Template talk:Wikipedialang/archive2

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Contents

1 Normalize the word counts and quit arguing 1 WP:RU --> 10 000 2 Proposal 3 Powers of three 4 WP:GD-->1000 5 word count, again (sorry) 6 About "50,000" 7 APPEAL! APPEAL! 8 WP:EN-->450,000 - ON WIKIPEDIA DAY! 9 Dutch wikipedia Reached 50000 articles, ADJUST THE PAGE !!! 10 Proper English alphabetization 11 Amount of content needed before a page is listed on the Main Page 12 Tagalog 13 Yiddish Biocrawler 14 Corsican wikipedia 15 Whitespace changed to make main page validate 16 Cassubian 17 Sanskrit 18 Re-ordered language links 19 'ten largest' section 20 Constructed Languages 21 "Quick links" 22 Cutting down the list 23 Major langs with small wikipedias 24 Bootiful! 25 The 100,000-article mark 26 Entities? 27 Size of this template 28 Discusion on parenthesized translations 28.1 Keep Translations 28.2 Use Transliterations Only 28.3 Remove Translations and Transliterations 29 Scrollbar. 30 Ranges 31 Replacing the 100's with 50,000's 32 icon 33 Raul654 is prematurely implementing his proposed solution without a consensus 34 Section 35 5s 36 effects? 36.1 Suggested modifications to the word count template 36.2 Normalize the word counts and quit arguing 37 WP:RU --> 10 000 38 Proposal 39 Powers of three 40 WP:GD-->1000 41 word count, again (sorry) 42 About "50,000" 43 APPEAL! APPEAL! 44 WP:EN-->450,000 - ON WIKIPEDIA DAY! 45 Dutch wikipedia Reached 50000 articles, ADJUST THE PAGE !!! 46 Drop the Biocrawlers with fewer than 10,000 articles

Normalize the word counts and quit arguing

The concerns about word counts in various languages could be nicely addressed without getting philosophical by simply taking a well-known, multiply-translated text of about 1000 words (say, a bit of the Bible) and checking the length of the standard translations of that bit. That gives a multiply factor for each language. So if 1000 words becomes 5000 bytes in English, 3503 in Chinese, and 6590 in French, say, you can just pro-rate the byte counts. Simple. Steverapaport 17:42, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

this would make sense. First, we'd have to establish how the statistics script counts the words in the first place, I have the impression there are some pretty smart algorithms at work already. dab (ᛏ) 09:32, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes and no, dab. Even if there are indeed smart things going on already, this form of normalization would work, above and beyond them. Not that it wouldn't be interesting to know how the stats script works, but once the 1000-word passage has a normalization factor, there it is.

WP:RU --> 10 000

WP:RU has 10K articles.

with a great 3100 bytes per article (en has 2400)! I moved it to the 10,000 tier. dab (ᛏ) 15:53, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We have longer words :-))

--DIG 18:42, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

oops, I didn't check, and I just noted that officially, they have only 9967 articles. No point moving them back, I suppose? dab (ᛏ) 15:55, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I took my number (10 018) from the official special pages: statistics page (:en equivalent).

--DIG 18:42, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

true... The number on the main page is lower, though (even down to 9933, now!?). I don't know which is the 'official' one. dab (ᛏ) 11:48, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposal

Please see here for my proposal. I don't think the Biocrawlerlang template needs to have such large text, but I do think it's vital that it links to all usable Biocrawlers (ie, over 100 articles - some might argue 500 or 1000 as a better limit for usability).

With text of the proposed size, people who are looking for it will be able to find it but it won't be an eyesore to people who aren't interested. People who aren't looking for it but could probably use it anyways will still be able to notice it easily.

The languages with over 10k articles are in bold, but there is no font size difference between the three tiers. I personally think it looks better than the old version. --Node 01:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, but I prefer the existing template. In my view, this section attempts to fulfil the following aims:

1. Biocrawler is available in a range of additional languages.

2. The complete list can be directly accessed.

3. These wikipedias vary greatly in size.

4. Some of the wikipedias are very significant.

5. A small number of the most commonly used wikipedias can be directly accessed.

6. To provide the above information concisely and clearly.

Your proposal addresses these aims, but not, in my opinion, as well as the existing template. In particular, numbers 3, 4 and 5 are less clear in your version. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 06:50, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with George. →Raul654 14:16, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

...of course you do. Actually, I think it's more that you disagree with me and less that you agree with him. --Node 22:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe my proposal addresses 1 and 3 better than, 2 and 6 about the same as, and 4 just a bit less than the current revision. I'm not sure exactly how 5 is an important aim here, and when compared with the size of the template before my and Raul's original editwar, the number in my proposal is still "small". I do think it's important to emphasize that we are /very/ multilingual, and in the current version European languages are overrepresented and other languages underrepresented (of course there's a reason for that, but it does make us look less international), whereas my proposal includes languages that expand the scope of the template significantly to include such highly-populated areas as Southern India (excluding Andhra Pradesh), Pakistan, Hindi-speaking parts of Northern India, and is in addition more geographically diverse (if you count the area where each of the languages is indigenously spoken, my proposal is significantly less Eurocentric) --Node 22:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

One thing that suprised me when I updated dab's template is just how much of the content is concentrated in the top dozen languages. I don't believe that the current template overrepresents the European languages: if anything, it still significantly underrepresents them. Now, I have nothing against showing a broad range of other languages, except the concern that long lists turn off readers and end up being ignored. But I don't want to advertise a level of multilingualism that does not exist.

But the multilingualism does exist. Just because some of these Biocrawlers aren't SuperBiocrawlers, they still exist and they still have content and in about 75% of them there's a vibrant community and about 50% of them are usable encyclopedias (this is referring to the under-1ks). Look again at my proposal. Does the list look so long? Again, this list is for people who might be interested in reading or contributing to another Biocrawler, not people who speak only English. If monolingual English speakers are turned off, too f'ing bad for them, because this template isn't /for/ them. If your language has over 10k articles, then you will find it quickly. If it has over 1k but not over 10k, you will find it still. If it has over 100 but not over 1k, you can still find it without having to go to a different page, and it still doesn't look like a "long list".

