Commons talk:Language policy/Archive 1

Name of files

I'm moving the discussion about ASCII file names here, so it won't mess up the ordinary page. Kjell André 16:47, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

About ASCII code

Why can file names only be in ASCII? Node ue 19:04, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest, with better software, generic file names be given to all uploaded files (perhaps a number 0000001.png etc.) with "titles" in each language, accompanied by a description. When logged in users can specify their "Language of preference" which will automatically be displayed as the file title/description if available. For example, a French speaker would specify "French" as their language of preference, French would be prominantly displayed wherever available. If unavailable a "Write description in your language" button could appear with whatever languages are already written. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 22:03, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand why Commons should have more restrictions than the normal Wikipedias. By using Unicode and the same encoding schemes as in these, wouldn't be easy to allow any file name? Anyway, why not use all 8 bits of the byte? ASCII is too restricted, Latin-1 is the minimum. // Kjell André 14:43, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's a problem with linking to Wikipedia articles with Unicode characters. For example, a link to w:pl:Stanisław Lem links to w:pl:Stanis. Ausir 00:44, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is only because of wrong syntax, use pl:Stanisław Lem, problem solved. --Gabor 14:21, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

May I suggest that somebody create a list of what ASCII characters are? I ask this because those of us who are not familiarized with such terminology will not know what you are talking about. Besides, if I go to the articles in Wikipedia in Spanish or in English, the explanations are too complex. I think we just need a list of characters in a page linked from here where everybody can check, for example: may I write "ñ"?, or may I write "á, é, í, ó, ú" etc? I make myself this question. Thank you. --Javier Carro 06:47, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Javier, those characters with accents and tildes are not ASCII, those ones are provided only by Latin-1 or full Unicode. I agree with Kjell André in that ASCII is too restricting, and Latin-1 is the minimum (at least for Western Europe, other cultures will probably need full Unicode). Why not suggest use of ASCII but not impose it? ManuelGR 18:26, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Also, check the third and fourth image from below on Special:Unusedimages. The image is there, but the image page is nowhere to be found, and they can be linked only as external. - Andre Engels 08:12, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There already are quite a few non-ascii filenames; diactitics are crucial among others for the pronunciation samples. So far there seems to be no problems, example: Media:Nl-Oekraïens.ogg
--tsca 13:39, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

More About ASCII code ...

I feel the comments above are a bit unsatisfactory, so let's start again. First, let's define what characters we are actually talking about:

• ASCII - the normal "basic latin" letters A-Z and a-z (and no others!) and also some other characters like "/", "%", "." etc. The full list is here
• Latin-1 or ISO-8859-1 - the same as above, but "supplemented" with "accented" letters commonly used in Western European languages, like "Å", "Ö", "Ü", "É", "Ñ" etc, and also some additional non-letter characters. The full list is here
• Unicode - "the full Monty" - including Eastern European, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese etc. characters. See Unicode charts for details.

ASCII vs. Latin-1

ALL the wikipedia projects support Latin-1, and I have not heard of any web browser not being able to display these characters. So this should be the minimum character set, anything less is simply not acceptable.

Wikipedia editors with keyboards that do not support all the strange Latin-1 letters may protest: How do I reference an image file when I can not type its name? In most cases this is no problem - cut-and-paste techniques allows you to copy the file name from the title . Also various "encoding techniques" makes it possible to type such names with an ordinary ASCII based keyboard. For example:

[[Image:Jätten Finn i Lunds domkyrka.jpg]] or

[[Image:Jätten Finn i Lunds domkyrka.jpg]] or

[[Image:Jätten Finn i Lunds domkyrka.jpg]]

all refer to the same image:

The point here is, that wikipedians who want to create files using these letters have no problems doing so, and the ones who want to refer to them also have no real problem doing that. So let's allow it. (Besides, there is no way to stop us ...)

So this is my answer to the question from User:Javier Carro above - yes these letters should be allowed! And it also explains why User:Tsca has no problem with his/her pronunciation samples.

Latin-1 vs. Unicode

Here the problem is that many of the language editions of Wikipedia use Latin-1, not Unicode. But many DO use Unicode, for example the Polish Wikipedia. This makes it possible for Polish wikipedians to freely use letters like ł both in ordinary article names, like in the example "Stanisłlaw_Lem" used above, and also for images.

If Wikimedia Commons is changed into a Unicode-based project, they would be able to continue doing that, and also the rest of the world which is not restricted to the Latin-1 character set. The Wikimedia Commons would be (and is!) rather useless to that part of the world otherwise. The problem with names like w:pl:Stanisław Lem is caused by this link being made from a Latin-1 based Wikipedia (this one) not by the name itself.

My point here is, that we (I'm one of them) who are restricted to keyboards and software unable to type and view much else than Latin-1 letters, should not prevent the ones who are not so restricted from using the correct characters. Besides, the techniques for handling non-latin characters is developing all the time. I'm convinced that in a few years all language editions of Wikipedia will be using Unicode.

THE WHOLE POINT OF COMMONS IS TO PROVIDE IMAGES THAT ARE EASILLY USEABLE BY EVERYONE. THE BEST WAY TO ACHIVE THIS IS TO KEEP FILENAMES TO THE SIMPLEST SET OF CHARACHTORS POSSIBLE.

sure my computer can display chineese doesn't mean i can see a chineese letter remember it and find or type it again later. with a romanisation i would stand a good chance of doing so.

Filenames in ascii don't tend to really loose anything of substance over latin1 (ok so they may not have some accents that picky people might say are needed but restriction to ascii doesn't usually result in any real change of meaning over latin1 and makes them easier to remember for those not used to being fussy about accents).

Filenames in unicode open up a HUGE can of worms. There are letters that look the same but are different code points (for example ohms sign and omega immediately spring to mind). There are combining diatrical marks giving several ways to represent an accented letter. There are things like zero width no break space which can be inserted invisiblly in a name and worst of all there is bidirectional text which is incrediblly hard to handle for those not used to it. Plugwash 04:55, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In that case why don't we restrict ourselves to lower-case letters without spaces? You may not have all the keys to type russian on your keyboard, but similarly people with a russian keyboard layout don't have most of the latin-1 characters on theirs. Either commons is for english speakers only, or it is for everyone, in which case we need to make it work for everyone. --HappyDog 13:30, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Referencing Unicode names from Latin-1 based Wikipedias

Actually it is possible in Latin-1-based Wikipedias to reference NORMAL articles with strange names in Unicode-based Wikipedias - it is done all the time in the interwiki links, and with a bit of effort also possible inline:

[[:pl:Stanisław Lem|Stanisław Lem]] gives Stanisław Lem

Actually, it is possible to store articles with unicode names in Latin-1 based Wikipedias too, but the software does not seem to be able to handle links to them - the links remain "red" even if the article does exist. Inter-wiki links does seem to work however. The following is a link to an article called "Stanisław Lem" in the Swedish Wikipedia, which is a simple redirect to the article called "Stanislaw Lem":

Stanisław Lem

(The redirect works, but the system is a bit confused about the name of the article containing the it)

Unfortunately this technique can not be used for referencing images from other language-editions of Wikipedia since it is not possible to use double name-space prefixes like [[Image:pl: ...]] (wouldn't it be nice if it did!?)

My guess it that since the normal inter-wiki links can handle unicode names, it would be possible to make the software able to handle it via Image:-links to Wikimedia Commons files too (if it does not already work!) What need to be done is to prevent the normal "de-coding" of illegal characters to be done when fetching the image from Wikimedia Commons. Perhaps a new name-space like "CommonsImage:" instead of the normal "Image:" would be needed to make this posible. It should be treated in similar to the way inter-wiki links like "pl:" is done today.

That's all for today, Kjell André 20:18, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's already possible: Media:Pl-Gdańsk.ogg = Media:Pl-Gdańsk.ogg (see source); both work.
--tsca 20:41, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[[Media:Pl-Gdańsk.ogg]] = [[Media:Pl-Gda%C5%84sk.ogg]] (nowiki clarification Kowey 13:53, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Stanisław Lem

Gallery page: Stanisław_Lem

Great! Thanks Tsca for enlightning me. In my view then, there is no question about the validity of using Unicode file names. Of course we should use the correct characters!

Kjell André 20:08, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunatly this does not seem to work. When I try to link to the image to the left from the sv: Wiki I get "Image not found". Only linking to the incorrectly spelled file "Image:Stanislaw Lem.jpg", which also exists, works. Anyone think this is possible/desirable to solve? Kjell André 20:54, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Only by converting all Wikipedias to Unicode, which should have been done a long time ago.Ausir 17:52, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

.

.

