my talk page or [email protected] 7804j (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion on disallowing use of the ʻokina in Chinese romanized article titles

There is currently a discussion that may interest you. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Disallowing use of the ʻokina in Chinese romanized article titles proposes that the ʻokina gennerally be prohibited from article titles derived from Chinese whenever it does not adhere to the English Wikipedia policy to use commonly recognizable names. Plese join the discussion. Thank you. Peaceray (talk) 17:12, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

OKA

Start copy/paste from User talk:SusunW#OKA as this conversation is better suited for this WikiProject talkpage than a user talkpage. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

One question... I was unaware about the funding, Ipigott. Curious regarding -but only if you are comfortable sharing- how you notice translations by OKA editors as I have been oblivious to this. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

• In regard to OKA articles, I frequently come across them when reviewing or assessing Italian articles. The most recent ones have been Alessandro Manzoni's thought and poetics, Pellegrini Chapel (San Bernardino) and Prospero Provana. But I also see them in translations from Spanish, French and German. I was interested to see that most of the editors come from South America where they apparently provide better value for money. I'm not too sure whether I agree with this approach to paid editing. There are not so many problems with articles addressing culture and cultural heritage but as you probably know, some of the donors call for translations of articles addressing their business interests. I don't know to what extent these and other paid groups of editors have received any kind of official attention and, if so, whether the approach is considered acceptable.--Ipigott (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

• Aha! When I do WP:NPP, Ipigott, I don't commonly look at the article's talkpage, but now I see that this gets added to talkpages of that ilk: {{OKA}}. As for whether the approach is considered acceptable, I admit to feeling ... uncomfortable, but if it's disclosed paid editing (and the google doc you linked to indicates that it must be disclosed on the editor's page), then it's "okay". That said, interestingly, there is no category for the hundreds of OKA translations. Perhaps it would be useful to have such a cat for (a) historical documentation as well as for (b) spot-checking the translation quality. Are you aware if there's a wiki talkpage somewhere for this? Perhaps discussion of this sort has occurred there already? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:04, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

• See also: Wikipedia:List of paid editing companies#Open Knowledge Association (OKA), which contains an on-wiki list of editors, and a google doc list of articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Rosiestep:: Sorry, I should perhaps have sent you the talk pages of these articles instead. Whenever I come across an NPP article for review, I always look at both the article and the talk page, carrying out any necessary assessment. That's how I have become aware of so many OKA translations as they are frequently unassessed and many of them deserve B class. As for an OKA category for articles created, if it's introduced it should probably be invisible but for me clear mention of OKA on the talk page is sufficient. OKA themselves might of course welcome an additional means of identifying the articles created as they seem to be proud of their achievements. I must say that in most cases OKA involvement indeed indicates a much higher standard than can usually be expected of translated articles. And unlike many (if not most) translated articles, OKA editors always clearly mention the source article in their first edit. OKA articles are almost always creations rather than improvements to existing articles (which other "agencies" usually seem to prefer). I have not come across any talk pages discussing the involvement of OKA but as their activity is obviously progressing, it might be useful to draw wider attention to their work. I agree with you that full disclosure of their operations and editor involvement probably makes everything more or less OK.--Ipigott (talk) 06:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Rosiestep: You might be interested in these articles translated by the highly active OKA editor Oliwiasocz over the past couple of months. Although they stem from well developed articles in Polish, the standard of translation is impressive. My interest was triggered by the biography of Leonia Nastał.--Ipigott (talk) 13:52, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

• Don't know if Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki is on anyone's watchlist anymore, but OKA translation efforts would pertain to it. (cc: Dr. Blofeld) --Rosiestep (talk) 16:26, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: Hello! For some reason your pings aren't working!♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:50, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld:, that's odd; don't know why they aren't working. I'm trying "ping" now instead of "u" in pinging you; did you get this one? --Rosiestep (talk) 18:43, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Got that one. :-) I only saw a post from you from about a month ago asking for help editing something a few days ago too, didn't get the notification! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:45, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