Note also that English, Spanish and Portugese are European only in origin. The bulk of their speakers reside on other continents. Taking this into account, only half of the top dozen languages are 'European.' GeorgeStepanek\^talk 23:09, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"each of the languages is indigenously spoken"... Thus, out of the over-50Ks... well, let's just say it's 5/6ths Eurocentric ("Eurocentric" generally includes the descendants of European colonists and immigrants living in the Americas). With every smaller tier, more diversity is added. Soon, Biocrawlers from even more diverse places for example Nahuatl (a Native American language of Mexico with over 1 million speakers) will have 100 articles, yet they will still be absent from the template. When the Swahili Biocrawler reaches 100 articles, it will be missing here and the only "African" languages present will be Arabic (which is really more of an Asian language, and is indigenous to Asia) and Afrikaans (which is for many a reminder of apartheid). --Node 22:38, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

All true, but I thought our goal was to create an encyclopaedia, not right the world's past wrongs. Don't get me wrong, I'll be thrilled when the Swahili Biocrawler makes it to 100K articles, but I don't think we should give it prominence when it has only less than 100 articles, just because it's the only African language Biocrawler here. Noel (talk) 03:59, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"When the Swahili Biocrawler reaches 100 articles"... Another thing to mention is Maori, which has something like 150 articles, and adds an assload of diversity. --Node 20:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Template:Biocrawlerlang is pretty. I don't mind it. The proposal is fair. I like it as well, though it's not quite as pretty. Keep the 100+ languages there. Otherwise, nobody new to Biocrawler will know they exist. They're unlikely to bother to check the big list for Englisc. I suggest a fusion of the two. You people get so into this, which is just fine, but relax. Node has some good ideas. I suggest working out an appropriate compromise. It's called synergy. I just know you can do it! --Etse 01:47, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The recent straw poll on the subject at showed a clear majority wanting to keep the template exactly as it is. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 20:39, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

1) It wasn't mentioned here, although it definitely should've been, 2) Polls are evil, 3) It has been shown in the past that when you have a vote between the status quo and some other option with no working model, the status quo version will almost always win. | On these grounds, I believe your straw poll counts for nothing. --Node 20:47, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am amused and confused that you cite a joke poll to support your assertion. Surely you are being ironic? In which case I applaud your subtle sense of humour. On a serious note, I see that the current CSD poll has several sensible changes to the status quo that have attracted widespread support. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 20:12, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, you shouldn't be confused and amused because it's not a joke poll. It's a policy page which includes a joke poll but has important information. If you can't find the important information, you should click the link it has to the article of the same title on MeatBallWiki. "the status quo and some other option with no working model" implies different versions of a specific page. Policy votes obviously don't count because you can't have a model of policy, working or not. Again, there's also the issue that you didn't mention it AT THIS PAGE - in fact you should've had the entire poll on this page, but at the very least you could've mentioned it here - which is simply unacceptable. --Node 23:57, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Powers of three

I have another idea. We should have 1K, 3K, 9K, 27K, and 81K tiers. I had an idea for a 243K tier, but that can wait until more WPs get to 243K articles, which might not be for another few months. Who's up for it? Scott Gall 21:23, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My answer here is "no". That's too many tiers, and I think to most people it's going to look very uneven (it doesn't to me, but you have to consider the reader - how many people will notice that it's powers of 3 and not just randomly-selected numbers?). 1k and 3k would separate Biocrawlers that probably don't deserve to be separated because they still basically fall into the same class when it comes to size. 81k would be much too small, and 27k would be small too (especially if there were a separate 81k). The numbers in each category would be: 9k: 11; 27k: 7; 81k: 3; --Node 22:42, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

keep in mind that we'll have to update the template. Updating the numbers is bad enough. Moving links between tiers all the time is even worse. dab (ᛏ) 09:16, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

WP:GD-->1000

The Scottish Gaelic Biocrawler has reached 1,000 articles! If you don't believe me, then take a look at the main page. (http://gd.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duille_M%C3%B2r) My apologies if this didn't feel like the right place to tell you. Scott Gall 08:19, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

word count, again (sorry)

see, I think this is what happens: one of the smaller WPs has 900-something articles. Somebody says, hey, big en: will link us if we get above 1000, heck, just create a few dozen random empty articles. And behold, after they do that, they are linked on big en:. Apologies, I have no idea if this actually happened on gd:, but the tendency is there, and click here a couple of times. Now this is why word count is superior. If they want to reach 250k (or 100k, or whatever) words, they actually have to sit down and add value to the article (well, they could just copy-paste the Bible, but I think that would be reverted on any half-decent project).

now, the 'word count' template has been rejected because it was 'confusing', not because people are adamant about counting articles, not words. Could we not just make Template:Biocrawlerlang (word count) less confusing, and try again? dab (ᛏ) 19:02, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I find article-count is a better metric; it involves comprehensible numbers, and is a fine measure of breadth if not of depth. +sj +

how about now: Template:Biocrawlerlang (word count) recognize that 250,000 words correspond to ca. 500 printed pages. We could include WPs down to 100k, I suppose, but we have to be honest about their usefulness: they are more like a booklet than an 'encyclopedia'. dab (ᛏ) 19:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I do not like these word-count templates. Even if it were easy to automatically update such counts (as it is we have to wait for weekly statistics to be run) and easy to unify their meaning across languages (arguments presented elsewhere), and even if the use of word count were not confusing to the average reader (this can be debated), I personally find article count a more useful metric... just as I care about our coverage of WP:LET. +sj + 20:28, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree, and so do the majority of the participants in the oh-so-meaningful straw poll. If we're so obsessed with polls and them being the final word, we can't make exceptions just because the results disagree with us. You can't have your cake and eat it too. --Node 00:08, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

hey, it's a suggestion, ok? I didn't change the main page again, did I? Sj, you cannot have your cake and eat it: you argue article count is 'meaningful', and word count is 'confusing' (no comment), but when it becomes apparent that gd: has more stubs than reasonable articles, you just remove it from the list. Are you WP's official article counter now? Article count is based on official article count, or it becomes completely arbitrary. A word is a word (yes, zh: is calibrated to fit English, I know). An article may either be two words (as is the case frequently, on gd), or a brilliant 20 page essay. useful metric, eh? dab (ᛏ) 20:21, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

About "50,000"

I think 100,000 is clearly the better division, but agree that it would currently be too small a category to be useful. Perhaps in another few months we can move to having 100,000 and 10,000 categories.