All translators: A doc in english has images in en.wikipedia.org, of course I am creating a new article in es.wikipedia.org so I come to commons:

1.- how may I easilly search commons? gees! heh Id like to be recommended a method for loosy searching with many results and small thumbnails *grin*

2.- is it possible to MOVE an image from en. to commons.? HOW? for the programmers: maybe even a button for logged in users to click on and get a popup window with a few codes ready for use ;)

3.- What's wrong with using the original image from en. into the doc in es. and later on a bot may find both documents referring to the same image, move the image automatically into commons and update links on all related documents? or am I dreamming here? heh

4.- My programming teacher's first class was all about KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid! so my take on files names is NEVER to use ( ) , . accents, ñ etc on file names, making it EASYER for any other language author to pickup the image and use it without any worries, séñor_frogs_in_cancun_at_night.jpg and senor_frogs_in_cancun_at_night.jpg are both perfectly understandable to me but 1 is easy to copy/paste from source to destination. btw congratulations to all of us, wikipedia is amazing! --201.137.204.117 21:54, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Audio

I've tried linking from en:John Paul II to Image:Pl-Karol Józef Wojtyła.ogg using the {{audio}} template. It did not work, and I had to manually re-upload the same message to a filename without diacritics (and it worked).

Until technical glitches such as this one are fixed, I specifically advocate not uploading sound files (esp. pronunciation) with non-ASCII characters (maybe the problem is only with non-Latin-1?). David.Monniaux 06:24, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Titles of articles

Proposals

moving the initial proposals here to keep page tidynotafish }<';> 00:57, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) Here are my proposals:

• Files may be named in any language; however, names should consist of ASCII characters only
• File descriptions may be made in any language; translations are welcome
• The same holds for gallery pages and similar, but English is preferred here. If the texts get too long, other languages may be relegated to the bottom of the page but not to a different page.
• Titles of gallery pages and similar are in English. Redirects or disambiguation-like pages may be made from the subject name in other languages.
• Policy on specific kinds of subjects may specify a different language than English in the latter case (for example, we could specify to use the binomial Latin name for animals or the local name for cities)

- Andre Engels 23:55, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• For animals and plants, the binomial Latin name is preferred.
• Japanese subjects (locations, persons, mythology): Hepburn transliteration

- Ellywa 08:30, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think Japanese names should be allowed. See discussion page. // Kjell André 20:24, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Music should be named in its original language - Die Zauberflöte not "The Magic Flute"

--OldakQuill 15:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree fully on this. See discussion page. // Kjell André 20:24, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Questions to be answered

this is based on the table found here

Places

• Countries : What about countries with several official languages ? (this applies to cities as well)

ie. Belgique - Belgie (Belgium)

• Regions : What about regions with local languages or dialects

ie. Breizh Bretagne (Brittany)

• Battles or events involving different countries :

ie:Bataille d'Azincourt or Battle of Agincourt ?

People

• Popes : Latin name ? Country of origin name ?

Opinions on how we should list names of Popes? Would Latin be best for the Commons? If in English, should the title "Pope" be before each name? -- Infrogmation 06:59, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• • I would be in favor of Latin names. - Andre Engels 09:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree. (I brought up English because some Pope articles were already created in that language.) -- Infrogmation 17:13, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Ancient names

ie. fr:Pline l'Ancien, en:Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus ?

• • For Romans, I would definitely prefer Latin names. With a disambiguation page at 'Plinius'. But for Greeks I'm still doubting - Greek name, Greek name transliterated or latinized name? - Andre Engels 09:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Roman and Greek originals, imho --Briséis 18:39, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Russian names: I created 7 pages with Russian names (writers), is that ok? (Example: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский) What about ordering in the categories? --Gabor 23:17, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• • That's a good point... I would say that's ok, but it would of course be helpful if you made an (additional) English page that pointed to the same image. -- Kowey 17:31, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • If there are no software problems, having Russian names in Russian letters seems fine, but there should be redirects to there from the Latin letter transliterations, as keyboards set for Latin letters are probably the most common with Wikimedia users. -- Infrogmation 17:13, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If it will be desided to use Russian letters for Russian names, should we also apply the naming conventions of Russian Wikipedia? The point is that according to the naming conventions of Rusian Wikipeida, biographical articles are titeled as follow: Surname, Given name Fathername, so it should be Пушкин, Александр Сергеевич instead of Александр Сергеевич Пушкин like now Kneiphof 23:03, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I should like to warn you not to use to many different alphabets for file names. In some places like categories and watchlists, articles are always listed under their file name, redirects from other file names do not help in that case. So it is necessary that everybody using Wikipedia Commons be able to read the file names in that case. And I think the only script everybody using Wikipedia Commons can be reasonably assumed to be able to read is currently the Latin script. Of course, as Wikipedia Commons expands further, at some moment not even that may be the case any more. The Russian script is quite simple to learn for someone knowing the Latin script, but it is an additional difficulty for users. Furthermore, once having allowed the Russian script, it is difficult to argue why one would not also have file names in Greek script, Georgian script, Arabic script, Hebrew script, Chinese script, various Indian scripts etc. - there are Wikipedias in all these scripts and of course all of them can be learned as well. But I would not expect anybody wanting to use Wikipedia Commons to learn all these scripts together. Therefore IMHO the most reasonable solution is to use only the Latin script for article file names, while files named in other scripts should only contain redirects to the Latin script file. 1001 14:48, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed with 1001. As for Chinese script, there are about 40,000 characters. And most of non Latin characters cannot be displayed without special settings in many environment. I prefer to use only Latin arphabet in page titles but write original name in Latin transription (so, not Catherine II, but Ekatyerina II). --Aphaia 01:11, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

family name in capitals

For commons I think it would usefull to put the family name of people in capitals like in Esperanto (the name of people on the picture) --Walter 00:10, 12 dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this. Seems to be a French convention as well. -- Kowey 11:23, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Disagree strongly. For one it is not a French convention. Secondly, it'd make title like shouting at people, which is unfriendly. villy 10:17, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Disagree too. It looks very strange. --Raymond de 12:10, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I DISAGREE TOO FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:05, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Disagree, too. Even if it were a French convention, it shouldn't be. NAME SHOUTING IS NOT NICE. --wpopp 17:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm... I am sympathetic to the NAME SHOUTING IS BAD argument, but

1. It is handy for disambiguating name order. For example, MAO Zedong and Richard NIXON.
2. These are for commons, just a repository for finding stuff, not any text that anybody is actually going to read, where one could care so much about shouting.

Another question is if disambiguating name order is actually useful on commons. Maybe it isn't. -- Kowey 18:33, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I concur. This is not a French namaing convention and I disagree with it for all the reasons stated above. If we need to use that for disambiguation pages, the disambiguation pages may use the capitals to emphasize the word being "disambiguated" (although I don't see why), but that could be in the linking. ex. [[Richard Nixon|Richard NIXON]] would do the trick.notafish }<';> 17:36, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about Small Caps, i.e. Richard Nixon? It seems rather unwieldy (I used a <span style="font-variant:small-caps"> tag), but I'm sure it can be done with some smaller tag (I don't know if it already exists, the Editing Help link on this page shows nothing). It works for Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (not sure which of that is the family name); I'm not sure what happens with non-latin-like scripts, as I undersand the case distinction doesn't exists in most writing systems.

Disagree. Using all-caps for surnames is a convention in genealogy as well, where it is very useful for distinguishing surnames that are often the same as first names. While it could be useful here as well, it isn't something most people do naturally and trying to enforce it would be more trouble than it's worth. --Rick Sidwell 18:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

AGREE. It is a fairly common convention for distinguishing surnames (or similar) from given names. Its use in geneaology indicates it can be useful do such a distinction. I think most people will not regard it as shouting anymore than italic, underscore or similar, it is just a simple technique to mark one of the words as SPECIAL. I also think it is the only available technique, since mark-up like the ones used for italic, underscore, smallcaps etc. is not possible to use for article or image names. Of course it only applies to those scripts that DO distinguish between capital and small letters, but why not use it there? // Kjell ANDRÉ 15:43, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Disagree. Not good to read and like shouting. --Tobias Conradi 05:24, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Disagree. Counter-intuitive to most people and language usages, capital letters do sound like SHOUTING and therefore impolite to several users, and I really don't see much use for disambiguation first / second name in a media content repository such as Commons is. Ary29 13:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Disagree (although not strongly). That extra piece of information does not need to be in the title. I propose instead that we underline the family name in the first occurence of the name in the text. Furthermore, in some cultures there is no such thing as a family name. The most frequently used example of that is Iceland.

--Verdlanco 06:58, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to organize Commons images for different languages

I posted this proposal in Village pump, but at moment I don't have any feedback, so I am copying here.

Why not organize images in the Wikipedias instead organize in the Commons. Could be created a new namespace in wikipedia like Gallery or Album to organize images in categories or articles. Each wikipedia could choice the way that the images will be organized. That is it. Gbiten 03:28, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just a short comment: This would nullify the effect of commons to share free images to all WikiMedia projects. And if these Pictures in the Album or Gallery Namesspace were accesable by all projekts it would be quite difficult to keep track of the pictures in 100+ Wikipedia, all with different Copyright laws. -guety 04:32, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The images still here in Commons, only the articles (or categories) that group and organize images go to wikipedias. Gbiten 04:53, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It would make them hard to synchronize. Ausir 11:15, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I couldn't understand what kind of synchronization is hard to make, could you be more specific? Gbiten 21:31, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll post again what I've posted in the VP. I think this is a good idea for the language wikipedias, organizing Commons images can be done with creating an article for the image. However, it can't prevent us from organizing things on Commons, which I think is not "just" a Wikimedia ortiented project, but has a much wider potential. notafish }<';> 17:38, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I imagined the organization of images in english in the Commons and the organization of images in wikipedias for the others languages. Gbiten 18:03, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Then I am not in favor of it :) notafish }<';> 11:05, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Conventions de nommage. Objections.

