Forum:Other MA versions

Main Pages
български (Bulgarian) català (Catalan) čeština (Czech) Deutsch (German) español (Spanish) Esperanto français (French) italiano (Italian) 日本語 (Japanese) Mirror Universe (English) Nederlands (Dutch) polski (Polish) português (Portuguese) română (Romanian) русский (Russian) Српски језик (Serbian) svenska (Swedish) українська (Ukranian) 简体中文 (Chinese) Start a new edition!

Forums → Ten Forward → Other MA versions (reply • watch)

Other MA versions

(de) German version

Statistics : 6000 articles since May 2004

1. I don't know if it's just an issue of our language version but the JPEG compression for thumbnail images is really low. The compression rate is about at .4/.5 (or 40 up to 50%) which creates many disturbing artifacts especially in images with stars in the background. Please compare Bild:SS Botany Bay.jpg to its thumbnail in the article SS Botany Bay. : [defchris] :: ^{[ talk ]} : 20:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
2. There is a second issue about the German Wikipedia that took our CC-licensed Bild:Föderation Logo.svg and uploaded as "Public Domain". It was "solved" by deleting the JPEG copy and taking the original SVG file - marking it again as "Public Domain". So there we start again arguing... : [defchris] :: ^{[ talk ]} : 20:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
3. I was wondering why our license "CC-by-nc" wasn't updated to 2.5... Ours is still 2.0 : [defchris] :: ^{[ talk ]} : 20:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Aw, man - our thumbnails and smaller JPEG images look really crappy! : [defchris] :: ^{[ talk ]} : 01:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

(eo) Esperanto edition

Statistics : 5 articles since September 2005
I don't mean to hurt the feelings of whoever initiated it, but I really don't believe we should have an Esperanto edition. As I stated somewhere above, many non-native English speakers prefer reading MA in English over their own language, and I just can't see any benefit in adding another layer of complexity to the project when we have two editions (Swedish, Polish) which are already in a state of disrepair. Wouldn't we be better off without the Esperanto one? --Vedek Dukat ^{Talk | Duty Roster} 21:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be (little but) activity on it actually. As long as people are interested in, I don't see any problem with it - Philoust123 10:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I created a very, very basic page on the Esperanto wiki, but I was experimenting with the language while reading a tutorial. I agree entirely with the Vedek's assessment. If I was going to learn a language for the sake of Memory Alpha, it would be Spanish, which I learned in high school. Weyoun 19:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday, I requested bureaucrat access for MA/eo and also worked a little on that edition by at least creating english versions of those pages that should have been there from the start. I have no idea how that edition could have been started even without those. I'm still not sure this will be going somewhere, but if anyone of you has any idea about esperanto (I don't), please help by translating those few pages, or even create some short articles so that that edition has at least some content. -- Cid Highwind 11:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

(es) Spanish version

Statistics : 5600 articles since ?
In case you missed its casual introduction into the MA family, we now have a Spanish edition, and I'd like to make a few notes on it in case this causes confusion:

• What is now MA/es was originally "Trekkipedia" (a better name for MA, IMHO, but that's another issue) which is why formatting may be different from what you're used to. For example, most articles don't begin with a bolded declaration of the topic, and citations are much less frequent at present. This will change as time goes on, so feel free to adjust things accordingly.
• You will probably have to re-register, as the user base (at present) is not pooled with that of Wikia and by extension Memory Alpha.
• Performers and production staff formerly had articles using last name, first name; if you come across any of these articles, please move them to first name last name format.
• Titles are something I need to discuss with the admin, because Star Trek is known as "Viaje a las estrellas" in Spanish and I'm not sure how much translating will be done in that respect.

Any other questions, feel free to contact me or the admin on there. Thanks! --Vedek Dukat ^{Talk | Duty Roster} 07:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't speak a single word of spanish, so I'm just putting this here - was the former "Trekkiepedia" published under a compatible Creative Commons License, so that the content could be reused, or how do they work around that? -- Cid Highwind 07:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't speak spanish either, though it is sometimes rather simple to guess what one article means in english (or German). In order to get the interwikis set up: Vedek can you please set interwikis there, where the spanish page title is not the same as the english one? -- Kobi - [[{{ns:3}}:Kobi|(''{{ns:1}}'')]] 12:52, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Licensing: Umm, it didn't -have- a license, so I think they're just adopting MA's CC license. It was formerly hosted on a server in Argentina, so I have no idea what that means in "legalese", but es:Ocupación de Bajor is a translation-in-progress of one of our absolute best articles.