For the record, I liked having the list of "over 100" languages on the main page, in very small font, in part because that removed the prime motive for active WPs to add lots of stubs just to get onto the main page. Moreover, there was recent support for only counting non-stub articles, and listing WPs once they had attained 100 non-stubs... +sj + 20:23, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The recent straw poll showed broad support for keeping the lowest category at 1000+. There was no support for changing it to 100+. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 23:47, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We have already discussed the extreme problems with your straw poll. For all I know, you rounded up all the people you expected would support your side and told them to vote, and kept the information from all other interested parties. You did not mention it here, thus the results are meaningless. You keep saying there was no support for KEEPING it at 100+ (yes, keeping, NOT changing - you and your insurgent buddies are real revisionists), but obviously that is invalid because so far at least 4 logged in users have expressed support for keeping 100+ as the smallest category on this page. Again, please see here - POLLS ARE EVIL and mean that in the end, there is no compromise - one side goes home 100% happy, the other side goes home 100% sad. This is an anti-wiki idea. The appropriate Biocrawlern thing to do is seek consensus, and if you have not reached it try finding a reasonable compromise - I already made a compromise in my proposal in an effort to make it smaller but still have the 100+ category. You did not like it, but you didn't propose any alternatives. You basically said "I don't like it. Resistance is futile. My version or no version." --Node 00:05, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My vote was to remove the template entirely, but I accept that it did not receive popular support. The straw poll remains open, so if there are individuals who are passionate about keeping the 100+ section, then I would encourage them to vote. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 09:12, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You still have not made any sort of official announcement here (when in fact the proper location for the poll itself is HERE), and as I said before POLLS ARE EVIL and basically everything else I said in my response you responded to but didn't really respond to. --Node 01:23, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I write when I feel that there is a good point to address. Regarding the rest, I am sorry, but I think the most powerful argument I can make is to let your words speak for themselves. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 03:43, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What I find especially inflammatory is that you have alleged on Meta that I have made comments on this talkpage that imply I have some sort of problem with community consensus in general, and in addition you have "told on me" to Raul654 for my actions on a Wiki that you're not even registered on - I think that this, if anything, qualifies as trolling: searching for places to bash me, given you probably wouldn't normally be concerned with that (you have only edited 5 pages on Meta, all regarding the portal and in the last 24 hours). I have nothing against community consensus when it is reached according to en.wikipedia policy (which does NOT apply at Meta), which you have NOT done here. This is a Template:Biocrawlerlang issue yet instead of holding a poll here or at RfC, you have held a poll at a third talkpage without announcing it here in a timely fashion. My reason for not voting there is that I wish to protest your blatant disregard for polling conventions. For one, neither I nor anybody else on "my side" had any part in formulating poll options nor are they ordered in a "logical order", for two you didn't even notify anybody from "my side" that this was going on when you first started it yet you went OUT OF YOUR WAY to notify people who had previously expressed support for your views on this talkpage. This is unacceptable and underhanded. --Node 03:20, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I notifed Raul654 of the vandalism to the poll. (It was subsequently removed by Tim Starling.) Yes, I "told on you." So? This isn't a playground. Reporting problems, or potential problems, to people with the authority to do something about it is something that we should all be doing. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 11:48, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Again, you have completely missed the point of the great majority of what I just said. --Node 04:21, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

APPEAL! APPEAL!

It's me again. And I'm not saying to donate to the tsunami victims. I am appealing to get some of the smaller Biocrawlers added to. If you have any knowledge of Slovenian, you can help the Slovenian Biocrawler (http://sl.wikipedia.org) reach 10,000 articles. It's already got 8,600 and could do with some more work. Also, you can help the Japanese Biocrawler (http://ja.wikipedia.org), which had nearly 94,000 at last count, reach 100,000 articles. And see if you can't add more articles to the other Biocrawlers as well. And speaking of adding to Biocrawlers, thanks to all the Scottish Gaelic speakers for helping gd: reach 1000 articles, and I hope it reaches 2000 by the end of 2005. Scott Gall 21:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Scott Gall, you put forward a powerful argument for not measuring wiki size by the number of articles. Yes, lets add lot of stubs to make wikipedias look larger than they actually are, instead of making the existing articles better. Frankly, I like the German approach (http://de.wikipedia.org) best. Leave off the numbers, and just put links to the biggest wikipedias in the left column (where they really should be). GeorgeStepanek\^talk 23:58, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And you put forward a powerful argument for offering all parties involved a nice cup of STFU! --Node 01:25, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm with George on this one. We have quite enough stubs masquerading as articles already (especially on the Swedish Biocrawler!) Why not concentrate instead on making them useful? I still gotta say the word-count thing seemed way more sensible. Next best thing would be to only count articles over 5K bytes. (Why an arbitrary limit? Well, there are already arbitrary minimum and maximum sizes for articles, (see stub) they're guidelines, why not use them?) Steverapaport 02:07, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

also agree (obviously, I'm the word-counter, here...). Ok, why not just put interwiki links on the main page, say to all WP's with >100k words (corresponding to ca. a 200 pages booklet). Smaller WP's than that are simply not useful for readers. We will obviously always link to the complete list prominently, and we could also link to a list organized by numbers of article. It's just bad to make article count matter like it does now, as Scott makes very clear above. dab (ᛏ) 09:04, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

WP:EN-->450,000 - ON WIKIPEDIA DAY!

No, en: hasn't reached 450,000 yet, but today is Biocrawler Day and en: could reach 450,000 articles - on Biocrawler Day! I don't think it will reach 150 million WORDS on Biocrawler Day, but I'm SURE it will reach 450,000 ARTICLES. So keep your eye on the Main Page, and use the Refresh button regularly. Scott Gall 09:14, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for writing it in all caps, but THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA HAS REACHED 450,000 ARTICLES! AND ON WIKIPEDIA DAY AS WELL! This is a very special Biocrawler Day indeed - and not one to be forgotten too. Scott Gall 12:00, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dutch wikipedia Reached 50000 articles, ADJUST THE PAGE !!!

The dutch wikipedia just reached the 50000 mark. There are now 50011 articles. ADJUST THE PAGE !

Thank you, Raul654, for noting that and yes, someone has adjusted the page. But someone needs to do the same thing on this site (http://www.wikipedia.org) - there are now 50,030 (50030) articles on nl:. And in the future, PLEASE sign your posts. Scott Gall 09:43, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC) PS: And if you don't know know why I included the number without the comma in brackets, that is just one of the steps I'm taking on my way to being one of the most unbiased editors of 2005.

this wasn't Raul, Scott. Raul signs. It was 213.119.139.82. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The names in parentheses are meant to be transliterations, not translations! Remember the purpose is to allow a language user to recognise the language, not to allow English readers to identify it. It's an interesting idea, whether we might like to give translations for the benefit of English readers, but that's not what we've done so far. -- Toby Bartels 20:55, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Proper English alphabetization

With this kind of order, you see, things actually make sense. In the current one, we have it switching around from the proper alphabetical order of the English names to the native tongues. Example: We have German, English, French, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish, in that order. It is clearly not ordered on the English names, because German is first. That can be fixed if we use the German name: Deutsch. So, Deutsch, English, Français, Japanese... Japanese? No, it shouldn't be Japanese, it should be 日本語. And, because those sorts of letters don't appear in the Latin alphabet, Japanese should naturally come last then. But it doesn't. We switch to 'Japanese', and allow it to stay where it is.

