POLL: Community Wiki in Other Languages

Would it now be a good idea to create different versions of the L5’s Community Wiki in other languages besides English?
(Not necessarily a direct translation or exact duplicate of the English version)

  • YES
  • NO
  • Maybe/Not Sure

0 voters

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I think many people are able to use the English wiki, but the language skills are varying. So it would be good if anybody could have a wiki in the mother language. Also nobody gets excluded.

But this comes at the price of maintaining multiple Wikis. Is there enough will in the community to do that work?

Captain obvious - out. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think native speakers of other languages will create and maintain those if they think it useful, and care enough about spreading the L5 good news to the world. :slightly_smiling_face:
Doesn’t require any effort from anyone not interested in the other languages. And of course, the English version will still be there.

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Non-english speakers could try the DeepL, the neural network based translator.

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We can add more pages to the existing Community Wiki in other languages, but I personally would like to see Purism set up a proper community wiki (MediaWiki, DokuWiki, Wiki Tiki, or something similar) like PINE64 has, which is designed to cover all its products and designed to be translated in multiple languages.

I think if Purism sets up the site, then volunteers will appear to do the translation work.

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And if and when that happens, the translated pages may be prioritised, as amount needs to be in balance to the available resources and time. It’s better to have a clearly defined goal of basic info or main/most sought articles only vs. all the pages and articles. The point of translation isn’t always to translate absolutely everything.

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From experience with online Linux doco generally, sometimes out-of-date doco is worse than no doco at all. I think there would have to be real commitment to periodical review and updating when appropriate. That applies to the English language doco too but is less likely to be a problem than a more niche language.

Hence part of the process could be maintaining dates for display on the page itself semi-automatically e.g. page create date, last update date, last review date. I don’t know whether this particular Wiki software supports that.

Anyone is free to set up any documentation in any language, completely independently of puri.sm, and as it stands today anyone is free to set up pages for other languages within the Wiki (and there could be a page in the Wiki that is the jumping off point for content in other languages).

Maybe a precursor question for this poll is: Is there anyone volunteering to write community doco in other languages?

Just finished watching the remastered “My Fair Lady” last night. Now I think English is its own problem. (“Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” - Rex Harrison.)

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The Wiki of ubuntuusers.de Shows notes for which software version the article’s contents have been tested. Example:
https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSH/

What I also like is a quick way to switch between languages like Wikipedia does. Sometimes the English article is better than the German and something it’s the other way around. I can switch directly from an article to it’s corresponding equivalence it another language.

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The ultimate response is, of course, yes. The immediate response is, I am not sure.

One needs a sufficiently large number of contributors in each supported language to maintain. Remember the adage: ‘When buying something, it is not the price to which one should be attentive but the cost of maintenance’.

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My impression, after being active for some time in the L5 forum, is that there are a good number of speakers of other languages here, especially French and German, Greek, and maybe some Italian and Spanish as well. Some have even started a dedicated thread for French speakers. So I don’t think there would be a problem with numbers or willingness to edit a Wiki in their languages from time to time, especially as the community grows. I think they will start those Wikis if they want to, and if they think they’re needed. There’s also no reason to think they would be less committed to maintaining them than the editors of the English language Wiki.

It would be a place to point new L5 owners so they could start getting up to speed if they’re not very fluent in English.

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This might be a good place to start: https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5.html

I vote for Esperanto.

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Is this language still alive? Since the '70 I never here anybody mention Esperanto.

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Only Esperantans, I imagine.

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They must be an occupied minority, we should demand self-determination, Free Esperantia!

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No, free Espresso!

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Na ankevi Kernewek! (Don’t forget the Cornish language!)

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Ama runasimita chinkakuychu! (Don’t forget Quechua – If we want to compete for indigenous minority languages.)

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For me everybody is free to construct its own language and do their own translations … :innocent:

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