Interwiki: Sure, I'll make sure the links stay up to date, although it gets to be a bigger and bigger pain as we open more and more editions of Memory Alpha. But that's a good thing, so I don't mind. ;) --Vedek Dukat ^{Talk | Duty Roster} 22:12, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, my name is Omar, from Argentina, and one of the creators of the original "Trekkipedia". I not fluent in English, but I sure what the "Trekkipedia" was 100% compatible with the CC Licence. LL&P --ElAuriano 16:55, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

(fr) French version

Statistics : 1230 articles since November 2005

• January 2007
  

I'm confronted to a formidable type of vandalism since the last days. A few IP users (probably bots) create new articles translated from MA-en, every 2-3 minutes. The problem is that these articles are completely unformatted and translated word for word without correction. Images appear with html code, ... A few pages that already existed are also replaced by this version. On the one hand, those articles are easier to finish (generally 5-10 m for formating), but on the other hand, at least 50 new articles per day is a bit too much. They are blocked for now. - Philoust123 19:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Be careful: What I find alarming that the one article I picked (fr:Discuter:Ro Laren) was a wikipedia translation (wikipedia:Ro Laren)! Incompatible licences here. Also fr:Discuter:Kira Nerys caught my interest, because it seems the graphics are included from Memory Beta which not only makes use of novel information but is GNU as well. -- Kobi 10:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've already thought about that, especially when I've seen "Kira Nerys is a character from Star Trek universe". That's why I've reverted a few articles and placed the content temporary in discussion page for further investigation. But most of the new articles are translated from MA-en. What is funny is to see that this user translate everything, including TOC, edit... fr:Talla "De l'alpha de mémoire" (from Alpha of Memory) ; OTO-RHINO (ENT) ; pinces de Jeffrey (Coombs of Jeffrey) ; the Archer from archery (Jonathan Archer) It will probably take me a week to clean this up. - Philoust123 12:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(nl) Dutch version

Statistics : 4150 articles since April 2004

• Nothing for the moment

(pl) Polish version

Statistics : 53 articles since ? 2005
How can we contact any of the admins? (They left no email address and Wikia doesn't have one either). [...] -- Kobi - [[{{ns:3}}:Kobi|(''{{ns:1}}'')]] 12:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Update has 30 articles now and pl:User:Dax is active in creating new articles, however pl:Robin Lefler looks very much like an apocryph article, shouldn't the canon policy count for all language editions? -- Kobi 10:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I just read about Memory Alpha's canon policy in FAQ, and you have right, Kobi. I knew that ST New Frontier isn't a canon and I shouldn't add those non-canon information. I will make some corrections in those articles, but I have one question: if I put those articles (unchanged) into Novels category instead Characters category, is that will be OK? -- Dax

Current style is to put a very minor note about "apocryph" appearence of characters into the background section of an article (example: Spock#Apocrypha). You can of course copy the New Frontier parts of the articles to a page similar to Star Trek: New Frontier characters or on the novel page itself if it is not a novel series (example: Ghosts#Characters). -- Kobi 12:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

We've just started the creating articles and structure to polish version. There are more people that want to help. I think the creating of polish version truly begins today. Domko 17:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

That is good to hear, but I see the Memory Alpha style is still not in use in MA/pl even on the new pages like pl:Bajor images are cluttered wild within the text. -- Kobi 13:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

(sr) Serbian version

This has just been created. I invited the new admin/bureaucrat of that version, User:Whisperer, to join us here as well. -- Cid Highwind 12:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, hello to everyone. I’ve read this section before I submitted my proposal for the new wikia although I noticed some repulsion to the other wikias as they are not growing as fast as some expected there needs time for setting up and starting effectively new wikia. I’ll continue with translation and addition of important pages and I’ll invite some of my friends there exists newsletter group but it is not very large I hope we all could make this project works. If I have any questions to whom may I refer except the main admins on the main wikia these guys who set it up. Because I think there might be some mistakes I noticed them already? Ah yes I worked on several wikias on some even as an admin and I worked on two projects of like wikinews wikipedia. Whisperer 19:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding technical details, wikia staff would be the best choice. Regarding questions about Memory Alpha policies etc., you could just ask the community here, in general by using the Forums, or specifically by using some of the user talk pages. -- Cid Highwind 11:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

