Interlanguage Links, revisited (and vote)

[Solar]

In this thread, users from the German OS-development community lowlevel.eu informed us that, in their Wiki, they are using the "interlanguage links" feature of the MediaWiki software to link selected articles to their counterparts in our Wiki.

Example: FAT, USB (note the "English" link at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar).

They asked whether we would consider doing the same.

In the above-linked thread, some discussion ensued, with quite some posts riddled with misunderstandings:

• This is not about translating material from one Wiki into the other,
• this is not to fill gaps in either Wiki,
• this is not about any disability to read technical English or anything.

What it is about is that there is a strong yet disjunct community over at lowlevel.eu, with a quite well-done Wiki I might add, that links us and asks us if we would be interested in linking back. The idea is to provide more cross-references to anyone capable of crossing the language barrier (from either side).

Since the discussion in above-linked thread threatened to glide off into the personal, and several misunderstandings seemed to persist (on both sides), I suggested letting it rest for a while, and then having a vote to get an idea what the majority of people here thinks about the proposal.

This is it.

[Solar]

...aaaaaand now somebody tell me why "the submitted form was invalid" when I try to cast my vote?

[Combuster]

Poll broken here as well. (and apparently, a summon moderator spell has already been cast)


Anyway, neutral tending to no. Based on that a "yes" would be good courtesy, and a "no" because the decision can in the long term contribute to the "unrelated" Bad Stuff.

That includes a disagreeance with Solar's notion that this vote and the discussed bad subjects are unrelated because they are: the linked discussion shows the connection often enough. the more relevant question is whether the (increased) probability of the aforementioned bad secondary effects outweigh the good (primary and secondary) effects. In other words I do not believe that the long term effects should be ignored as Solar seems to suggest: that would be the wrong conclusion to that thread.


Summarized, the points to consider:
- The gained access to more information
- Probability of more unity in the OS Development scene
- Maintenance
- Probability of nationalism breaking the OS Development scene
- Probability of a loss of emphasis on the essential development skills

[Solar]

Summarized, the points to consider:
- The gained access to more information
- Probability of more unity in the OS Development scene
- Maintenance

Absolutely ACK on those.

- Probability of nationalism breaking the OS Development scene
- Probability of a loss of emphasis on the essential development skills

Disagreeing on these two; actually I believe exactly those two to be the "misunderstanding" I have mentioned before.

There is no "breaking" since lowlevel.eu already exists and is, as far as I can tell, completely disjunct from OSDev.org. They won't cease to exist, no matter whether we link them or not.

"Loss of emphasis on essential development skills" - again, lowlevel.eu exists, and they do link to English documentation left, right and center. There is no effort of keeping English away from their users; they just use their native language for communication. As I do every day at the office when talking to my co-developers, or when documenting our work in the company Wiki. Yes, strong English skills are essential, but there is no requirement to keep all your own documentation in English, so from their point, it's absolutely valid to have a German forum / wiki.

And then, I believe, the strongest point: What does it matter? Let's say a native German speaker who is not fluent enough in English to actually benefit from OSDev.org comes here, finds the interlanguage links to lowlevel.eu, and switches to their community. What would be bad about it? Do you really want to teach him English here? So, even when he is missing "essential development skills", why not point him to a community that is able to point out his shortcomings in his native lingo so that he has a fair chance of actually getting the point?

I don't want this to become another lengthy discussion, so I will shut up now. I just felt these points had to be pointed out.

[Brendan]

Hi,

I voted "yes", under the assumption that Solar is volunteering to take responsibility for the inter-language links (including setting them up, maintaining them and sorting out any possible problems; for all possible languages; both now and in the foreseeable future)...

I also wanted to test the poll - seems like it works, and has been working for a while...


Cheers,

Brendan

[Solar]

Vote still broken for me.

I voted "yes", under the assumption that Solar is volunteering to take responsibility for the inter-language links (including setting them up, maintaining them and sorting out any possible problems; for all possible languages; both now and in the foreseeable future)...

Har-har.

It's a Wiki. The interlanguage links are content just like everything else. Yes, I will look into the links to lowlevel.eu (seeing as I'm a native German-speaking regular visitor of osdev.org and would welcome the crosslinking myself), but "taking responsibility... for all possible languages" is a joke, right?

[Brynet-Inc]

Yeah, polls broken.. someone fix it so I can vote 'No'.

[Combuster]

Found a workaround: change your board theme to prosilver and it works.

[Brynet-Inc]

Found a workaround: change your board theme to prosilver and it works.

But I like my board blue.

[chase]

Setup now. Please try to keep the interwiki links at the bottom of the page.

[Kevin]

Thanks, chase.

As you can see, we have started to add interwiki links to both wikis now, and I'm sure we'll add some more during this weekend.