Forum:Foreign Wikis really need our help.

Forums: Index > Wiki discussion > Foreign Wikis really need our help.

Ok, so I've never made a forum post so hopefully this is in the right section, but I do think this definitely needs attention. Me and a few fellow chat goers were browsing around tonight, and we noticed that all of the foreign Wikis are missing lots of content, seem quite abandoned, and many lack the Nukapedia logo (Some don't even have the Vault's old logo). I know this is obviously a big project that we probably couldn't handle since we don't speak the language, but I do think it's important that they have at least a small amount of basic content and better looking Wikis. After all, these Wikis practically share our name.

I understand this is difficult, but we were thinking maybe if somebody with a bot or who knew how to make one could maybe make one that could translate some stuff into another language for their Wiki? At least some basic pages would be great. I'm sure Ramallah can probably word this better, or has more to add so I'll leave a section below for him, and then a section for everyone to discuss what we can do to improve our fellow foreign Wikis. - Chris 07:50, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Ramallah's turn

The Foreign Nukapedia Wiki's are simply put in horrible shape. They are missing content, they are missing templates, many still carry The Vault logo, and some are even abandoned. These are our sister wikis and quite frankly aren't being held to the standard of Nukapedia. Somehow we need to to come up with solutions to these problems and find a way to bring these wikis into the fold and increase the quality in which these wikis are maintained. For those that are abandoned we need to find editors that can take over and fix the issues raised. For those with an active community we need to open a line of dialogue with there community and ether have them fix the issues or drop them as sister wikis for Nukapedia. --RAM 08:16, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Comments

I totally agree with you guys here...the state of the current foreign wikis are horrible. People who speak and read languages other than English shouldn't have to rely on the English wiki for details on fallout.--Josef (talk) 08:23, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Ok guys, you picked up the ball, let's run with it. Make a list here of all the interlanguage wikis, with a real quick assessment of the issues. Table it, with headers like "active sysops", "outdated logo", "outdated templates", "vandalized", "missing content", etc, please. The Gunny   20:05, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

I can help a bit on the French wiki, that's the only language I know enough to be able to edit on a wiki of that language. I know we have a couple of other bilingual users here too. --TwoBearsHigh-Fiving 20:08, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Foreign Wiki assessment

Site	Actively edited	Logo status	Template status	Vandalized	Content level
Bulgarian		Default	None		9 pages
German		The Vault	Some		3,860 pages
Spanish		The Vault	Some		2,653 pages
Finnish		The Vault	None		421 pages
French		The Vault	Not much		207 articles
Hungarian		Default	Some		263 articles
Italian		Default	None		531 articles
Japanese		Nukapedia	None		26 pages
Georgian		Default	None		6 pages
Korean		Default	None		61 pages
Lithuanian		Default	None		19 pages
Dutch		Nukapedia	None		197 pages
Norwegian		Nukapedia	Some		117 pages
Polish		Polish Vault logo	Some		3,084 pages
Portuguese		Totally different logo	Some		445 pages
Russian		Totally different logo	Some		11,118 pages
Swedish		Nukapedia logo	Some		93 pages
Turkish		Default	None		16 pages
Ukrainian		Totally different logo	None		18 pages
Chinese		The Vault	Some		1,326 pages

As you can see from this chart, most of these Wikis are almost completely lacking content, and have no active users. The ones that do have more content, seem to be still actively edited for the most part. We need to do something to either unify these Wikis or to get rid of them from our main page. Having them on our main page at this point is misleading to people and leads them to believe it is our Wiki in a different language (Which not a single one of these are). - Chris 22:12, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

This forum looks like a call to "do something," yet I'm not sure what to do. Maybe we can work out some small ways of helping rather that just discussing big or general ideas. 69.l25 (talk) 22:21, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

If it's a major issue, I can change out the logo on the Chinese wiki. I have bureaucrat rights there. --Skire (talk) 22:29, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

That would be a step in the right direction. We need to standardize all of our other language Wikis to be what they're actually meant to be. In their current state, they're wastelands lacking any information. If people aren't able to take steps necessary for them to actually be a "Fallout Wiki in other languages" as they're shown on the main page, then they should be removed. - Chris 23:03, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Some of the pages there are translated, but there is no significant editor activity, and to my knowledge, few viewers of the wiki's content. It shouldn't be too surprising that the Fallout series isn't super popular in China... --Skire (talk) 23:27, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