No activity in the last 30 days. I just contacted Whisperer to see if he is still around... -- Cid Highwind 21:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

(sv) Swedish version

Statistics : 1280 articles since May 2005
Since there are no replies about my concerns on Memory Alpha talk:Start a new edition in another language I have to post this more public it seems: What will happen to the Esperanto, Polish, and Swedish versions? How can we contact any of the admins? (They left no email address and Wikia doesn't have one either). Currently MA/sv is a spam fest for vandals and no admin around. -- Kobi - [[{{ns:3}}:Kobi|(''{{ns:1}}'')]] 12:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why we even have an Esperanto edition... Enough people (several German-speaking members and at least one who speaks Swedish, to my knowledge) prefer the English edition over their own languages, so I can't understand why anyone would want to read it. I could be wrong though.

The Swedish edition at least has content, so the only thing I can think of is to have some English-language admin keep an eye on it until someone else comes along and picks up the project. --Vedek Dukat ^{Talk | Duty Roster} 22:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I check them from time to time as well. Perhaps sysop rights should be granted to all English admin for the other MAs. That way they could block obvious spammers and vandals, even if they dont speak the language (page blanking and spam looks the same in every language). Jaz ^talkFile:United Federation of Planets logo.png 04:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think every english admin should have the sysop rights, but rather 1 or 2 who check these wikis every 2-3 days, because many of them won't care about these wikis and there's no need for 20 admin on each versions (people who have questions don't know who to contact in that case). Furthermore, the other languages admin should inform about their presence (saying for example they watch the recent changes "once each week every saturday"...) and absence (holiday, administration stop...). I think a special page should be created for this like "Memory Alpha:other MA versions discussions" (rather than the Ten Forward) to discuss these specific problems. Concerning MA-fr, I watch the changes generally every days (at least every 2 days), I also granted Kobi the admin rights. If I haven't any disponibilities for a while, I will inform you, don't worry :). - Philoust123 12:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I contacted Wikia once about that, and the answer basically was that "orphaned wikis" typically don't get closed. Instead, they eventually will be put up "for adoption". It might be best if that was done by the MA-community, but I'm personally not going to adopt a swedish wiki... I'm sure there's a way for one or several of the existing admins here to become an admin there as well, if necessary.

What's more important than that is the fact that apparently, it is possible for anyone to create a new MA/xx project via Wikia without consulting with the rest of the MA-community. I guess there's no way around that, considering that Wikia "pays the bill" so to speak... -- Cid Highwind 10:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I changed the start date for the swedish wiki to May last year, not november 2003. That changes somethings, I believe. I am one of the admins of the swedish. The creator doesn't seem to be around that much, and I got tired some time ago, about doing it all by myself (or with User:OnO). I personally believe that the swedish MA would be better if it merged with the swedish wikipedia instead. But I'm open to other suggestions as well. Peter R 22:37, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's not really an option for two reasons. First, MA/sv won't simply be closed down just because content is reused somewhere else, meaning that doing this would be more a split than a merge. Second, there's the incompatible license which means that content can't even be moved from one of these two wikis to the other that easily. Basically, MA/sv is here to stay - the questions is just, in what form, which size, and with which group of users/admins. I can perfectly understand if you don't like to administrate a wiki that has no or only a few contributors, and I'm glad to see that, at least for the moment, spam and vandalism is reverted/fixed. In the long run, there should be some more contributors - perhaps you could try to find some people interested in joining the project? If not, perhaps you can read some of the suggestions below (section: Inactive editions) and also comment there. -- Cid Highwind 00:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

(ru) ...

Was created last week. It would be nice if an admin there could be contacted and be invited here. Not me, because I'm basically unavailable today and tomorrow. -- Cid Highwind 12:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

(cs) ...

Was created last week. It would be nice if an admin there could be contacted and be invited here. Not me, because I'm basically unavailable today and tomorrow. -- Cid Highwind 12:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As best as I can tell, there are no admins there. --Alan del Beccio 12:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Should have noted that, this (Re: User:JemHadar) is what brought me to check it in the first place. I contacted Sannse about it. -- Cid Highwind 12:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I am here, ready and waiting - without anyone inviting me :) --JemHadar 22:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Additional suggested versions

(tl) Klingon?