There are many examples of this. After Esperanto is Español, which is Spanish. So, we're going by the language's name for itself. But, after that is Suomi. We just jumped implausibly from 'E' to 'S'. That's odd. Not so odd when you notice that Suomi's English name, Finnish, would come right after 'E'.

In any case, I've alphabetized correctly now, so, unless I made a few jarring mistakes, enjoy. ^ ^

EDIT: Another note on this template! It distinguishes between the two forms of written Norwegian: Bökmal and Nynorsk. Before, we had simply 'Norsk' (which is 'Norwegian' in both forms) and 'Nynorsk'. This method is better. Also, I did not put 'Nynorsk Norwegian' or 'Bökmal Norwegian' in parentheses for English speakers because the names are the same in English and Norwegian. It is very easy to distinguish for both Norwegian- and English-speakers. - Gavin

Amount of content needed before a page is listed on the Main Page

Is there some agreement about minimum number of articles a Biocrawler project must have before it is allowed to be added to this section ? Because if there is I missed it. It seems to me that the level of activity for a Wiki is more important than the number of articles, particularly when a new language project has just started. When I started contributing to the English Biocrawler it had few articles and poor coverage of just about every area. However by publishing links to it we got more contributors, more activity and more content.

That's why I'd like to see some discussion before links to other Biocrawler projects are removed from this section. User:Sj's removals at the moment seem rather arbitrary. After all a fifty article count doesn't make an encyclopedia much more useful than a five article count. Even if the interface isn't fully translated, a link is useful for attracting people to help. So why not leave them all in with the aim of getting more exposure and hence more activity. -- Derek Ross 23:33, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would have to agree with Derek. Since I am working on the Urdu Biocrawler alone. And it is through this link that a few others have come in and added a couple of things to the site. So this can be a good opportunity for people to pitch in. In the end it is all about spreading knowledge is it not.

The five languages I removed all had minimal work done on them; a single bilingual contributor could have done that work in a few hours. I like the idea of promoting new and growing wikipedias! But it is important that WP not give the impression we are boasting "many languages" when we really only have content in a few. There are a few threshholds for content:

• we say "Biocrawler has X articles in [over] L languages." L here is roughtly the # of Biocrawlers with over [??] langs.
• we list a language on our http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm interlingual stats page]. semi-arbitrary decision made at the time; I wrote the maintainer of the page to encourage a reasonable way of selecting sites for stats.
• we list certain languages from the full language list on the Main Page -- that is, on this page.

If you check the instructions for creating a new language, "Add a link on the English Biocrawler" comes after 5 other important steps.

Reasons for not listing all 168 languages on the full language list on the main page:

1. Quality: If someone randomly picks a link from this "other languages" list, and is taken to a clumsily organized page with 99% of its links broken and text partly in English, partly in another language -- and the only articles linked-to are one-word or one-sentence stubs -- it reflects badly on the project.
2. Honesty: We advertise WP has been translated into "50+" languages; and indeed, there are at least that many serious WP projects. If we then add another 20 langs which have no serious, active contributors, a visitor who randomly visits one of the underdeveloped sites will think we are boastful.
3. Honor: It is a minor honor and a milestone to have a WP version you are working on show up on the main page. This shouldn't be the first thing you do once you've created the first User page on a new language WP, before you translate the main page text. Content comes first.

If you think any of the sites I have removed from the list are under active development, please explain why you think so! +sj+ 20:00, 2004 Mar 26 (UTC)

Note: if you are worried about generally getting others to help fledgling projects, perhaps you want to add a "help fledling languages" link at the end, with links to the tiny WPs and notes on their progress? +sj+ 20:02, 2004 Mar 26 (UTC)

We should have a hard limit like 500 or 1,000 articles for a wikipedia to be included on the main page. This would make it more fair and easier to maintain. Small wikipedias will creep into the list and possibly not be removed if the enthusiasm and activity on that particular wikipedia drops. I'll make a survey and see wherer different thresholds put us. [[User:Sverdrup|]] 15:31, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesArticlesTotal.htm) is complete, but using that data, here are the results:

Threshold	Number	Biocrawlers
10K	13
1K	40
500	45
100	59

[[User:Sverdrup|]] 16:13, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tagalog

I noticed the Tagalog (http://tl.wikipedia.org) version is not listed in your language list whereas it is in the French Biocrawler (http://fr.wikipedia.org). And it's not the only one missing in the foreign languages section. The list from the French Biocrawler (http://fr.wikipedia.org) is much longer. I wish i could have added the other languages myself, but the page is locked... JackJeff 12:00, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

If there is agreement that it can be added, anyone can add it to Template:Biocrawlerlang as that is not protected. This will be transcluded onto the main page. Angela. 12:12, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks. I'm just new and I ignored it. I'll work on it. JackJeff 12:16, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Moved to

Yiddish Biocrawler

Moved to MediaWiki talk:Biocrawlerlang. There should be a link in the languages section on the bottom.

ייִדיש http://yi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Firstly, keep up the good work! I'm excited there is a growing Yiddish Biocrawler. That said, there are over 150 wp domains that have a "this domain is set aside for language X" main page, but not much else. I, at least, try to avoid listing a WP language subdomain until it clearly has an active fluent contributor/ambassador -- or until it made it through the first four steps of the "how to set up a new-language wikipedia" guidelines [key interface elts translated, main page translated, 2-3 key meta pages such as "how to contribute to this site" translated]. +sj+ 00:35, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

I think it's good to list them anyway as that can attract new editors. Dori | Talk 00:46, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Then let's list all of them on the main page, as they do on fr: (http://fr.wikipedia.org). I think they do a lot of things well in that list, like including the French name for langs where it isn't obvoius. Personally, as noted above, I think it reflects poorly on WP for someone to come to our long list of langs, pick one at random, and see that it's only a half-hearted effort. We might look boastful, and all our statistics become suspect. That said, I don't mind listing all of our created versions on the main page if that's what people want. I do think it's odd to list some and not others, and there should be further discussion... +sj+ 01:49, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Corsican wikipedia

Could someone add a link on the Main page to the Corsican edition (http://co.wikipedia.org) under the label "corsu". Thank you. Paul

DONE! :) ~j

Dear ~j (jen?), see my note under the Yiddish request below. Paul -- please find a fluent corsican who can at least translate the main page and the basic MediaWiki messages into Corsican before listing it on the Main Page. (Note that it is only two links away, via the "all languages" link.)