Si vous voullez vraiment que le projet soit multilingue il ne faut en aucun cas imposer une langue de préférence a d’autres.

Les français font des pages en français, les anglais font des pages en anglais, les allemands font des pages en allemand, les italiens font des pages en italiens, etc., etc., rien ne doit contrecarrer cela.

Les consultants ne connaissent pas forcément une langue plutôt qu’une autre, donc ils doivent pouvoir trouver un article dans leur propre langue, il doivent pouvoir en créer un dans leur propre langue, je pense particulièrement au personnes qui comme moi ne pratiquent qu’une seul langue.

Mais rien n’empêche qu’il peut exister dans un même article plusieurs paragraphes de différentes langues. Les personnes bilingues ou multilingue pourront créer des liens vers des articles dans d’autres langues, et traduire des paragraphes d’une langue dans une autre tous en respectant les paragraphes écrits dans une langue qu’ils ne comprennent pas.

Les paragraphes de différentes langues peuvent parfaitement cohabiter dans la même page (comme on peut le constater par exemple dans les formulaires administratif suisse)

Des liens vers d’autres pages dans d’autres langues pourront toujours être fait à la fin d’un paragraphe

Spanish and Portuguese collision

Spanish and Portuguese are very similar languages and now we (Portuguese speakers) are having problems translating the main pages because some pages are spelled the same way in both languages:

• Commons:Administradores,
• Commons:Política de idiomas
• Commons:Café

We used some tricks to resolve this problem (like using Commons:Administrador—Administradores in the singular), but I fear that this problem may become worse later. Gbiten 03:38, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We may add the ISO code at the end of the title, for instance: Administradores(es) and Administradores(pt). --Javier Carro 13:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I liked your idea.Gbiten 05:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A better way would be that pages with the same name are allowed to exist as long as they are put indifferent categories. ie. Administradores could exist twice, but once categorized under Category:Commons-es, and once with Category:Commons-pt. I don't know if the software could make the difference. As a matter of fact, I suppose articles should ALWAYS be categorized, it should be a requirement when you create a page, so as to avoid uncategorized pages.

As for the Café... (which would work in French too !) well, be creative ! I am sure a Bodega or a Café del Sol could be fun ;) notafish }<';> 10:57, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Haha..I saw that you did indeed get creative ;-), sorry I hadn't seen it before. See Esplanada. notafish }<';> 11:03, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A New Idea for Language Policy

Regarding (1) the proposal above to organize the material on the local-language wikipedias and (2) the naming conflict between Spanish and Portugese.

I think that the naming problem is only going to get worse as time goes on, and we wouldn't want (es) - (pt) to have to be the long term solution. (We probably wouldn't allow that to happen in English.) Also, classifying what will hopefully someday pretty soon be millions of images and audio-visual clips is something that will take a huge amount of effort in each and every language, and may even become something much too big for a "gallery" or "album" within a local-language encyclopedia. (Nevertheless I really liked that idea, and it may be a good intermediate solution. It is similar to what I am about to propose next.)

So here is a totally new idea: Let's go ahead and differentiate between the actual content kept on the Commons, versus its organization and classification. The former, for zillions of very good reasons that have already been discussed, is being all to be stored here here at "http://commons.wikimedia.org", for common use as common resources in all of the WikiMedia projects (because we all have a lot it common :-). But let's build the latter, i.e. the various "Gallery", "Index", "Album" etc. organizational projects in local languages like fr.commons, pt.commons, es.commons, etc. That would allow maximum leeway and ease of use to local languages while still letting all the gathering of material take place right here with no change at all.

To allow this to happen, only one technical problem would need to be solved: We would need a convenient way to link back and forth not only between the various organizational languages (on the other projects this is already done with en:, fr:, etc.), but from them back and forth to the "neutral" or "every-language" Commons right here.

So do other people think this is possible idea? Jared

Probably this involves changes in wikimedia software, but if is possible I think it is better than my proposal. Gbiten 12:23, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It would work the same as the Wikipedias do, so I don't think it would need any software changes. But it would need one small thing: a very easy linking code for the main Commons, right here, where the images are all actually put. Jared 14:02, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This does address the problem of mainframe pages and articles, I agree. However, I see two problems with this idea :

1. it does not solve the problem of image information. What of the licences used, or information given by the author of a media file? Those need to appear on the media page, where would you put it ? here in the Commons, or on language commons ?
2. Organizing the media in another interface makes little sense since that is already to an extent what is being done withing the wikipedias, but the bigger problem I see would be access to information that has not been articled or categorized in one of the language commons. How do you plan to make sure users of all the language commons 'know' that even though it is not categorized/put into an article a media-file exists ? notafish }<';> 10:44, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Naming policy for country and country subdivision related files

General / Intro

original written by Tobias Conradi 14:23, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC) , be bold and feel free to enhance

• use codes instead of names
  • avoids language conflicts between wikis and maybe several local languages
  • shortens the file names, to allow for additional info
    • content may have changed over time
      • e.g. flags might have changed
    • layout standardized
      • e.g. a series of grey maps with area highlighted in green
      • e.g. flags standardized to certain format (do we need this?)
    • license
      • e.g. a GFDL vs. a PD flag series
• image name elements
  • geographic entity
    • en:ISO 3166-1, en:UN/LOCODE
  • type if image (coa [civ|mil|rel|fam|idn]|flag|map|anthem)
  • series identifier (optional)
  • time identifier
    • en:ISO 8601

Naming policy for Coat of Arms

Considering the need to simplify the searching of images I propose some standard criteria for coat of arms naming. The file name shoud be composed by four or five elements:

CoA_[civ/mil/rel/fam/idn]_[Country ISO code/Papa]_[owner's name]_[type of owner (optional)]

with the following meanings:

CoA = Coat of Arms

---

civ = civil coat of arms (administrative)

mil = military coat of arms

rel = religious coat of arms

fam = family coat of arms

idn = individual coat of arms

---

Country ISO code (for civ, mil, fam, idn coats and for rel coats with the only exclusion of Holy Father;

for countries not included in ISO code the entire name in original language (i.e. Bourgogne)

Papa (for Pope's Coat of Arms)

---

owner's name in original language (for the Pope is the latin name)

---

type of owner (for civil coats the administrative level, for religious and individual coats the rank).

Same exempla:

Coa_civ_FRA_Paris_ville (coat of Paris, french city)

CoA_mil_ITA_accademia militare (coat of the unit "Accademia Militare" of the Italian Army)

CoA_rel_Papa_Joannes_XXIII (coat of the Pope Joannes XXIII)

CoA_fam_GBR_Abercrombie (coat of the english family Abercrombie)

CoA_idn_FRA_Gaspard de Châtillon_Comte de Coligny (coat de Gaspard de Châtillon, Comte de Coligny)

CoA_rel_FRA_Camille de Neufville-Villeroy_Archevêque de Lyon (coat de Camille de Neufville-Villeroy, Archevêque de Lyon) Massimop 07:07, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It has some pros. Then, a coat can have more than one version. If you have several files, all depicting Giovanni XXIII's arms, would you just add a number to the end of the name, or a more descriptive tag like CoA_fam_GBR_Joannes_XXIII_engraving, CoA_fam_GBR_Joannes_XXIII_photo, CoA_fam_GBR_Joannes_XXIII_old?--Erri4a User talk:Erri4a es:discusión usuario:erri4a]] 18:47, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think is useful add the year of the composition of the new CoA, like CoA_idn_FRA_Gaspard de Châtillon_Comte de Coligny_1746 and CoA_idn_FRA_Gaspard de Châtillon_Comte de Coligny_1762.