I suggest we create a user project to translate MA into Klingon and convert the Esperanto wiki to that language. Wouldn't it be more sensible for a Star Trek site to have Klingon? Weyoun 21:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

A possible "MA/Klingon" should use the fake language code for the Klingon language (tl/tlh), not misuse the Esperanto one. Anyway, I don't see much potential for that... -- Cid Highwind 21:13, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

i read somewhere that there are 2 million speakers of eo and 700,00 or so speakers of tl. Now, i don't know about the ratios of star trek fans that know eo, but its safe to assume that its a small minority. Everyone who speaks tl is a star trek obsessive, beyond even most of us here. Which makes more sense to have as a language? (And i acknowledge that a Klingon language version would prolly be as active as Esperanto, but at least Klingon is logical. Also, we could prolly bug the KLI for some help if we wanted to. I'm sure someone would pounce on it.) --6/6 _{Neural Transceiver} 09:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. the idea of Esperanto being a real language and Klingon being a fake are mutually exclusive. They are both constructed languages, with full syntaxes, and vocabularies. the only difference is the REASON thy were created. --6/6 _{Neural Transceiver} 09:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

(pt) (Forthcoming?) Portuguese version

Greetings. Long time lurker, first time poster, the latter for a good reason: I'm studying the possibility of starting a (mainly Brazilian) Portuguese version of MA, and I thought it would be unpolite to start such project without previous notice here, especially to make clear that presently I'm really just studying the project's viability, because I don't want to start something around here just to leave it inactive shortly afterwards.

The ST fandom here in Brazil is quite large, but it is concentrated mainly on discussion boards and/or conventions. My aim is to find in those places a few people interested in coordinate the administrative part with me as well as some regular contributors to start translating/writing articles about ST proper.

I have some experience with Wikis, since I contribute occasionally to Wikipedia and I am also administrator at Enciclopédia Valinor, a Portuguese language Tolkien-related encyclopedia.

Presently I am translating myself the Help, FAQ and other technical pages as suggested, and in a good pace (even though I'm not sure if something will come out of this, of course, but since I am actually a professional translator myself, I really enjoy doing this kind of work, for training and/or for fun, and do it fast :) ).

So that's it. I really do hope to be able to go on with this, and if there's any Portuguese speaker reading this willing to help and/or was already thinking about starting a Portuguese language edition, just join the club and contact me. :) --Elentilion 00:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

On a side note, I would like to know if there is any kind of restriction regarding translation of MA articles from one language version into another? Should I cite the reference for the original article? Would the interwiki link be enough?

There are already many thorough articles in a given language that translate them would be better and more practical than starting a similar one from zero, as well as helping to make the information of each article more consistent with its counterparts from other versions. --Elentilion 06:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Elentilion, and welcome! I think a Portuguese edition of MA would be a great addition. The only concern we have with new editions is that we already have several inactive editions (Esperanto, Swedish) and we'd hate to see another. Having said that, though, several editions are moving along with only one or two regular contributors; for example, the Spanish version currently has two primary archivists, and the Polish version has one. Our newest addition is the Serbian version. And to answer your question about translations from other languages, I think many articles started out as translations from the English article, and there are some English pages that are borrowed wholly or in part from the German, French, or other editions. If you'd like to get started on MA/pt, just let us know and we can get the framework set up. -- Renegade54 08:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Elentilion, and another welcome. :) Thanks for commenting here and letting us know about your plans. I don't know how viable a MA/pt would be, but I think you're already off for a better start by getting involved first instead of just silently creating the page. Good luck.

Regarding your question about translating articles - all articles here are published using the CC-by-nc license, as would be articles on MA/pt. The "by" part means that attribution is necessary when creating a derivative work. I think it would be enough to leave a comment like "initial version translated from [[:en:ARTICLE_TITLE]] in the edit summary in those cases. -- Cid Highwind 11:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for you comments and suggestions, guys. Yes, I'm also concerned about the project's activity, and that's why I'm studying it carefully before taking any rash step.