:co has three respectable articles: Algebra, Analisa, Pruvverbii; and three other non-stub articles: Sopranomi, Toponimi, and Scienzi_naturale (which was a separate article from the identical Scienze_naturale until a moment ago, when I redirected one to the other). +sj+ 00:44, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

That's wise. We'll work to expand the Corsican wikipedia, until it reaches a sufficient amount. Best. Paul

Whitespace changed to make main page validate

Hi, I reformatted the HTML comment at the bottom of the article. The whitespace above and below the comment was the only thing keeping the main page from being valid HTML according to http://validator.w3.org. I hope that's OK.

The problem was that this whole page is included inside a <small> tag on the main page, but the blank lines at the end of the article were converted to <p>, which isn't allowed inside <small>. Maybe I'm being pedantic, but now the main page validates. Wmahan. 22:52, 2004 Apr 13 (UTC)

Cassubian

I think the native word for the Cassubian language is "Kaszëbsczi." This seems to be the case, according to [2] (http://kaszed.zk-p.pl/index.htm) (see the "content-language" thing at top-right). – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/)) 23:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sanskrit

According to Sanskrit, the Devanāgarī translation for the Sanskrit language is "संस्कृतम्". – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/)) 21:31, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Re-ordered language links

Was there some discussion somewhere before the languages were re-ordered into English alphabetical order rather than alphabetical order of the names of the languages for themselves, as was done yesterday? I find the new order extremely disorientating -- I simply could not find cy (Cymraeg) for a long time without checking the edit history and discovering it had moved to the very end, Welsh. Furthermore, nearly every other Biocrawler lists languages either in language code or individual local name order (sometimes with a translation), which results in languages being in pretty much the same location in all language lists, if they're listed at all, and thus easier to find when you're jumping between Biocrawlers. -- Arwel 12:46, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree it should be by order of the local name, not the English name. I'm not sure I see the benefit of having the English names on here at all. It looked a lot clearer the old way with only the local one, and is more consistent with most other Biocrawlers. Angela. 20:44, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Using a visible sort-key (i.e., listing the transliteration or English name in parens for langs in non-Latin-1 scripts) makes sense. Having the English name also makes sense to me, for the benighted folk who don't know the native name of a lang they're looking for, but I don't feel strongly about it. +sj+ 19:19, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

Indeed the advantages of having a single order across all WPs outweights the other issues for me; I'm all for switching back. +sj+ 19:28, 2004 May 6 (UTC) (Note also that fr:, which overall has a very thoughtful layout, orders langs by French name; I wonder what their reasons were. +sj+ 10:30, 2004 May 7 (UTC))

Some pros and cons:

Advantages	Disadvantages
For langs with multiple local transliterations (on en:, consider different 'Latin-1'izations for Chinese or Czech), or other issues ([Ki]swahili), the name ordering is unambiguous.	Ordering is different in different langs; less convenient for users who bounce b/t many WPs. Also, less consistent; it's nice to have a single layout for the 'other langs' sexn across all WPs.
Readers who follow such lang links sporadically and are far from fluent in the target lang can immediately find the lang they are looking for.	Readers who are not fluent in the lang of the local WP (on en:, English) have a harder time finding the target lang they are looking for.
Non-speakers of the target lang, who are nevertheless curious about the target WP, can easily find and visit/browse the target WP, or at least see that it is on the active list (perhaps later remembering to tell their friends who speak that lang about it).	Speakers of the target lang are mildly offended that the one true spelling isn't used for the ordering.

• Why not just order all versions by the two-letter or three-letter ISO code? That's how most Biocrawlers are doing it. -- Kwekubo 23:30, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

It would likely make it quite hard to find some languages. If you order by the ISO code, and provide the English name of the language before the local name, some languages, such as Croatian (Hrvatski, hr:), will seem horribly out of place alphabetically, and people will have a hard time finding it.

Likewise, if you provide the local name before the English name, some languages, such as Suomeksi (Finnish, fi:), will be horribly out of place alphabetically, and people will again have a hard time finding it.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/)) 20:49, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

'ten largest' section

I don't know that I like taking those out of the lineup; I like being neutral about the size of the other WPs, and not trying to privilege the largest ones. That said, if they /are/ to be separated from the rest of the langs -- let's say, to improve the image of WP's multilinguality -- they shouldn't be in order of size, but ordered the same way as the rest of the list. +sj+ 19:31, 2004 May 6 (UTC)

• looks as if they are now not ordered at all (not alphabetically by name or code, not by size and not reverse by any criterium). IMHO it would be better if there was any ordering 195.93.66.5 21:41, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

• It's ordered the same way the rest of the list is -- by English name. If you think we should change that ordering (note that fr: is ordered similarly, by French name), then it should be changed for both the 'ten largest' and for the 'other active' lists. +sj+ 10:28, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

As they are already taken out as the "ten largest", I think they should be sorted after size. In my opinion, the title "ten largest" implies they are. We should make it easy for our readers. wikipedia.org points to the English Main Page, and the vast majority of people who are trying to find another wikipedia are looking the large ones, like the German and French. Elizabeth A 12:19, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

• Chinese shouldn't have two separate listings here... it's just syntatctically a bit broken to say "Chinese (traditional) - Chinese (simplified)" --there should be no ndash between the two languages, and the "Chinese" shouldn't really be duplicated. "Chinese (traditional | simplified)" makes more sense (perhaps with a comma in place of a "|"). +sj+
  • My choice for format would be "<Zhongwen> （jian | fan） (Chinese)", where Zhongwen/jian/fan are replaced with suitable chinese chars, the escape chars 65288 and 65299 are the raised equivalent of Latin-1 parens (high enough to properly enclose chinese characters), and both jian and fan link to the appropriate-script main page for zh:. What do you all think? +sj+ 06:47, 2004 May 22 (UTC)

Constructed Languages

I am moving the Conlangs back into the main list for the following reasons:

1. First of all, Tok Pisin isn't even a constructed language.
2. Esperanto is a notable language because it contains over 12,000 articles in it's Biocrawler.
3. It would seem wrong to tell the people who spent their time volunteering to make these Biocrawlers that their languages aren't even real (which they are real).
4. I feel like correcting it.