End cut/paste

OKA category

@Ipigott and Dr. Blofeld, returning to the question of categorizing OKA articles, one way to track them would be to add the WP Intertranswiki talkpage template to all the articles and templates (and drafts?) created by OKA editors. The on-wiki list is here; this is a list of {{OKA}}-templated articles so it may be incomplete if some articles created by OKA-editors aren't OKA-templated. OKA also maintains an off-wiki list, which may be different. If you think it's a good idea to add the WikiProject Intertranswiki talkpage template (I couldn't find one but I assume there is one), I'd want to get Ser Amantio di Nicolao opinion on the matter, (a) because of the quantity (almost 2,000 articles/templates), as well as (b) his availability to do the needful. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding @7804j: (founder of OKA) to the conversation. Also, noticing that they have already commented on this WikiProject talkpage, so a belated warm welcome and thank you for what you do around here! --Rosiestep (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi everyone,

From the OKA perspective, we are ok with tagging the articles we translated with any categorization that the community feels adequate, especially if it can help raise visibility of the work. We currently have the OKA template added to the talk page of all articles (+ the tracker) so it's easy to find the full list.

7804j (talk) 15:54, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, 7804j, for your understanding. Perhaps someone (Ser Amantio di Nicolao?) could devise an automated way of handling this. I would prefer a dedicated OKA category rather than Intertranswiki.--Ipigott (talk) 18:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding MSGJ to the conversation as they helped us modernize the Women in Red talkpage template. Old style example: Talk:Aurélie Neyret; new style example: Talk:Marietta Sherman Raymond. Martin, maybe you have some thoughts on how to categorize OKA articles on-wiki. The tracker that 7804j refers to is fine for their business model but as it's a ggl doc and off-wiki, it doesn't solve on-wiki tracking. If I misunderstand the tracker, hoping someone can clarify. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

For on-wiki tracking, there is also this page that can serve as an alternative (though it is obviously not as convenient as a proper category)

7804j (talk) 20:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

7804j: This is a useful list but it includes articles which have been improved by OKA editors rather than created from scratch. I think many of us would be particularly interested in articles created by OKA editors on the basis of translations from other language versions. Are you able to provide such a list? If not, it should be possible to differentiate between full translations and improvements to existing articles on the basis of Wikipedia article creation stats, etc. I am a bit confused by the chronology (if any) of your list. Can you offer any explanations? I have been spending quite a bit of my editing time on reviewing creations by OKA editors as until they are accepted after review they are not fully searchable on Wikipedia. As so many of them remain unreviewed for months on end, you and your editors might not be aware of the importance of reviewing. From now on, when I come across a creation by an OKA editor, I'll look into the full list of articles he/she has created any will try to review those needing attention (as I already have for Oliwiasocz -- see above).--Ipigott (talk) 06:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

At the moment, the vast majority of OKA articles are new, with only a few being expansions of existing articles (but even in case of extensions, they are almost alway through translation). In terms of chronology, we have a date published field on our internal tracker in oka.wiki/tracker (and I also ask translators to flag the non-new articles by marking them as "expand", but they haven't been doing it as systematically as I'd like) but I'm not sure if there is a way within Wikipedia to sort the ones woth the OKA template by date published

I didn't realize that there was such a long review waitlist -- thanks a lot for your help in clearing through that backlog!

If there is no automated way to add the OKA category to articles, I can also ask my team to do it manually but that would obviously not be ideal as there are almost 2000 of them

7804j (talk) 07:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Rosiestep and @Ipigott: I will need to look at this further over the next few days - I've been in and out all day, and don't have the wherewithal before bed, I'm afraid. But I'm sure that a hidden category might be a possibility. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 04:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

OKA WikiProject?