—Massimop 19:51, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

categories containing articles with native names

since Hanafuda is a japaneese game i put the page for it at 花札 with a redirect from Hanafuda however this means that the entry in Category:Card games is something that will be impossible to recognise or remember to someone not familiar with ideographic languages. suggestions? Plugwash 19:14, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think we should stick to Latin alphabet (with all possible diactrics) for article naming. Ausir 01:56, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another solution would be to extend the Category mechanism to let you change the name under which articles appear. You can already change their sort order by saying something like [[Category:Card games|Hanafuda]], now what would be nice would be to be able to say something like [[Category:Card games|Hanafuda|Hanafuda (花札)]] so that it appears under the listing as something recognisable to everyone. -- Kowey 21:59, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It would be even better if it changed it according to language settings... Ausir 06:46, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

User:Grndmrcs have just had some counter edits and discussion re the native name "Brasil" and the English language name "Brazil". I strongly suport the policy of using native names for places (at least when it can be in Latin letters), while Grndmrcs makes an argument for having the category at the English name. It seems messy to me to have article "Brasil" and "Category:Brazil". Other thoughts? -- Infrogmation 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You should decide exactly what you prefer - native names or native names only in Latin letters - is is big difference. Native names only in Latin is nonsense - we should either have one language (for example English) everywhere or native languages everywhere, other cases are discriminative. Maximaximax 02:34, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Não! Isso é um absurdo! O texto da página Porto Alegre foi traduzido para inglês [1] e o texto em português foi apagado! Além disso mudaram as categorias que eu criei, que não estavam bagunçadas nem ao menos duplicadas! Um administrador deve reverter as mudanças, ou eu mesmo vou reverter isso que foi uma tremenda falta de respeito e contra a política determinada nesta página. Se as categorias vão ser a maneira principal pela qual as imagens são organizadas, é impensável que elas fiquem em inglês ou em qualquer outra língua que não a nativa. --E2m 04:39, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

-----E2m´s post translation to English-----

No! This is foolish! The text of Porto Alegre article was tranlated to english [2] and the portuguese text was removed! Furthermore, he changed the categories that I criated, they weren´t disorganized and duplicated! An administrator must revert thoses changes, or I will revert by myself , this was a big disrespect and it is against the language policy. If the categories will be the principal way that images will be organized, is unthinkable that they will be in english or in any other language than the native language. --E2m 04:39, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

-----End of translation - Gbiten 14:42, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)-----

I agree Grndmrcs making that page English only was not appropriate. -- Infrogmation 06:59, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with E2m's reclamation. Gbiten 14:53, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I really think that User:E2m plainly overreacted on my modification of "his/her" Porto Alegre page. I did not have any intention of "disrespecting" anyone, and I really don't see how translating the sentence with half dozen words in one page and the category the page was in can do that - bear in mind that I did not change or remove the information/category, only translated it, making it consistent with all the massive amount of other categories that were there already available in English about Brasil and following the language policy (what I did was not against the language policy, it was for it). According to Commons:Language_policy: "So far, Categories are in English". So, the original category name User:E2m was using (Category:Municípios do Rio Grande do Sul) clearly doesn't comply with that, since it is in Portuguese. Therefore I changed it to (Category:Cities in Rio Grande do Sul), in English, preserving the meaning, maintaining the brazilian name for the location (according to Commons:Language_policy:"Places are in the native language"), and therefore still following the language policy. If anyone look around the topic Brasil, you will see that virtually all pages content and categories about Brasil and sub-topics/categories were originally written in English (look in Rio de Janeiro, Paraty, Lagoa dos Patos, Pelotas, Natal, Brasil, Category:Brazilian food, Category:Brazilian religions, Category:Brasilian instruments (this last one is a fine example of what a confusion a language mix is able to do with the category names - people don't know what to use), Category:Maps of Rio Grande do Norte etc etc etc), and Porto Alegre was one of the few (probably the only one or two) with the description in Portuguese, using one of the few (one or two) categories in Portuguese, making this page very inconsistent and unstandard with regard to all the others. Having information and categories spread in several languages only add to fragmentation and confusion. Nothing more natural for me than make this 'orphan category in portuguese' more consistent with the others, by translating it also to English, what will only contribute to the categorization effort as well. Before accusing me of being disrespectful, User:E2m should have just contacted me (or even better, started an amicable discussion on Porto Alegre page, so that anyone in the future will see the discussion on what not to do) and stated the reasons why the information should remain in portuguese. I would present my arguments, and I'm sure we would have promptly come to terms, probably by maintaining "his/her" portuguese version, or by writing two sentences/categories (one in portuguese and other in English - keep in mind that writing category names in portuguese, other than specific places that might appear as a subterm in the category name, keep any non-portuguese speaker from realizing the meaning of the category, i.e. making the category useless for non-portuguese speakers and requiring duplication of its meaning in english. (((Why English and not French or Chinese? well, first answer me this: Why are we writing this discussion in english? Why is Commons Wikipedia interface in English? ))) ). I'm here to try to improve this wiki, and I don't think that this attitude of accusing me without even contacting me a priori about the subject was constructive at all. But apart from all this discussion, I think that this mixed set of English and Portuguese names is only adding to confusion. Category names should be in English, only places should be in the native language. Best regards to all, -- User:Grndmrcs 16:04, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Grndmrcs, I have two points about your comments:

• You are right about E2m should first contact you.
• There were discussions about the use of english as the common language since the begining of Commons, and there is no solution yet. I think this is the biggest challenge to Commons. You said that portugueses articles and categories only make confusion, but how became Commons confortable to non English speakers. At this moment the Commons is very english oriented, but this exclude many people, and I don´t think this is an excuse to maintain this situation.

Gbiten 18:47, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Gbiten, I see what you mean. But the remaining question is: who do we intend to exclude by making a category english or non-english -- respectively non-english speakers or english speakers? Anyway, one will be excluded from accessing the information. Probably the best way is assuming a common language for Commons (e.g. X-language or english) and duplicating all non-X-language categories/descriptions in this X-language (of course preserving native names, since e.g. translating Rio de Janeiro to english doesn't make any sense). This would be better handled if natively provided by the Commons software, so that every category would have any number of names: the main one in this common X-language, one in the native language, as an alias, and any number of other alias in any other language one desired. This would allow everyone (a polish, a mexican, a chinese etc) to use Commons and particularly the categories under Brasil, and also to add any new alias in the language of his choice to any specific category. Cheers -- User:Grndmrcs 19:56, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First of all, the categories or pages are not mine as User:Grndmrcs have said (and I never said that). I should point that User:Grndmrcs was already contacted by Infrogmation, then user Infrogmation reported what happened here. I may overreacted, but it is plainly sure that people usually get offended when someone erases their text only because it is in their native language. Furthermore, may be User:Grndmrcs did not realized that previous discussions (category talk:Brasil) was already taking place and thought that the english language was the project language. In spite of that, I am willing to not discuss this issue anymore (but, of course, User:Grndmrcs should have the right to talk about what I said now). What I am concerned about from now is the policy: I think categories should be in their native language (when there is one) and redirects and links from wikipedia should guide nonnative speakers. And, of course, one can always add translations to any page and in any language. This is the way that I think that a multilingual project should be. Cheers, --E2m 02:22, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC).

The expression "...erases their text..." you used above justifies my use of "...his/her..." regarding the words you wrote in Porto Alegre, and also quite explains why you may have considered my translation as an offense and possibly overreacted. I only discovered about this ongoing discussion because User:Infrogmation was kind enough to tell me about it so that I could present my arguments. That's why I said that User:E2m should have contacted me first to allow us time to come to terms before sparkling a discussion. As I said, Porto Alegre was the only one or two pages with a few words in portuguese under Brasil. *All* the others topics/categories under Brasil were in english, making Porto Alegre an 'orphan portuguese page' which was not using the existing english-only pattern under Brasil, which seemed, by large, to be an established pattern. Therefore to me, at the time, nothing more natural than standardizing this 'orphan portuguese page' by translating the few words in it, instead of adding an english sentence. Regarding previous existing discussions, half of the category talk:Brasil discussions you cite is in portuguese (and the english sentences only define rules regarding the words Brasil/Brazil), and there's no discussion in the topic Brasil. Besides all of that, please keep in mind that I was just following the already established language policies when making the translation. According to Commons:Language_policy: "So far, Categories are in English". The category "Municípios..." was in portuguese, that's why I translated it to the corresponding "Cities..." category. I maintained the native local name "Rio Grande do Sul" in the category, according to the rule Commons:Language_policy: "Places are in the native language". I don't think that the redirect solution you suggest, at least for now, should be widely implemented, since Commons:Language_policy also says "Categories cannot be re-directed (from one language to another)". Of course, any policy can be changed if we want to, but at least for now that is what is being stated there. Lastly, I also think that Brazil is the only local native name under Brasil that should be written in english, because the Brazil spelling is a quite well-established one and it avoids things like having a topic Brasil, a category Brazil, and strange categories like 'Brasilian etc' and 'Brazilian etc' at the same time, which is very inconsistent - but this is another discussion that I don't want to raise here (maybe in another section), and it seems that a large amount of time has already been used in it. Regards, --User:Grndmrcs 12:37, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC).