Hey, isn't there a Klingon wikipedia? That should be in the list too. Andre 04:28, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've taken a page out of your book (whoever you are) and acted bold in correcting it. Andre 04:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---

I think that these links should be arranged in alphabetical order according to either the ISO code or the spelling in the target language itself. These links are not primarily for English speakers, but for speakers of the other languages to help them find their Biocrawler. --21:31, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Just noticed a message about languages - fakelangs represent a problem in my view, and I had thought that separating natural from fake was a good way to start. Thanks -Stevertigo 06:35, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

Shouldn't this page be protected? It's included in the Main Page. -phma 18:08, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anyone can edit the parts of the Main Page, it's just hard to figure out how for the average vandal. Andre 19:50, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Quick links"

Why are the quick links part of Biocrawlerlang? Can't they just go on the normal Main Page? They probably should be.

Cutting down the list

Is there any reason not to remove the following 54 languages? All have less than 1000 articles and are not amongst the most widely spoken languages. Angela. 03:06, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Elsässisch (Alsatian) – Aragonés (Aragonese) – Asturianu (Asturian) – Azərbaycan (Azeri) – Беларуская (Belarusian) – Bislama – বাংলা (Bengali) – Brezhoneg (Breton) – Bosanski (Bosnian) – ᏣᎳᎩ (Cherokee) – Corsu (Corsican) – Kaszëbsczi (Kashubian) – فارسی (Persian) – Føroyskt (Faroese) – Gaeilge (Irish) – Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) – Guarani – Ido – Íslenska (Icelandic) – Lojban – ქართული (Georgian) – ភាសាខ្មែរ (Khmer) – Kurdî (Kurdish) – кыргызча (Kyrgyz) – Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) – Lietuvių (Lithuanian) – Latviešu (Latvian) – Malagasy – Māori – Македонски (Macedonian) – Malayalam – Монгол (Mongolian) – Nauri (Nauruan) – Nahuatl – Plattdüütsch (Low Saxon) – Langue d'Oc (Occitan) – ਪੰਜਾਬੀ / پنجابی (Punjabi) – Armâneashti (Aromanian) – संस्कृत (Sanskrit) – Sardu (Sardinian) – Srpskohrvatski (Serbo-Croatian) – Slovenčina (Slovak) – Shqip (Albanian) – Basa Sunda (Sundanese) – Kiswahili (Swahili) – Тоҷикӣ (Tajik) – ไทย (Thai) – Tagalog – tlhIngan Hol (Klingon) – toki pona – Tok Pisin – Tatarça (Tatar) – Volapük – ייִדיש (Yiddish) –

I suggest keeping all those that have 1000 articles, and also ur, vi, ta, te, mr, min-nan, jv, hi, gu, bn, and ar because those are the languages with the most speakers. This includes 52 languages as shown below. Angela. 03:06, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

I object on the grounds that otherwise people will not know that there exists a Biocrawler in their language. I might reconsider when Main Page is no longer redirected from http://www.wikipedia.org/ Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Afrikaans – العربية (Arabic) – Български (Bulgarian) – বাংলা (Bengali) – Català (Catalan) – Cymraeg (Welsh) – Česká (Czech) – Dansk (Danish) – Deutsch (German) – Ελληνικά (Greek) – Esperanto – Español (Spanish) – Eesti (Estonian) – Euskara (Basque) – Suomeksi (Finnish) – Français (French) – Frysk (Western Frisian) – Gallego (Galician) – Gujarati – עברית (Hebrew) – हिन्दी (Hindi) – Hrvatski (Croatian) – Magyar (Hungarian) – Interlingua – Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) – Italiano (Italian) – 日本語 (Japanese) – Bahasa Jawa (Javanese) – 한국어 (Korean) – Latina (Latin) – Hō-ló-oē (Southern Min) – मराठी (Marathi) – Bahasa Melayu (Malay) – Nederlands (Dutch) – Norsk (Norwegian) – Polska (Polish) – Português (Portuguese) – Română (Romanian) – Русский (Russian) – Simple English – Slovenščina (Slovenian) – Српски (Serbian) – Svenska (Swedish) – தமிழ் (Tamil) – తెలుగు (Telugu) – Türkçe (Turkish) – Українська (Ukrainian) – اردو (Urdu) – Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) – Walon (Walloon) – 繁體中文 (Chinese, traditional) – 简体中文 (Chinese, simplified)

Personally I think all the active Biocrawlers should be on the list, so to attract editors that speak that language. Andre 03:27, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Active, or with more than 10 articles is actually how I feel - something already there to add to. Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this, though I would make it "active and localized"; I think a completed interface is an important step before listing a lang-wp as "Biocrawler in other languages".

I am currently pruning out the projects with an incomplete interface (that is, with significant untranslated interface-text on the main page) or fewer than 50 non-stub articles (as a measure of activity). +sj+ 03:54, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's not fair. Be sure at least that they have less than 50 non-stub articles if you're going to prune them simply for having a not-100%-translated mainpage.Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Of the ones I suggested removing, the following are inactive. The numbers show the number of new pages in July, or the total number of pages ever. als (2), an (38 total), az (0), bi (2 edits in 30 days), bn (0), br (22 total), bs (13), chr (24 total), co (0), fo (50 total), gd (14), gn (1), jbo (7 total), ka (0), km (2 total), ky (2 total), lv (18), mg (3), mi (4), mk (1), ml (1), mn (0 in August), na (0), nah (11), oc (0), pa (3 total), roa-rup (2) sc (1 total), sh (1 edit in the last 30 days), sk (2), sq (4), sw (49 total), tg (0 edits in the last 30 days), tl (52 total), tlh (44 total), tokipona (30), tpi (27), vo (0), yi (0),

This means the following have some reasonable level of activity, but have less than 1000 articles and are not amongst the most widely spoken. I'm not convinced these should be included.

