5 ms·
But then you'd lose all the interesting cultural insights you can infer from comparing the way different language versions describe the same topic. The texts ar
by usrusr 7y ago
But then you'd lose all the interesting cultural insights you can infer from comparing the way different language versions describe the same topic. The texts are supposed to be neutral, but even neutral can mean quite different things. And when you have a topic that is prone to be suffering from edit wars in one language (e.g. a company you suspect of paying someone to "clean their wiki"), escaping to a different version can often be worthwhile if you have the language skills.
- mc32 7y agoIndeed. Plus there’d be tugs of war, for example, the Sino-Japanese war, or the Russo-Japanese war, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no way to reconcile those histories.
- tomrod 7y agoWhat? Why not? An objective and comprehensive recollection of facts, mutually identified responses, and associated outcomes can't be hashed out?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y agoOften people don't agree even on the most basic facts. For example, in the case of the Polish-Soviet war (1919-1920), "who attacked who?" is still a controversial topic.
- sings 7y agoValid point. But why delineate differences of opinion across language lines when there are all sorts of reasons to disagree. Whether the disagreement is political, philosophical, regional, cultural, seems like using language as the key differentiator is a fuzzy proxy. You need to find a way to resolve these differences if the content is going to be trustworthy.
- Myrmornis 7y agoExactly.
- Myrmornis 7y agoWhat you describe is indeed the downside. The upside is that if we automatically translated English content for (say mathematics) into other languages then non-English speakers would have access to the highest quality Wikipedia content. I do think this is an interesting point: the current Wikipedia policy of allowing each language's Wikipedia to evolve independently risks missing an opportunity to free certain non-English speakers from some of the unfairness that results from happening to have not been born an English speaker. (With no disrespect to the Wikipedias of other major languages, I'm sure they have many extremely high quality articles. But I assume that in, say Math, Physics, Computer Science, the English Wikipedia is the highest quality.)
- zenlot 7y ago> translated English content for (say mathematics) into other languages then non-English speakers would have access to the highest quality Wikipedia content. Why would you think that English content in mathematics is the highest quality in comparison to other languages? Your thinking is flawed.
- probably_wrong 7y agoBecause English Wikipedia is by far the version with the most readers, and therefore the one where most time has been invested in making an article good. In my experience, non-English Wikipedia articles are great for "insider knowledge" about topics and/or local figures who are deemed not relevant enough to the English Wikipedia editors. But outside these niches, their texts tend to be both shorter and less polished.
- Yizahi 7y agoI don't know about Maths and other STEM pages, but modern history and politics (last 100-150 years) pages in many non-English languages are highly questionable or even downright lying.
- Myrmornis 7y agoBecause academics around the world who are native speakers of non-English languages do much of their professional work in English, read English language journals, and, if they contribute to Wikipedia, they are at least as likely to do so in English than their native language. As a result, English Wikipedia (for, say, mathematics) has vastly more attention and contributions, and is more comprehensive, than other languages.