Some text is mine. I have wrote it and made it available under GFDL. The article (or page) is not mine. Can you see the difference? I have wrote it because I was trying to make the commons a multilingual project. I ask the commonsers: is right to translate the text from one article (not keeping the original text)? Is this the policy we should have? About the categories, you should have in mind that "So far, Categories are in English" is very different from "Categories must be in English". The main sentence is "WikiCommons is meant to be used by various languages". This sentence is translated in all languages at the top of the page. The other, is not. Please, read it again. Brazil spelling is a quite well-established one in English! You are only defending English as the project language when you say this! Seriously, you are not realizing how impolite you are being. And what is the problem of a Portuguese discussion at category talk:Brasil? --E2m 23:04, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I see the difference, but as you said, you think that I offended you by touching *your* text that is in Porto Alegre page. Your words. And you still seem to be offended, because I have never been impolite any time whatsoever, e.g by assuming you were being disrespectful towards me or making foolish actions without first contacting you. You can write in any language you want to, so can I, if I think I'm improving the wiki, and since your text was available under GFDL, it can be improved by anyone. As I said, Porto Alegre was the only page with portuguese text, therefore it seemed to be out of the standard and the right thing to do at the time. No problems in having any portuguese text in it. You originally didn't seem to be trying to make commons a multilingual project, only portuguese, since you required the sysop to *revert* my translation back to portuguese only, instead of just adding again the portuguese sentence or asking me to do that directly. From my side, I don't want anyone to revert the page back to english, I'm confortable with having both english and portuguese on it, and any other language. Now, if you carefully read the language policy that is currently being used: "So far, Categories are in English", this means that until now, and until someone changes the policy, the categories that are not in English are against the policy, such as "Municípios..." etc. There is no exception in the rules. I didn't write the policy, I'm not defending it, I'm just following it. The policy is very specific and clearly states that *Categories* should be english-only. If you think the policy is wrong, you should try to change the policy. I will happily follow the policy whatever it is. Brazil spelling is a quite well-established one. Please read my previous post again. I'm very clear defending the name *Brazil*, and only this *name* (not the project or any other native local portuguese name), to be in english, and this only because there is already a large amount of categories under Brazil that uses "Brazilian etc" and because, if you look in the beginning of this discussion, User:Infrogmation asked for suggestions about this name and I'm sure he was not being impolite or intending to be so - indeed, he talks about arguments and so on, instead of taking things personally as you usually seems to do, by feeling that people are being impolite when they are just trying to raise a civilized argument - everybody has the right to have his own opinion, and the role of a civilized discussion is to come to terms on different opinions, and taking objective arguments as personal attacks will not lead any discussion anywhere - but as I said, this is another discussion. And the problem of a portuguese discussion in category talk:Brasil, by the way, is that non-portuguese speakers can not understand. The person who wrote it maybe thinks that everybody speaks portuguese, or that WikiCommons is portuguese-only and therefore everybody is obliged to understand any information or policy that is written in a discussion in this specific language. No wonder that non-portuguese speakers (polish, chinese, indians and the rest of the world) are not able to follow the entire content of such discussions or to completely follow their content and decisions. Cheers --User:Grndmrcs 02:40, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC).

Others users edited the text. You offended me not by touching my text (as others users already did!), but by translating it, by erasing it only because it was in Portuguese. Saying this is not a personal attack. I only found it disrespectful, as many other native speakers. In a personal attack I would say that someone is a bad person, or other things. But I am talking about that situation. Or I cannot say that someone have done something wrong because it would be a personal attack? In addition, as I already have said, everybody should be allowed to add translations to any page and this you could do to improve the wiki. And I was, yes, trying to make commons multilingual. I have wrote in Portuguese because 90% of commons was (and still is) in English. Portuguese pages attract Portuguese speakers. If everybody that write in English here could reserve some time to write in their native language, I think we could have a much better commons. At the time I wrote that page, others Portuguese speakers were writing in English. Furthermore, I have nothing against you, User:Grndmrcs, and I think you would do a good job here. Cheers, --E2m 04:03, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS. My interface is not in English, it is in Portuguese. Did you know?

OK, just to make some points end meet in the end: after this discussion I did realize that I offended you, as you clearly pointed, but as I said this was not intentional, since I just thought I was doing the right thing by changing the only page that was not following the existing pattern under Brasil, and by following the *existing* rules in the language policy on categories. I did not contacted you in advance because, as I said, I thought I was doing the right thing. I think you should have contacted me in private, a priori, expressing your feelings about my change, without raising this enormous discussion, saving us huge amounts of time (which we could be using in improving the commons) and probably working together in a new policy or whatsoever. I also consider that your initial public comments just after my changes were at least an undue overreaction on my changes that did not contribute at all to a quick conclusion. Hope this discussion can be used to spark solutions to the problems that were discussed. As I said, I'm completely in favour of a multilingual commons and of following established rules and policies. No one who don't speak a specific language in this multilingual environment should be expected to understand any post/discussion not in his native language. And a fundamental problem to be solved together by all commoners is to find a solution for this babel language problem. Looking forward to doing this together, best regards to all, --User:Grndmrcs 10:45, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS. Mine can be in any language.

Maximaximax, when I say I strongly support native names when they are in Latin characters, note that I do not object to native names in other characters. In general I think using native names is a good policy. I simply don't know enough about other character sets and how widely supported they might be to evaluate how practical they are, hence my not extending my "strong support" into non-Latin characters reflects my being aware that I am personally too ignorant on the subject to fully evaluate it. Anyway, as far as I can tell that is a seperate question. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 06:59, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for categories

I am also here to make a proposal to handle the category system. For example, think about some images of women. Women are native from everywhere, i. e, there is no native language for women (...). Instead of having one category "women" in English, I think we could have a template "women". In the template there could be categories for each language: Category:Women (en), Category:Mulheres (pt), Category:Mujeres (es), Category:Frauen (de), etc. Then, if an image of a woman is uploaded, the uploader should add the template to the image page and all the specific-language categories will automagically be added. (I thank the user pt:usuário:henriquevicente for useful discussions about this proposal.) One problem that one can point is that categories inside templates do not work properly. But, what do you think? --E2m 23:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

After having read the whole discussion, I must say that what makes Commons interesting to me is exactly the fact that it is multilingual. An "all-in-english" (or "all-in-whatsoever" language") Commons makes no sense, we have already the Wikipedia in english. So I support (and will always support) multilingual articles. In my opinion, User:Grndmrcs should have translated the text (if he wanted to) and added it to the article Porto Alegre. It is so obvious, I do not understand why we have to discuss this! I understand that User:Grndmrcs thought he was doing the right thing, but I think it was a bad idea to delete the original text without taking the time to let a message to the original author. E2m did not contact Grndmrcs, but Grndmrcs deleted the text without asking E2m's opinion!

About non-Latin characters, I do not see the problem. For one who does not read cyrillic, do you think that the Latin (ISO) translation will help? It will only disturb people who read cyrillic! And how am I supposed to improve my russian if I cannot find russian text here? Or chinese? Or... Do you see the point? Let's not be afraid about text we cannot read. Remember that there are more people out there who do not understand english than people who understand it. And the same is true if you replace "english" by any other language. So let's be multilingual!

The same should be done concerning categories: we must find a way to have multilingual categories. In this sense, E2m's idea is interesting: one must only extend the template to his/her language to get his/her category active. I support this idea, and hope it is feasible. I hope I could help the discussion. Regards, Marcelo Schlindwein 01:10, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Different languages for article names

I think the idea to use native languages for places and people, and Latin for plants and animals is more populistic than realistic. It causes more problems (see still unanswered questions in section "Questions to be answered" above) than gives us benefits. It is no problem to use any laguage or script for article names and it is nice idea to have several language sections in article text, but I'm sure that for article names we should use the only language. I cannot say that English is my favorite one, but it is meta-language of Wikipedia so it is the most real candidate for it. For other languages we should use redirects. My other suggestion is to improve MediaWiki software - just add a simple possibility to have categories for redirects - then we will be able to create redirects for any languages and a local system of categories for any language. Maximaximax 06:06, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I tried to rename some Russia-related articles to Cyrillic and just after I did it other users started to complain about my activiteies and I can understand them. For example I can read Latin script, Cyrillic and Greece scripts. But I definetely cannot understand Chineese, Korean, Arabic and Hebrew. Just look on the list of articles - can somebody tell me about which subject is 唐朝 article? Maximaximax 12:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

For Russian names the ISO transliteration should be used. It is a de facto meta base for Russian names in latin letters, well-known n science and better than a licentious english diction. It can be found here 82.83.51.168 11:42, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's nice idea, but it should be written in the rules. At the moment we have in our rules that names must be native (of course it includes to be in native script). I do not insist on this rule, and even more - I think it is not good for most of people, but then we need at first to change the rules and only after this we should change article names, don't we? Maximaximax 07:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I support this. --Steschke 13:25, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Format for English titles

I've been playing around with the commons a lot lately, and have come to a few of conclusions that I would like to propose as policy:

• Use Noun-Preposition-Noun phrases, not Adjective-Noun (example: Culture of France, not French Culture).

  Rationale: English is currently the dominant language being used in the naming of article and categories. In deference to non-English speaking users, we should make the titles as easy for them read as possible. I believe that most non-English speakers would be more likely to recognize the English noun for a name than the English adjective formed from that noun. Many noun/adjective formations in English follow highly illogical rules, and so this policy would neatly sidestep the problem.

  With the policy of using native names for places (which I strongly support), using this construction would avoid creating mixed-language mishmashes like Category:Brasilian instruments.

• When using prepositions in titles to relate a subject to a place, "of" is better than "in".

  Rationale: It may seem like a minor point and a foolish consistency, but I like patterns, and would like to see more consistency in file names. Many Noun-Preposition-Noun names are named using "in", and many more are named using "of". This is especially true of the categorization of things by places. I would like to see the "of" construction used sitewide for consistency's sake. Consistency should help non-English users find their way.

  An advantage of using "of" is that it has a broader meaning than "in". Generally, "of" means the same thing in English as "in". But it also may mean "from" or "in the style of". For example, Category:Buildings in France and Category:Buildings of France are both equally recognizable by English speakers.

• Deference should be given to local languages when creating titles about places.