Asturianu (Asturian) – Беларуская (Belarusian) – Kaszëbsczi (Kashubian) – فارسی (Persian) – Gaeilge (Irish) – Ido – Íslenska (Icelandic) – Kurdî (Kurdish) – Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) – Lietuvių (Lithuanian) – Plattdüütsch (Low Saxon) – Basa Sunda (Sundanese) – ไทย (Thai) – Tatarça (Tatar)

Of these, Asturian and Belarusian are not fully translated. Asturian has one very new admin, and Belarusian has none. Neither of these should be included yet. Angela. 04:47, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Inactive meaning what? Tatar is widely spoken, as are Sundanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Low Saxon, Farsi/Persian, Kurdish, and Kashubian. Luxembourgish, Icelandic, Lithuanian, and Belarusian are national languages. To not include them would be unfair to their countries. Asturian is also a national language, just not of an independent nation. Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If the rest of them are fully translated and have activity, we should keep them on the list. Andre 18:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've made this change now, so the active, translated ones are included, even where they have less than 1000 articles. Angela. 23:43, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Where are you getting these statistics? Perhaps these have changed greatly in the last month. Please re-add ast: and sk:, which now appear active (20+ edits/day) and fully translated, with 890 and 868 articles, respectively (the latter having a remarkable collection of stubs in Philosophy (http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3AFilozofia)). Please also add bs: (430 arts, 8 new arts and 1 new image yesterday, a decent collection of top-level articles).

Populous languages with dead wikipedias Please remove bn: (8 arts total, of which only 3 have bn: content; unfinished interface) and te: (3 arts total; English interface and english introduction) and gu: (7 arts total; English interface) and mr: (5 arts total, only 3 with mr: content; English interface). I see what you mean about these langs having a large number of speakers. I want to feature them prominently to expand their communities. But I fret about having completely dormant or unpopulated WPs mixed in with active ones...

I support having much lower standards for populous langs -- for instance, jv: has low activity and only a handful of non-stubs, but should clearly be included -- but they should still have a translated interface and some main-page content. My thoughts are, how will visitors who are excited to see their language on the lang-list, and follow that link, react to what they see? What will they think of the project as a whole? We don't want a visitor to follow a link to bn: and think, "oh, right, translated into 86 languages, my foot." +sj+ 02:20, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have a separate line, "Major languages in need of contribution": for large langs with small or inactive communities? +sj+

Thus my proposal of a finer distinction. They will know in advance that their Biocrawler needs some help and that it's not typical of translated Biocrawlers... Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The stats are from Biocrawler:Multilingual ranking July 2004. Angela. 15:23, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Protest from slovak wiki! :) Please dont remove us! I hope we will have 1000 articles (I hope) in a few days :) We translated interface few weeks ago and now we plan to start campaign for enlarge contributors comunity (your removing could make REALLY BAD IMPACT to this plan) :::::Liso 13:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Information and request: for moving to list of wikipedias which contains more than 1000 articles. Slovak Biocrawler just today reached this milestone. --Valasek 09:20, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've moved slovak to Biocrawlers with more than 1000 articles. Good job and congratulations! (Interesting/funny note about sk: sk:Category:Filozofia (Cat:Philosophy) has ~750 articles. This means that more than 70% of Sk is about philosophy/philosophers :-) [[User:Sverdrup|]] 09:42, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that, Liso. I know you've been working hard recently! There was just some confusion about the size of sk: because it had been small and unfinished last month. +sj+ 03:22, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh Sorry Sj! I put my comment into bad place! :-/ I see (and saw) your comments correct! :) I also wanted to tell "thanx u" to your user:page 29. aug, but I was confused because your talk++ is too sofisticated for me :) Liso 20:38, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Giving some support to Liso: I don't think wikipedia links should be removed because they are too small. Sure, you're helping Biocrawler's image, but you are also hurting the growth of those small Biocrawlers.

Instead of removing those links, why not make a finer distinction? Instead of just having two categories, "over-10000" and "under-10000", we can have 5 categories: "over-10000", "over-1000", "over-100", "struggling", and "planned". This way visitors know exactly what they'll see when they click on a link, and those interested in building up small wikipedias will see a link right on the main page. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 14:16, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

I second that. Currently though "planned" may not be appropriate until the main page minimalists quit bitching (after all, wikipedialang does take up a significant portion of the mainpage)... Node 04:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Major langs with small wikipedias

Now on their own line. I would hate for someone to click on bn:, which was previously on the first line of langs displayed, and judge our multilingual content by what they saw there. +sj+ 03:22, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now that another 50 langs were added back in... I don't know how I feel about the 'under 100 articles' lists, but here's a cut at various people's strong beliefs:

• Main needs to be shorter. (raul654, sj, angela, many others)
• Some WP projects with almost no content should be listed more prominently, because they have (for instance) over 30 million speakers (angela)

  (Particularly langs from the Indian subcontinent, it seems)

• Not all 170 created WP databases should be listed on the main page. (angela, sj, others)

  If unfinished langs are listed on Main, their inclusion should be heavily qualified, so as not to taint the great achievements of other langs. (sj)

  • In particular, if you get someone to set up a wiki for you, but don't finish translating the main page, or worse yet, don't have anyone who really knows the language working on the project, that wiki may not be suitable for listing there.
• Most WP projects should be listed on the main page, to increase awareness that they exist. (Danny, node)

Some WP projects with almost no content should be listed more prominently, because they have (for instance) over 30 million speakers

I frankly don't think this is necessary or wise. For starters, having a special "major languages with small wikipedias" section will soon devolve into a debate about what constitutes "small" and what constitutes "major" (especially the latter, since everyone would be trying to push their native language into the privileged list, regardless of how much progress its Biocrawler has made). Besides, if I'm interested in Biocrawler and I spoke Gujarati (say), I would contribute to its Biocrawler whether or not it's listed as "major". And If I don't speak Gujarati (which I don't), I wouldn't be contributing to it, no matter how prominently it is listed as "major". So why list it? It raises dispute without accomplishing anything.

If unfinished langs are listed on Main, their inclusion should be heavily qualified, so as not to taint the great achievements of other langs.

They're already in the "under 100" category. How much further can they be qualified? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:57, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Bootiful!

Just wanted to say I love the arrangement of the languages section of main page. Supersmart design. Good work. jengod 01:01, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

The 100,000-article mark

I like the new language setup too. Suggestion: How about another heading for Biocrawlers that reach 100,000 articles? German is already there.