As for the translations: Cid, do you mean adding a section at the end of the article itself with the "initial version translated from [[:en:ARTICLE_TITLE]]" quote? If so, that would be done. :) --Elentilion 17:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I was referring to the "Summary" box - when creating a new (translated) article, your summary could reference the original. In that case, a link to the original article would always be a part of the article history. Alternatively, you could add a comment to the talk page; I don't think it would be necessary to make it a part of the article itself, as that would only "mess up" the article layout. :) -- Cid Highwind 20:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Language index

OK, first of all, I'm new to this Wiki stuff, so excuse me if this question/suggestion doesn't meet any formatting standarts or is in the completely wrong place, but here it goes anyway: Right now the address http://www.memory-alpha.org automatically redirects every visitor to the English language edition of the site and while I know Star Trek has its foundation in the anglophon (Is that the correct word?) areas and countries and that most of its fans come from there and that this edition has the most content of them all I find this situation to be a bit unfair towards the other language editions. I propose the implementation of a kind of language index page like Wikipedia has to allow new visitors to discover other language editions of the site more easily and maybe even put a link there which allows people to start a new edition.
I in no way mean to step on anyone's toes, I just wanted to bring this to your attention. Additionally, I have also posted this same question/suggestion in the German and French editions of Ten Forward to see what the people there think of the idea.--Bell'Orso 22:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

It should at least be more prominent on the EN Main Page. At least the German, Spanish, and French versions as they are the biggest. But English is 3x as big as DE or ES, and 9-10x as big as FR so its far more likely to find an article at EN. Of course, making it more obvious that there are other languages might help them grow.

On another note, the stylesheets at ES and FR are still broken from the upgrade. They need to be copied from the DE or EN wikis by an admin. Cid Highwind said something a while ago about re-doing the skin so that it didn't replace monobook but I don't what the progress is on that at the moment. --Bp 22:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I added links to other versions of MA more prominently to my Main Page suggestion. I deliberately did not add the "Start a new edition" to that listing, because I think we have enough inactive languages already... Regarding the stylesheet comment - yes, I'm still trying to get that started, but no reply from Jason yet. -- Cid Highwind 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, right now it IS much more likely to find an article in English than in any other language. That is precisely WHY I am suggesting to feature the other existing languages more prominently. Maybe you're right that adding a link to start a new language edition would not be such a bright idea, but I still think we should have the address point to a language index.--Bell'Orso 08:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I said not for the moment on the french MA because english version is the most complete and most viewed version. In that case, the english visitor (in majority) will click 2 times to access MA-en (Main Page / Index => Main Page), whereas the french visitor will click 2 times as before to access MA-fr (Main Page => Accueil MA-fr / Index => Accueil MA-fr). Furthermore, most users can use the favorite links to place his prefered version rather than the simple MA.org. - Philoust123 12:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I know that those people who already know about the other language editions won't see much of a difference, but I think it would help those people who don't visit here every day to become interested in joining and helping more easily when they see what languages are already present.--Bell'Orso 16:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured articles on other MA versions

Wikipedia puts a star on interwiki links when an article is well done on another language version (see for example here). Is it possible to do it here also for at least featured articles ? As a french, I rather go on the wikipedia-en than the -fr, even if I would prefer reading an article in french, because it is often more complete on -en, unless I see that star. - Philoust123 19:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure it should be possible to introduce them, however you need to know that at least the German Wikipedia discontinues the useage of those templates ... I wonder if it is really useful here too: how many languages does the average archivist speak? -- Ⓚⓞⓑⓘ 15:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Inactive editions

(Also continuing the discussion from Memory Alpha talk:Start a new edition in another language)

I just had a little chat with Angela after seeing that the swedish MA was, again, full of spam that hasn't been reverted for at least days, in some cases weeks!

Regarding spam, one option Angela reminded me of is the spam blacklist. Although having at least one active admin per edition would be far better, of course, suggesting spam URLs found on the inactive MA editions here will at least lead to removal of the spam within a week.

Regarding existing inactive editions, according to Angela closing them is not an option (partly due to technical restrictions, as it seems). If someone wants to volunteer (preferably someone who already is an admin on one of the other MA editions), I could talk to Angela about making that someone an admin on the editions that currently lack an active admin.

To prevent more inactive editions in the future... Currently, "Step 1" of Memory Alpha:Start a new edition in another language is the only step necessary to create a new MA edition. If we agree to change that procedure, we could avoid future projects that "go nowhere", or lack admin access. Possible changes I could think of are:

• Need to provide X contributors willing to work on the new edition (signature collection on a user project, perhaps?)
• Need to make at least one current admin also an admin on the new edition (avoiding completely parallel structures)
• Have a common bureaucrat for all editions (basically acting as a last failsafe if all admins of that edition go missing. I'd volunteer for that if there aren't any objections).