  For example, I notice that Category:Brasil contains two equal categories: Category:Municípios do Brasil and Category:Cities in Brazil. By all means, lets use the Português title, as long as an English definition of the category is given at the top of the category, and the English category is made into a redirect to the Português one.

• Every top-level place name should have translations into the major languages of the world located at the top of the category/article. de: en: es: fr: it: ja: pt: ru: and zh: should just about cover the vast majority of people on the planet, either as a native or second language. (Maybe a couple of others would make sense as well? Suggestions?) At the top-level, the user would become aquainted with the native place name, and recognize it as they navigate down the category tree. See Category:New Zealand, Category:Brasil and Category:Canada for examples of how this could be done.

  Redirects should be used liberally to point to native place names.

• Within Categories, the "number of subcategories" statement and the "number of articles in this category" statements should be automagically translated by the language interface. Currently, no matter what language you have set, it still seems to present the numbers statements in English. (Not sure if this observation should actually be here on in a feature request somewhere, but there you go.)

Hope these suggestions are useful, and I welcome comments. Kevyn 13:10, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Localisation of search words and categories

I have written an article: Using Ultimate Wiktionary for Commons it describes how the translations known in Ultimate Wiktionary can be used to search for the keywords and categories that are within Commons. Technically it is feasible and it would be a benefit to all. GerardM 08:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

VIDEO Coordination

Dear all, I know that they are many important things to discuss in this FORUM but I really want to ask about the Policies for ADD Videos? I want to contribute to developing this "Department" and I have already, many ideas and a ready Project for add more contributions. For Storing Videos, as well to Editing. I'm ready to support it, providing a SERVER (At moment only few GB but it can grow with the demand.)--Jober 10:09, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)Starting contributions in Portuguese

Conventions de nommage. Objections.

Si vous voullez vraiment que le projet soit multilingue il ne faut en aucun cas imposer une langue de préférence a d’autres.

Les français font des pages en français, les anglais font des pages en anglais, les allemands font des pages en allemand, les italiens font des pages en italiens, etc., etc., rien ne doit contrecarrer cela.

Les consultants ne connaissent pas forcément une langue plutôt qu’une autre, donc ils doivent pouvoir trouver un article dans leur propre langue, il doivent pouvoir en créer un dans leur propre langue, je pense particulièrement au personnes qui comme moi ne pratiquent qu’une seul langue.

Mais rien n’empêche qu’il peut exister dans un même article plusieurs paragraphes de différentes langues. Les personnes bilingues ou multilingue pourront créer des liens vers des articles dans d’autres langues, et traduire des paragraphes d’une langue dans une autre tous en respectant les paragraphes écrits dans une langue qu’ils ne comprennent pas.

Les paragraphes de différentes langues peuvent parfaitement cohabiter dans la même page (comme on peut le constater par exemple dans les formulaires administratif suisse)

Des liens vers d’autres pages dans d’autres langues pourront toujours être fait à la fin d’un paragraphe

--Utilisateur:MG*** <@> Accueil Main Page [Accueil] 08:30, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Begin Translation by Kowey 21:32, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

If you really want for the project to be multilingual, we shouldn't in any case impose any single language over others.

The French make pages in French, the English in English, the Germans in German, the Italians in Italian, etc, and nothing should go against that.

Users do not neccesarily know one language over anthor, so they should be able to find an article in their own language, the should be able to create one in their own language, I'm thinking in particular of people like myself who only use a single language.

But there is nothing to prevent there for being within a single article, several paragraphs in different languages. Bilingual or mulitlingual people could create links to articles in other languages, and translate the paragraphs from one language to another, leaving the ones that they do not understand.

Paragraphs from different languages could very well live together (translator note: cohabiter translated literally) on the same page, (as one can see, for example, on Swiss administration forms)

Links from other pages in other languages could always be added to the end of a paragraph.

End translation

Iedereen in zijn eigen taal? Alle talen gelijk? Ja, daar is natuurlijk wel wat voor te zeggen. Maar of het de communicatie ten goede komt betwijfel ik. Ik zag al veel duitse teksten hier verschijnen, en in navolging daarvan ben ik maar begonnen de tekst bij mijn fotos in het Nederlands te zetten. ter wille van de broodnodige communicatie zet ik die er tot nu toe ook maar in het engels bij.

De planten artikelen waar ik voornamelijk mee werk kunnen heel goed de namen in alle talen gaan vermelden, ik zag al een trend in die richting. Wat dat betreft is het wel goed de artikelen hier kort te houden en de inhoud in elke taal te hebben.

Voor planten lijkt het me nogal dubbel ten opzichte van de links die we ook krijgen of soms al hebben. Bovendien staan die vertalingen als het goed is straks ook nog eens in wiktionary. Graag je reactie, MG. Or should we keep all discussions here in English? 19:56, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

At least we should keep talks about general policies in English. Discussions in other languages just adds confusion to talk pages. The above discussion just emphasizes my point. --Stonda 13:32, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Non credo che sia una buona Idea - Diese Forderung halte ich für abwegig und unangemessen - Nem igazád Stonda Foreigner 14:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

That would mean the commons not being a multilingual project, there has to be an opportunity for people who do not speak english to contribute to discussions about policies or anything else. -- Joolz 00:13, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and there has to be peace on Earth. Sorry, but you must use English. You can type it on any keyboard. Lots of people know it as a second language, probably for economic reasons related to the USA and the former British Empire. Chinese and Spanish lose out as being impossible for many people to type, few know Chinese as a second language, and in general many people preferring such languages are simply not on the net. Arabic can't even be displayed on many computers, never mind typed. That leaves English. AlbertCahalan 18:02, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I forgot a language. Second to English would be Latin. We can all hate it equally. We can discuss modern topics now, thanks to a dictionary of modern terms published by the Holy See. AlbertCahalan 18:04, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

fr Vous oubliez l'esperanto... ; eo Vi forgesas esperanton... ; en You forgot esperanto... Bouil 08:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please note: ... few Chinese and Arabs know English as a second language, and millions of chines are currentliy entering on the net. English can't even be displayed on many computers in asia, never mind typed. That leaves the native language of these native speakers. Foreigner 08:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

English: Actually, we should invite people who don't speak English to post on this page -- translations can be done.

Français : En fait, nous devrions inviter des gens qui ne parlent pas l'anglais à ajouter à cette page -- on peut traduire ce qu'ils auront écrit.

Deutsch: Tatsächlich, wir sollten Leuten, die Englisch nicht sprechen koennen, zu dieser Seite einladen. Man kann ihre Sätze übersetzen. --Zantastik 01:05, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Slovenščina: Pravzaprav bi morali na to stran povabiti ljudi, ki ne govorijo angleško. Kar bodo napisali, lahko prevedemo.

Dansk: Vi bør rent faktisk indbyde folk der ikke taler engelsk til også at bidrage på disse sider -- man kan oversætte senere. G®iffen 16:45, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Español: Realmente ahora invitamos a quien no sepa hablar inglés, a editar aquí en esta página -- pues alguien traducirá sus palabras. Lumen 16:26, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Galego: Disque convidan a quen non saiba falar inglés, a editar nesta páxina, e fáiselle a tradución, neno que desfeita de multilingüismo.

Italiano: Adesso invito te, che non sai parlare l'inglese, a scrivere nella tua lingua su questa pagina. Le tue parole saranno tradotte.

Nederlands: eigenlijk moeten we mensen die de engels taal niet of niet goed machtig zijn uitnodigen om op deze bladzijde hun mening te geven.

Latin binomial

This is not good. You won't get everybody to list their dog pictures under... whatever it would be, and most people looking for dog pictures wouldn't find them there. AlbertCahalan 18:23, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Since this obfuscation is being used, please verify my guesses:

• 
  rhubarb?
• 
  gooseberry?

... the first ont seems "fr:rhubarbe" to me, the part you make jam with, without the leaves.

Any other food I've missed because of Latin binomial names and lack of category usage?

AlbertCahalan 19:45, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, won't happen. en:Binomial nomenclature predates Anglosaxon world domination, and is here to stay. Common names are too ambiguous. 80.58.192.197 18:23, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I didn't say that Latin binomial names were bad to have. I just ask that they not be the only names. If you know other names (not just English) and do not at least include them on the description page, you're needlessly making things difficult for others. AlbertCahalan 19:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, if you really want to insist on Latin, you can start by moving all the Homo sapiens pictures. No? AlbertCahalan 19:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Español: En español puede haber decenas de nombres comunes locales para la misma planta. Sólo el nombre científico garantiza la homogeneidad: sólo hay que buscarlo en Google previamente.

/

English: In spanish there are dozens of vernacular names for a single species (I guess it is the same in Britain or any other not colonial country) and the same En:vernacular name applies to distinct species: common names are equivocal.

/

Español: El nombre científico representa un esfuerzo de normalización y es una buena cosa: ¡AlbertCahalan, creía que eras partidario!