The scope of WikiProject Intertranswiki is translation of articles from some language Wikipedia into EN-WP. The scope of OKA appears to be translation of articles from some language Wikipedia into EN-WP and getting paid for it. 7804j, would you please confirm or clarify? Ergo, I've been thinking of OKA as a "task force" of WikiProject Intertranswiki but it would probably be more appropriate for OKA to be its own WikiProject. This would be useful for tracking (e.g., "hidden category") and talkpage discussions, e.g., a particular OKA-article, a particular OKA-editor, OKA-editor editing trends, paid-editing specifically related to OKA, etc. Examples of conversations on two now-blocked OKA-editor talkpages that could more fully be discussed on the WikiProject OKA talkpage:

• Caress9570, "I want to delete this page because I was scammed by OKA. They never paid me!!!"
• Alemedicen, "The group that arranges your paid editing emphasizes increasing traffic to targeted pages."

As OKA-article talkpages already have the OKA-template, the next steps would include creation of WikiProject OKA, and enhancement of the OKA-template with the appropriate WikiProject-talkpage parameters. Is this the right direction, or something else? --Rosiestep (talk) 15:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the objectives of both Intertranswiki and OKA are the same, i.e., translating articles into EN-WP (though in the case of OKA, we also translate into other Wikis, and some of our editors also occasionally do a bit non-translation related improvements to articles). The key difference is on the "how": Intertranswiki consists only of pure volunteers, while OKA editors receive a stipend.

Therefore we could either see OKA as a separate project, or one part of OKA as a task force of Intertranswiki. If other people from Intertranswiki want to be more involved in OKA itself (e.g., streamlining processes, taking part in articles prioritization), I'm also open to it

The main reasons why I haven't created a Wikiproject for OKA so far are:

(1) I was worried that this would be perceived negatively by the community, as our translators are technically paid editors. I know many people in the Wiki community are not supportive of paid editing and I'm not sure if there are precedents for a paid-editing initiative having its own project, so I didn't want to create a controversy

(2) I don't have prior experience in setting up or managing a Wiki community, so I'm lacking a bit of the technical expertise to do so. Internally, we have a Google Workspace chat where our translators communicate, so we didn't have a strong need for a dedicated space within WP

If you believe that (1) is ok and would be able to assist with (2), I think that would be a great addition. I agree that having the discussions such as the ones you raised in the talk page of the community would make things easier (so far I recommended to people to use the talk page of our template, but people haven't done it so far).

7804j (talk) 17:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

OKA lists

* On-wiki list of OKA articles: here
* Off-wiki (ggl doc) list of OKA articles: here
* On-wiki list of OKA editors: here

Reply to Ipigott at 15:28, 20 April: not only from Italian, Spanish, French and German, but also from Portuguese. Pinging Racnela21, in case you wish to comment (and thanks for your translations on Brazilian topics). User:7804j, do you maintain a list (or better, sortable table) of OKA-assisted creations by language? That would assist editors here who wish to review (or improve) articles in which they have language proficiency, and not others where they don't. I'd like to see: column 1 = lang code, c2 = creation date, c3 = editor link, c4 = article link. Can assist with wikifying data into a sortable table, if you know how to provide CSV, TSV (preferred), or even Excel format. Mathglot (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot and all: At the top of this section, I've blueboxed the OKA lists that we're currently aware of, but if you know of others, please add. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:58, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot: Thanks for your interest. Yes, I am certainly aware of Portuguese. In fact I have looked carefully through the list of almost 294 articles translated by Racnela21 since December 2022 and reviewed and assessed those needing attention. As you can see, the results are impressive. As time permits, I'll assess/review articles by other OKA translators. I've already been able to cover 77 by Oliwiasocz (Polish) and 140 by Manoru007 (Italian). If you (or anyone else) can suggest any other prolific OKA translators (especially those who are still active), I'll try to look through their work too. (I'm thinking of handling those created by Alemedicen (German) which I may be able to cover later today.--Ipigott (talk) 05:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)