This intent of this forum is to raise awareness about this previously unnoticed issue. The sad fact is that there are only a select few users who even speak some of these languages, let alone have the ability or willingness to start bringing these wikis up to speed with Nukapedia. Hopefully, this forum will bring those users out of the shadows so that we can begin to work on fixing this issue. Chris and Ramallah can't fix everything on all of these wikis. Hence, they are trying to spark a discussion on possible solutions to this issue. They are not making a blank proposal with no solution to the problem, which is why this is in the wiki discussion forum, not proposals and applications. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I may be able to help a little with the Spanish wiki. Spanish is the only other language I speak, though the Spanish wiki is nowhere near as bad as some of the other ones (Korean or Bulgarian, for example). _{Into the wild blue yonder...} 23:12, March 2, 2014 (UTC)

Here is what I suggest: The wikis that are largely self-sufficient and have a notable amount of content (let's say >1000 pages) should be upgraded to sister wiki status. By a quick glance, that would be Sanctuary (Russian), Krypta (Polish), Spanish, German, and (possibly) Chinese. This would likely boost their traffic by giving them larger logos on the main page - a good thing for them, and removes the 'assumption' of these wikis being direct translations of our wiki - a good thing for us. The rest of the wikis listed, particularly the medium-sized ones (such as French, Hungarian, Finnish, and Italian) should be given focus from members here where possible. If they attain a similar level of quality as the larger wikis, they can then apply for sister wikiship with us when the time comes. Until that time, they should be removed from the main page.

As for me, I would likely be most helpful on the French wiki, although my French is only moderate I could work on page translation with the aid of a French-English dictionary.  A Follower  Talk  00:04, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

And by 'sister wikis' I mean affiliate wikis - similar to Wasteland.  A Follower  Talk  00:11, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

We can hardly recruit people for projects here, so it'd be silly to suggest we easily could do so for other wikis. Instead of just saying we'll help-- which is the least we can say we'll do-- let's spell out some specific goals; we can get people working right now on small issues: fix some red links on this wiki, update templates here, and add images there. The more specific we get, the more realistic we can be about helping out. It's not enough to just say we'll help; that insinuates practically nothing; rather than saying, "there's a problem that needs help" let's say what the problem is and say how to fix it. 69.l25 (talk) 05:58, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

If there's really not a single thing you can direct editors to do to help, then everyone who already knew about the state of the other wikis-- me included-- will be on their merry way as we have been for a long time; and I suppose those who are just finding out will sympathize for a few days before moving on. I don't see many people motivated to help out-- even those who know about this already. But we can get some results if we set up an equation. We need not spend more time to spread awareness; most special-rights holders-- admins and bureaucrats specifically-- know about the foreign wikis. Let's take the time to make the equation. Tell us what needs to be done, and we'll do it. Instead of aiming to make people aware, let's aim to make people productive. 69.l25 (talk) 06:28, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

This is a discussion forum, not a proposal for an immediate effective solution. This wiki does not work on 'lets do this because I said so and that's that' - we arrive at solutions via discussion. Instead of complaining about a lack of direction, why don't you suggest a direction we go in?  A Follower  Talk  06:43, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, this clearly isn't a proposal. People are going to give vague promises, and nothing will get done unless we get to specifics. I assumed it was the responsibility of the forum's author(s) to propose at least one action we can take on a foreign wiki to help it out, but I'll look for some ideas myself then. I understand this forum is for discussion, but saying, "I'll help X wiki" is not a discussion; rather, let's say "what exactly needs to be done to help X wiki," or "let's try to do this, which can help X wiki" and get some feedback. Everyone agreeing that we need to help furthers us not one bit, as that part's already clear. 69.l25 (talk) 06:52, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

We also haven't really gauged the opinion of people as to whether or not we want to keep this wikis as affiliates - and what actions we should take if we decide to do so. Many still carry The Vault's logo (or a variation thereof), and clearly our relationship there can be described as neutral at best. Do we ask these wikis to rebrand to our logo in order to maintain continuity, and drop them if we refuse? This may be easy for smaller wikis, and for wikis with which we maintain decent relations, but what of the larger ones? Do we ask Krypta and Sanctuary to rebrand their logo and rename themselves to something else (both are currently approximate translations of 'Vault')? Is this feasible? Do we drop the sister affiliation and have them apply as full-fledged affiliates, rather than labelling them as our wiki translated? All these things need to be discussed before we move forward with helping out these wikis at all, as helping now and dropping them later will take focus and work away from our wiki, which isn't productive in the slightest.