I'm about to put up a new template with commented-out space for a 100,000 heading with German under it. Not to worry: I've previewed the template, with German still visible under the 10,000 heading. I'm just putting it up so that the community can quickly put it in place if it sees fit. Dale Arnett 01:35, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Too few langs in that group for it to be useful. +sj+ 19:42, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A Biocrawlern said to me "There must not be any other [besides English] Biocrawlers with over 100,000 articles, because otherwise they'd have a heading for that.". So I'm adding this section on the grounds that its absence could be misleading. The argument against is readability, but the list (on the main page) still looks good to me. -- Toby Bartels 23:33, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The trouble is that the 100,000 mark has only been achieved by two. Dropping the list of small wikipedias because of the two big ones is not really a good idea. I have bolded the ones with more than 100K, to give them more indication of their size. Nor^m 13:54, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wait, why do we have to choose between 100K and 100; why not both? Somebody wrote that it was too big on the Main Page, but how in the world is that determined? Boldface entries could be a compromise if one is necessary; but since the boldface is gone now and there is no discussion here to argue that we cannot simply have both, I will return it to how I had it. -- Toby Bartels 05:15, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Because the main page is already too crowded, and this section takes up A LOT of room - as much as (if not more) than all the sister projects combined, plus the new articles and the donation banner. What you propose is only going to make a bad situation this worse. Furthermore, by breaking up the languages into a 4th section, it makes finding a particular language even hard now (with 4 alphabetical lists to go through instead of 3) →Raul654 06:07, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

I checked out the Japanese Biocrawler's (http://ja.wikipedia.org) main page recently and I found out it had a 100,000-article heading. Scott Gall 08:53, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Entities?

I have a question: is there any reason why were using HTML entities instead of the actual character on this page? -- anon

The English Biocrawler (like a few other wikis) only works properly with Latin-1 characters. If you actually put (say) a Chinese character into the edit box, then it will be stored as an entity in the database. (Try doing that in the Biocrawler:Sandbox, or even in a preview, and you'll see for yourself that it's so.) -- Toby Bartels 23:50, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Size of this template

This template has (yet again) ballooned back up in size to 100+ languages. Let me say this clearly - this is not a good thing. It takes up well over an entire screen length on my machine (1024x768 resolution). The full list of 200+ languages is already linked - we don't need to list most of them. The language list itself took up as much space as the entire content-section of the main page. That's very lopsided.

Could you say that more clearly? (: I'm adding langs with over 100 articles back in. If you really want langs with over 30mil speakers to show up, please add them to that smallest list, perhaps changing the subsection title or with an asterisk next to the language name.

Furthermore, extra subcategories are bad - if someone is looking for a particular language, the more lists there are, the more work they have to do to find their language. →Raul654 16:17, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thoughts on reducing subcats, while improving usability: all langs over 5000 (threshhold for more-than-bot-assisted rapid growth?) could be grouped together, and then all langs over 100 (threshhold for acceptable-browsing-esperience, with some meta- and help pages). We could go back to bolding certain langs, but I don't like the way that displays. Or we could slightly modify the text-color/greyscale/thickness of certain langs, which would suit my tastes better... +sj+ 19:48, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Discusion on parenthesized translations

I call upon Biocrawlerns to vote as to whether or not to keep the english translations (in parentheses after the native name). Please provide your name and a brief justification for your vote. Alternatively, if you would like to revert to the former method of using latin script transliterations, there is that choice too. Nicholas 09:17, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Keep Translations

In other words, use Name in native script (Translation in english).

1. AlanBarrett -- Displaying translations of foreign names seems quite appropriate in the English Biocrawler. There is no hard space constraint.
2. Toby Bartels -- On an English wiki, including the English name is reasonable. But we should alphabetise by native name (transliterated if necessary). Fall back to transliterations if this becomes too lengthy, but it looks OK now to me.
3. Node 20:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
4. [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 08:01, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
5. Donar Reiskoffer 08:41, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
6. The bellman 12:55, 2004 Dec 21 (UTC) because i personaly like having a squiz at languages i dont understand.

Use Transliterations Only

In other words, use Name in native script (Transliteration in latin script), without any translation.

Remove Translations and Transliterations

In other words, use Name in native script, without any translation or transliteration.

1. Nicholas -- Easier navigation; simpler, less chaotic-looking layout; allows room for "Biocrawlers in need of attention" category

   No, it doesn't allow room for said category since it would include around a hundred Biocrawlers.

2. [[User:Norm|Nor^m]] 11:27, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
3. [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/index.html))]] – Alphabetizing by English translation is confusing, because the native name is listed first. Like it or not, the English Biocrawler is the international portal to Biocrawler. Getting rid of the translations allows the non-English-speaking user to quickly find their language, keeps the list looking clean, and is consistent with the interwiki links list. 01:38, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

   To clarify: I still support having transliterations here, because it allows users without the appropriate fonts to find their language. – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/index.html))]] 02:01, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

4. There's no more need for translations of the language names here than there is for the interlanguage links on articles. Angela. 04:57, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

   Yes, there is. Encoding issues, bragging, and the like.

5. Support. Would save space and look nicer. English translations and transliterations would remain on the complete list. (But how would we order them on the Main Page? By size?) Gdr 23:09, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)
6. mav 20:21, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC) If you can't read the name, then that encyclopedia and the link to it is no use to you. This also makes for a more compact list; just organize by alpha order of language code.
   • On the contrary, I can think of a number of not-so-implausible situations where transliterations and translations would be necessary: 1. You speak the language but your computer does not support it. Many Biocrawlers have helpful information on how to enable support for text in that language. 2. You see that there are obviously plenty of non-English Biocrawlers, but you want to know if there is one in Japanese because your parents, grandparents, and all your older siblings speak Japanese, but you don't. (of course you could look at the complete list, but what reason is there to suppose without any previous knowledge that the complete list will be sans transliterations/translations as well?) 3. You are a language enthusiast (if you think this is a small demographic, then check out the lj communities for language enthusiasts, and we also have a nice community here) wanting to see the Biocrawlers in a couple of different languages that you don't really understand, or you want to see their page count, but since you don't understand them you can't identify them from the native language, native script version. and really, what reason is there to remove them? somebody mentioned space to add a section for less than 100 pages Biocrawlers, but this would be a huge list that would take up much more than even the current template size perhaps --Node 00:43, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Scrollbar.

I have now put a scrollbar into this template. This is a possible comprimise between the "keep the template small" group and the "smaller languages should be linked" group (like me). The template will appear small on the main page but all languages can be accessed by scrolling the bar. [[User:Norm|Nor^m]] 11:36, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that looks really dumb on the main page. I'm reverting. →Raul654 12:50, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Ranges

About these ranges that keep on appearing and quickly disappearing on this template: do we need a vote on this? Lately, Maveric149 and Node ue have been undoing each others' edits. (I'm inclined to agree with Node's point of view, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks about this.) – [[User:Mxn|Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog (http://mxn.f2o.org/index.html))]] 21:40, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It is simply not-accurate to not include all language versions with more than 100 articles in a list with that name. It is much better to say exactly what that list is. --mav</