English:

--LP 11:29, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

funny thing is, that the name of the first of these images "rabarbar lodygi" is not a latin binomial :) ... it's a polish description of the image and means "rhubarb, stems" ... just fyi, Blueshade 14:50, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I also think this is a supremely bad idea. There's a good reason, when I uploaded a picture of a cat, I didn't tag it Category:Felis silvestris catus. Because until my image was retagged, I didn't even know what that meant. Categories need to be USABLE if you want them to be USED! That means categories should be where you expect them to be. Secondly, categories should be easy to use. You shouldn't have to hunt all over commons to find what you think should be Category:Cats. I'll bet most people who categorise don't look up the category to make sure it's what they think it is first. That means if this policy was fully implemented, you'd need people whose sole task was to "watch" the obvious categories and move items out of them to their Latin counterparts as they appeared.

I don't see who this policy helps. Latin speakers?? Certainly no one else, except maybe zoologists. Finally it makes it extra hard for people who speak non-European languages. Using "Cats" (ie, English) is bad enough, but to go and use Latin?! What chance do they have?

--pfctdayelise 00:00, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

As explained above, vernacular (like English names) use to be more equivocal than scientific names, so I understand that categories and articles on species and higher taxons are titled with their scientific binomial, but do all varieties whithin species have a scientific term. for example, where should we place the gallery of the Basque shepherd dog? --Javier ME 21:41, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

An example of categorized file with multiple description, sorry, the filename is in french, but it's just some 'mint'

Let the user choose what ever filename convention he wants, as long it has some logic in one given language. Keep making multiple description.

Don't forget to ask users to categorize the image.

I'd be for having an uncategorized image not showing on other wikis, so it would force people to categorize it.

At least it would be better than trying to enforce language requirement and blatantly excluding users.

The same would be going if a file is lacking a description in a given language, so we could force (for their own interest) users to categorize the files they use and upload.

Esby (talk) 21:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Templates or Imbedded Text

With the arrival of templates, such as Template:English giving {{English}}, I am a bit confused as to what the language system should be. On most policy pages there are little tags at the top of the page which seem less intrusive. Once you get more than a half dozen languages using the template system they start to take up a lot of space. I don't know that that is necessarily bad, but it can start to look a bit cluttered, and distract from the actual images. Choosing to only list a few languages seems to defeat the entire purpose of a multi-lingual project. Anyway, shouldn't we choose one system or the other, or is there something I don't understand about the technicalities?

Surely a part of the problem is that these little tags are listed one under another, each in its own line, instead of being one beside another. --Eleassar777 18:06, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

This is being discussed on Commons:Village pump, CSS stylesheet alterations has been proposed to get round this problem -- Joolz 20:05, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, most people with access to a computer know a little english. I think the first language should be this, and then links to eventual translations. I'll let someone else decide if the language list should be on the side, on top or below... G®iffen 16:32, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To close this topic, the language templates are now based upon the language code: {{some text}}, {{du texte}}, etc. The 'inline' keyword can be added to display the text without adding line breaks. When many languages are displayed the user can customise his own style sheet to hide other languages than the ones he understands.

-- AlNo (talk) 09:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

India

I'm aware of the policy that countries should redirect to their native script. Examples are of Russia and Germany. One user did the same for India, moving it to Bharat. Now the Indian Constitution recognises both the names as the official name of the country. Hence both infact are correct and official. India is in English and Bharat is in Hindi, and also both languages are the official languages of the Indian Union. I don't want to take a unilateral stance, but I feel that the name should be India; which is perfectly acceptable considering the above. What is the general consensus on this anomaly? Nichalp 05:01, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was the user who moved it and I did not at the time know that "India" was an official name even though English was an official language. I have no strong opinion about it knowing that but is Bharat the more commonly used name natively? I also want to clarify what is the right course of action for say Egypt, should it be renamed to the Arabic? gren 06:32, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The first line of the Indian Constitution states: "India, that is Bharat...". In Hindi, Bharat is used, but the term India also is commonly used in cities. In English, Bharat is seldom used. A google search reveals Bharat used mostly for names of companies. Nichalp 12:39, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If both names are official then it should be fair to call the country however we like, thus westerners will call it "India" and indigenous population and such can call it "Bharat". The use of the name should be focused on the easiest recognition of the subject at matter, the country of interest, the mass of land that originates this discussion, is either India or Bharat, the right to choose belongs to each and everyone. unknown 22:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Bharat is just the name in Hindi, but Hindi is not spoken throughout the country, unlike English which is used at least by a significant number of people everywhere. There are other names forIndia in one of the dozen of official languages of India, and many more considering the numerous indian languages without official status.

The quoted constitution is only its English version, but the Indian constitution also has official translations in any one of its dozen of official languages. Note that, despite there are a dozen of official languages, Hindi is official almost everywhere and English is second (there are Indianstates that don't recognize English as an official language, and the reverse is also true). All other official languages are recognized only at the federal level, but not locally in every state (for Example Urdu, which is normally written only with the Arabic script).

So don't assume that the names "India" (English) or "Bharat" (Hindi transliterated from the Devanagari script to the Latin script) are universal! Even worse: "Bharat" is just one of the Latin transliteration adapted to English, but this is not the only one! Verdy p 04:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese speaking peoples all over the world & Brazillian speakers

Please, who should address the currently abysmal situation that's happening in the Portuguese section?

In truth Brazilians have literally taken control over the Portuguese areas.

There's one big but, to this, and it's the one that Brazillians speak a version of Portuguese that was recently modified by them and them alone, and it's written and spoken by them and them alone.

As for every other single country in the world, almost a dozen across a handful of continents, speaks the oficial Portuguese, it goes without saying, spoken as well in Portugal!

To make matter even worse, most of the 'changes' enacted by Brazillians, are not 'choices' but merely grammatical errors that have been perpetuated by their own, unique, society...

They use 'Israelense" to speak of and Israelite, when the "Israelita" is correct, and -ense termination only for cities, not for nations. this is not only an error in grammar, but at points offensive, to in this case Israel - As it tends to denote that Israel isn't a real Nation. Many other oddities, such as removing the C from correct or contract, exist - without explanation or logic. They refuse to capitalize months, while they insist on capitalizing all first letters in titles. It's bizarre and nearly unexplainable.

This is highly impairing native Portuguese speakers all over the world from Portugal in Europe, to Africa, to Oceania and Asia access to their real, oficial and original version of Portuguese.

The administration of the Portuguese area, now mostly controlled by Brazillians, who outwheigh us in raw numbers, has pretty much taken the unbeliavable stance of taking their own, personal, and rule breaking version of "Portuguese" over the one, oficial, that's spoken by Europeans, Africans, Asians all over the world... since they outwheigh us in raw numbers, they're pretty much devastating everything that was written in oficial \ non-brazilian Portuguese.

I sincerely submit to you, that this is nothing short of cultural opression. Portuguese is directly descendant of Roman Latin, and has been spoken for centuries, topping easily one millenium. It is currently spoken by myriads of ethnically millions of people all over and in all continents of the world. But right now, they're all being oppressed and quashed in their right to their culture. I believe this violates the spirit of WIKIPEDIA, strongly.

I would, and in discussion, gathered, most Portuguese, and regular Portuguese speaking countries all over the world would, prefer to have either a "Brazil" ou "Portuguese Brazillian" section... I have no quarrels with them using their particular own version of the language no matter how bizarre it may be, but right now, it's cannibalizing all other countries in the world and depriving them of their own - to top it all of, official and original - version.

Please, to whomever this may concern. Thank you in advance.

I don't exactly understand how this is oppression. Are other versions of portuguese being deleted? If so, that does seem a bit silly. This issue has been encountered in English where a Brit might well say the same thing about Americans. I believe policy maintains that each writer can use the variant of their choice when writing personal messages, but that in articles a consistent format should be used. Usually whatever was used first is maintained, unless it is an article about the specific place in question. For example, articles about Brazil would use Brazilian, while articles on Portugal would use Portugal Portuguese. However, if you think the two are totally different you could split the two, like nynorsk and bokmål did in the norwegian wikipedia. Its really up to the portuguese speaking community. Peregrine981 03:33, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I am portuguese from Portugal and a contribuitor to the PT wikipedia and only want to say that is very strange that this discussion is taken place here, We (portuguese, brazilians and other portuguese speakers) decided to live with our differences and we don't think that it's good to split the portuguese wikipedia in two. One day, if we decide different, the discussion will not take place here for sure. Paulo Juntas 12:18, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Intolerance is indeed a *very* ugly thing. When allied to ignorance its even worse. muriel@pt 14:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Dear anonimous, may I remind you that all languages change and develop new forms of writing and grammar. Portuguese is no exception, and it is not spoken in Portugal today as it was 500 years ago, so you too use a form of Portuguese that is not the "original" and "pure" Portuguese anymore. Your problem is that there are more people who speak Portuguese in the city of São Paulo alone than there are in whole Portugal, and also that there are 4,2 Brazilians to each non-Brazilian who speaks Portuguese. In spite of this numbers, the great majority of brazilian Wikipedists do respect other variants of the language, and I must say the same about the great majority of the portuguese fellows. Linguistic changes (in both senses) made in articles are reverted as soon as they are detected and the author informed about our tolerant rules. Of course, as more and more Brazilians discover the Wikipedia, it is obvious that brazilian Portuguese will be more and more present in the articles, what also makes sense, since there are more and more Brazilians reading them. I am convinced that forking the Wikipedia in Portuguese would be a waste of time and resources, and it would be really a pity. I do not have any problem whatsoever with the form of writing in Portugal, and I try to get things the right way: I learn your form of Portuguese as a hobby, as a new manner to see the world and, perhaps most important, as a sign of respect. Hope you do the same, as do people from Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and France with French; Germany, Switzerland and Austria with Germany; Belgium and the Netherlands with Dutch; Spain, Mexico, Argentina and all Latin America with Spanish; USA, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and so on with English. Something to think about:

Words are a mirror of their times. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding fastest in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at that time.