-- Cid Highwind 14:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes I agree the system needs to be changed. Especially since the new language editions are able to start without prior approval of the current membership or vision that there are enough members to care for it. -- Kobi 16:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, even if I'm quite the only contributor on MA-fr :) -- Philoust123 11:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, good to see admins from two of the other editions here already, because I think that something like this needs to be discussed throughout all editions. I will try to contact the founder (alternatively existing admins) of the other editions and invite them to this discussion. I guess they can safely be considered "inactive" if they don't reply within a week.

Regarding the above suggestions, the connection between "en", "de" and "fr" seems to be good as it is, with Kobi being sysop on all three and several other admins/bureaucrats checking in here regularly, as it seems. :) -- Cid Highwind 11:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Add "nl" to that list as well... sorry that I forgot that one at first. :) -- Cid Highwind 11:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi! I'm working in the "es" version, but I no speak english... please contact me in spanish if is also posible. Thanks. --ElAuriano 12:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Cross-language sysops are indeed a nice idea ... while I'm a bit uncomfortable with French (I don't speak a word except baguette) it would indeed make sense to adopt sysops from other languages: For example Eelco was recently added to the admin list in MA/de (he's Dutch and speaks de-3). Btw. Philoust, I at least see an option that the French language will grow, much more than an Esperanto one. -- Kobi 15:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, mein kleines Andorianer, MA-fr will exceed the swedishs and the dutchs, then ridicule the Germans and finally conquer the world... :)

But, for the moment, I must write my 'monthly' featured article, like every 2 months. :( - Philoust123 19:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello! Greetings to you all from the Dutch version. I must say I'm pleased to here that we're going to do something about the inactive versions. It's really frustrating to see lots of spam and realizing that there is nothing we can do about it. In my opinion it's a good idea to have some people with cross-language sysop rights. Since Cid volunteerd to do that job I'd be happy to support him on all versions.

On the subject of making it a little more difficult to start a new edition I have some doubts. Especially if I look back at the Dutch version. After the start up by Redge it slowly came to a stand still. After an entire year of MA it only had about 70 articles. And although that probably had to do with the fact that there were only a few users around I think it has been doing pretty well in the following year (4150 articles!). I don't think that I would have put in a lot of energy if there wasn't a Dutch version to start with. But on the other hand some languages are just a dead end (esperanto comes to mind...). If we would be able to debate with users from the other versions about upcoming versions I think that would help.

(Oh, and about the French conquering the world... don't know about that but they will definetly conquer Italy! Go France!)

--Patricia 09:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Small clarification: I wouldn't want to become an active admin on all MA editions - even I don't have that much time to spare... ;) What I volunteered to do was to become a site-wide bureaucrat (perhaps even with exceptions for those editions that have clearly active bureaucrats at the moment), basically to allow the active part of the international MA community to choose new "active" admins for any edition that is currently lacking them.

Regarding cross-project admins, we don't need to choose one admin for all projects, but I think it would be a good idea to start each new edition with someone who has been an admin on another edition for some months already, simply to help guiding that new edition according to our policies... -- Cid Highwind 10:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I would be worried if you did have the free time to become an active admin on all the other versions ;}. Anyway, I agree with you're ideas/opinions. So if nobody else has any objections I'd be happy to have you as a bureaucrat on the versions that need it.

It's a good idea if we start a new edition with a current admin. The only difficulty might occur when nobody of the admins speaks the particular language. I just hope that the MA community is widespread enough to support every possible language (italian, russian, chinese...???) But I'm sure that we'll find a way to make even those work. --Patricia 16:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, this "current admin" would be part-admin, part-counselor, on the new edition. Having one who actually speaks the "new" language on a native or near-native level would be preferable, of course, but if such an admin is not available, I guess we could live with one who is at least able to communicate with other admins there in another language (english, or a "similar" language like DE<>NL, ES<>PT, ...).

Are there any other suggestions, comments? And could someone speaking spanish perhaps translate for ElAuriano on his talk page on MA/es? Thanks. -- Cid Highwind 16:16, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

To my mind, the previous works of a future admin should also be taken into account (if only one or a few contributors are proposed for that version) : For example, if he built other websites in the past about Star Trek or other subjects, we could estimate his motivation with the quality, the duration and updates of that previous works.