If we decide to keep these wikis, or at least some of them, we need to find people who can contribute to them. I suggest opening up a project page, listing all the wikis and defining what needs to be done most on each, and having a log where people can sign up, whether they are speakers of the language or not. I think the priority for most wikis is the addition of basic templates - quests, items, NPC's, and locations - I'm not sure how much of this requires extensive knowledge of the language. Using some of our templates will upgrade the quality of the wikis significantly, then we can try to recruit people who speak the language, either from our own ranks, or from large wikis in that language - fallout related or not. It's not a simple solution, and that in itself poses a larger question relating to my first paragraph - is this a task that is really worth undertaking?  A Follower  Talk  07:10, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

Adopting

Some good initiative there, but what we now need is some follow through.

My understanding of the foreign language wikis is that they generally fall into 3 groups.

The first group is the active ones who we see have members visit here daily to update the language links. These guys are clear full affiliates in action if not completely. Obviously we should render whatever assistance is they ask for, but they have to keep the lead. The most obvious example is the Russian Language wiki - its almost as big as ours. The help here I think needs to mostly be a conversation about what we can do for each other.

There are those who are active, but are otherwise in very much a silo - not much interaction between us both. This is a problem not just for us, but also for the other sister wikis - Tranquility lane is active, but although its an official sister wiki, there's no cross pollination. We need a solution for this.

Then there is the third category - Dead Wikis. Those that someone started as a good idea and then realised... oops. I think here we have the greatest possibility for hands on action - as long as we can find people with the requisite english skills, we can start porting stuff over.

I would suggest what we do is some sort of triage operation for this third category. We select the most crucial pages - The main page for each game, the key characters (not all, just the key ones involved in questlines and plot points), key locations, and quests. We perhaps do a single page for each weapon category to offer a comparison between weapons, and maybe for healing items too. We then run these pages through google translate, and ask someone with good enough language skills to fix the grammar and syntax issues google leaves.

This would at least allow us to offer a "basic" service on each wiki. In order to do this we would need someone to officially adopt each wiki, and be responsible when Fallout 4 happens to take the lead on translation of other key pages.

I'd also like to look at some sort of incentive we could offer to help kick this off. Agent c (talk) 10:34, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

I agree - This issue has been on the backburner for 5 years with nothing being done for many of these Wikis. Part of the reason I think is because people have the "not my problem" mentality. It may not be as big of a deal as what we have going on here, but it is pretty important. Having the information available to all people is important, and it makes us look bad if we offer something that doesn't exist. In an ideal world, we would be able to get all of these Wikis in the shape this Wiki is and have people who can maintain them. This is obviously a pipe dream (Looking at you, Bulgarian Wiki), but it's worth doing what we can for them. And "basic" service is what's important. In my opinion, that's content. People visit a wiki for information about a subject. I've spoken with a few random people who say the can slightly speak various languages, but having trouble finding people who speak other languages fluently. If we can't find people who fluently speak other languages, I think we can find solutions with Google Translate, or even be able to help by adopting Wikis and bringing their basic pages up to standard. - Chris 11:03, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

I've been active for some time on the Dutch wikia but I just lost motivation. There was noone else around editing, and no matter how many pages I made a day, this wikia would always be better anyway. And if you speak Dutch, you play the game in English anyway, what left me wondering why you would go to a Dutch wikia, when you speak english and the english wikia is much better... I am aware that people use that wikia, considering I sometimes see people correcting typoes in the texts that are there and once in a while a vandal pops in, but still, i lost motivation to work on it.- ^Greets Peace'n Hugs (talk) (blog) 11:59, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

This sounds good to me, but I caution against the use of Google Translate as a translation tool. It is good for individual words but it often translates long phrases and sentences incorrectly. It would be much more beneficial to recruit editors who are fluent in the language, both verbally and in it's literary forms. That's going to be the most difficult part though. I have some experience with french, but I'm nowhere near fluent. ---bleep196- (talk) 13:24, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

The reason why I suggested translate was simply to get the baseline to start from. Yep, I know its crap, but I figured it was likely easier to have a someone read through it in google-translate form and adjust as needed, rather than start from English and try to change it all. Obviously I wouldn't advocate the use of google-translated pages without a read through. Agent c (talk) 13:31, March 3, 2014 (UTC)

I am definitely up for helping the Swedish wiki get at least decently up to snuff, with the small side note that Swedes generally have no issue at all with English (96% of our population speaks at least rudimentary English). Additional side note might be that I have no idea how long I can keep up supporting it. Hugs ^{"Say 'ello to my little friend!"}