User:Sbalint added today an "Hu" interwiki link on Tomorrow is Yesterday. Does someone know of an Hungarian version ? - Philoust123 18:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know there is no database setup for :hu -- Kobi 13:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Just did another check of all the editions:

• en, de, fr, nl are fine
• there are many edits on es (although I think that edition could use some more editors, at the moment it's basically a one man show over there).
• there are a few edits on pl, and there are still serious issues with formatting over there. With about 75 articles in existance, that could be solved, though.
• sv has seen some edits in the last day, but nearly all of them are vandalism/countervandalism. I don't see any real progress there at the moment.
• eo is dead, nothing more, nothing less.

So, the last three are still problematic. If there are no objections, I'd like to start by requesting bureaucrat access to eo. Meanwhile, if someone speaks one or more of the other languages, we could start working on those editions by at least adding some sort of "beginners guide" or something? -- Cid Highwind 11:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I was invited for a second time by Cid Highwind, to join this discussion. I've already stated my intentions earlier in this discussion (see under "Swedish MA"). I just wanted to make sure that you saw that I've already said something here. There were, of course, no response to my thoughts. Peter R 18:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't notice that and will reply above. -- Cid Highwind 23:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding this, we started an "international todo list", for specific problems we found on other language editions. Currently, this page resides in my user space, but feel free to edit it anyway, should you find other problems that need work. Eventually, this list could be moved to somewhere else. If you are able to solve one of the problems listed, please do and remove it from the list. -- Cid Highwind 17:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Translation conventions

Is there any? I mean, is there anything that should be left in English? My doubt is especially about names such as Memory Alpha itself; for what I can see from other MA versions, the wiki name is maintained in English (unlike Wikipedia, for instance, where each language version translate Wikipedia to its own form, such as Wicipedia in Welsh and Wikipédia in Portuguese.

The real problem is related to Memory Alpha as such: in Portuguese, the planet's name is Memória Alfa (used as such in both TOS dubbing and subtitles in the dvds). By browsing the other MA versions you can see that the name is left in English anyway, but I don't know if there aren't translations of the name in those languages or if the articles' creators decided to keep it in English in order to be coherent with the wiki's name.

So what should I do? Translate Memory Alpha as Memória Alfa and deal with the incoherence between article and wiki's name? Keep it in English, providing the Portuguese translation in brackets? Lastly, is there any possibility for other MA versions to translate the name of the wiki into their own languages? --Elentilion 22:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. I think it wasn't raised so far, because most dubbings/subtitles left the name intact. The German version on the other hand is the only language edition which uses the German episode titles instead of the English ones. Technical objects are translated however. -- Kobi 17:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

On MA-fr, the names are translated when an adequate translation can be found, but sometime, there are many translation, so the most used one is generally chosen. The problem with episode titles in french is that there are up to 3-4 different translations between TV diffusions (in France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland), VHS and DVD especially for VOY, ENT and TNG season 1 ; so rather than vote each time for the best title, the english name is always used and all the possible translations are redirected to that article. - Philoust123 18:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, as for episode titles, keeping them in English and providing the (most usual) translation in brackets would be the best solution, and my intention was doing that anyway. My main concern is regarding names of other articles, not episode ones, such as the aforementioned Memory Alpha/Memória Alfa problem, as well as the wiki's name. --Elentilion 19:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

You should use the portugese 'official' translation and redirect names when necessary, with some exceptions (for example, ship names). Using both pt and en episode title in articles would made the article illegible to my mind, especially when there are many titles referenced. - From Cardassia with pain 23:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, to the original question: ma/sr uses "Успомене Алфе"/"Uspomene Alfe", so pt wouldn't be the first language with a different name. -- Kobi 15:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Upload problem

Discussion transfered from Memory Alpha:Images for deletion

There are more and more images uploaded on the wrong database. Over a month, 2 new french users and one german user did that error (and I think I did that error too once). It's probably because the upload page is exactly the same on both versions (with the navigation language preference). We should think of a way to distinguish visually all the langage versions from the english version because other languages users always use MA-en as a base for translation, so edit errors in images and articles will happen more and more in the future, with the development of those other versions. - From Cardassia with pain 21:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)