- John Ayto, lexicographer

Regards, --Mschlindwein 23:57, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Português: Acho que o português de Portugal convive bem com o brasileiro. Aprendi muita coisa da cultura de Portugal por causa disso. abraço!

/

English: I think that Portuguese of Portugal is able to live with Portuguese of Brazil. I learnt a lot about Portugal culture thanks to that. Greetings!

--FML ^hi 18:19, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

This user is also a liar. The -ense termination is used in many other nacionalities names in Brazil (canadian-canadense, north-american-estadunidense).

and rule breaking version of "Portuguese" over the one, oficial, that's spoken by Europeans, Africans, Asians all over the world...

Did you REALLY think that Portuguese is used identically in everyone other country in the world?!RSRSRSMarc Sena 03:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

In fact brasilian Portuguese differs from european Portuguese - but hey, that's a real minor problem. Even if it was spanish a native speaker from Portugal could easyly understand it all. Obrigado for your attention Foreigner

Chinese (中文）

Why does commons persist in having separate Chinese pages with traditional and simplified characters, when zh: itself no longer does this? pfctdayelise 23:15, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Because this site does not yet have automatic Chinese converter used at Chinese Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or Wikisource. There are hopes to add a converter here, but it is not done yet.--Jusjih 16:07, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there a bug report or technical report about this anywhere? How can we request such a thing? pfctdayelise (translate?) 04:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Use Bugzilla.--Jusjih 15:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirects for categories

Re:

• Categories can be re-directed (from one language to another).

Well, it depends on what do you mean by "can be redirected". Of course, you can write #REDIRECT to a category page and, after visiting the page, you will be redirected. But, the contents of that redirected category stays in there, not visible on the displayed destination page. See bugzilla:3311, bugzilla:710, and as an example, Category:Badcategoryname.

--Mormegil 16:11, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Multilingual descriptions

Shouldn't this page say something about how descriptions in multiple languages should look at the top of the page? --Pmsyyz 16:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

---

I can only concur about multi-language descriptions. IM(nsH)O the descriptions should be limited to one sentence, spanning a single row. Multi-row description might be rather good foundation for a stub, and therefore ought to go to the particular Wiki leaving just a link behind. With the proposed chnage the article in the example (about Concave mirror) would become much shorter - "EN: Reflections from Concave mirror. Claimed neutrality of Wikipedia should keep all descriptions together, either at the beginning (100 languages x 1 row = 100 rows/few screens), or at the end. -- Zlatko + ^(talk) 16:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Hallo, I am not satisfied about this answer. I'm sure,that I saw images with different describtions, but unfortunately I can't find them again -- Jlorenz1 17:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Page titles and Categories

Deutsch: Ich bin deutsch.

English: I am German.

There is a need for page titles and categories in different languages. As the same word can have different meanings in different languages, it has to be disambiguated. The best way to do this is using language codes. The German word for mobile phone is Handy (which, by the way, many Germans assume to be an English word) hence Handy (de) should redirect to mobile phone (I just did this).

There should also be a category Category:Handys (de). Any image or media belonging to Category:Mobile phones should also belong to Category:Handys (de). Mobile phone on the other hand should not belong to it, but Handy should do so, or else the English page title will apear in the German category. As mobile phone is nevertheless the only page German users will see, a link to Category:Handys (de) should be included on mobile phone.

As English is the lingua franca of the modern world, I'd suggest using the naming conventions of the English wikipedia for ordinary page names and categories, while the naming conventions of the respective wikipedia is used for the redirecting pages title (xx). 82.135.12.246 06:32, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

We are waiting for a technical solution to the problem of multilingual categorisation. In the meantime, please just use English. Any system like you propose will just require too much manual work, and it's silly, when a proper technical solution is what's really needed.

Page titles (article names) can be in any language. Redirects should be created for other languages. But you don't need to use the (de) suffix -- I doubt a German speaker is going to type "Handy (de)" into the search box, they will just type "Handy". Page names certainly don't have to be in English (but I would always include an English RDR, otherwise we are likely to end up with forked content!) For example, Russia is a RDR to Россия. pfctdayelise (translate?) 07:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What is the status of the technical solution? Markus Schmaus 13:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

We're waiting for the developers to do something about it? I'm not sure. bugzilla:3311 (Automatic category redirects) seems to be our best bet. pfctdayelise (translate?) 03:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

How about a soft redirect while the developers are waiting for the results. It works for the English Wikipedia. It may work here as well. Aditya Kabir 11:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Language-free templates?

I've made Template:Plus as a way to show that an image was made by combining two others. It needs no translation, as it contains no words! Wouldn't this be the ideal solution for as many situations as possible in the long run, rather than a complicated system of templates that might not be in the language of a user's choice? We could potentially:

• Offer a purely pictorial browsing system, where Category:Animals would be represented by a cluster of images of cats, dogs, birds, fish, etc. Each sub-category would be represented by a smaller cluster with less dispersion in the image subjects.

• Extend the + equation further: "= + User:Seahen + John Doe + The GIMP" would mean that John Doe and I had co-created an image by retouching using The GIMP. In this way, we could show who had made each image and how.

• Use icons for the tabs and sidebar menus. For "Random file," we might use a rolling die with pictures on the sides; for "discussion," a bunch of talk balloons.

This would not only mean less translation work, but it would mean almost everyone could use this site, even those who couldn't read so well. What does everyone think? Seahen 01:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Great to see a template that doesn't have words, but I am not too sure about some of your other ideas. For example I am not sure it is technically possible to replace categories with pictures (or ? not sure exactly what you're proposing there). And for the side menus, I'm not sure if we'd want images there because they would be so frequently hit. And the real problem of translation is translating policy and guidelines, not one-word menu items. I don't think you can convert Commons:Deletion guidelines to images somehow :). But interesting ideas nonetheless. pfctdayelise (translate?) 02:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

A "cluster" to represent Category:Birds.

No, I'm not proposing we eliminate the category pages as we know them. Here's how the words-free navigation system would work: We'd establish a Portal namespace or somesuch. Then, suppose we had a Portal:Animals. The page would consist of:

• An image that was a cluster of bird photos and drawings, like the one at right; it would link to our Portal:Birds.
• Similar images for fish, insects, mammals, etc.
• Individual images if they (a) were featured (in which case they'd be marked with little stars) or (b) didn't fall into any of the sub-category clusters.
• An asterisk or something linking to Category:Animals.
• A cluster inside an up arrow, linking to the parent portal (probably a Portal:Nature or a Portal:Living Things).

Every image in a portal would link to another portal, an individual image, or a page that was a pure gallery (and, if it was a category, had no major sub-categories). If we put cluster images on the Main Page that linked to all the top-level portals, text would become completely optional.

As for navigational sidebar images being "frequently hit," so is our logo frequently hit! Seahen 14:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Image Captions

I propose a policy by which inside captions, descriptions and/or legends for images and diagrams should be language neutral (and script neutral) as far as this is possible. Whis would allow for the images to be used in an international context regardless of the target language/script.

Examples

Examples of bad practice

• 
  Labels inside diagram, language specific.
• 
  Caption included in diagram, language specific.
• 
  Labels inside diagram, language and script specific.

Examples of good practice

• Change this into this.
• Change this into this.

• 
  Discouraged: Labels inside diagram, language specific.
• 
  Internationalised version: Labels outside, image can be used in all latin-script based languages.
• SVG version: In-image captions means less work for readers to understand, and at 25% of the filesize, it's less of a concern if per-language copies are made, providing there is somebody with adequate graphic, SVG/XLM and language profficiency, as well as willingness, time and other resources.
  SVG version: In-image captions means less work for readers to understand, and at 25% of the filesize, it's less of a concern if per-language copies are made, providing there is somebody with adequate graphic, SVG/XLM and language profficiency, as well as willingness, time and other resources.

Proposal

• The images should be captioned outside of the image itself, on the description page.
• Parts of the image should be identified in a language-neutral manner, e.g. by
  • colour coding
  • numbering
  • international scientfic symbols
  • mathematic signs, etc.
• Language/script specific images should be tagged by the {{Convert to international}} template, to encourage users to convert the images to a language neutral appearance.

--AtonX 14:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

As this is already the practice (at FPC, diagrams are requested to be converted to language neutral form), I think there is no problem with adding a formal statement to this effect to the language policy. You are welcome to do so.

Please point out that language-specific versions are welcome as long as a language-neutral version applies as well. Also, for the purposes of converting between languages, SVG files are particularly suited to this task. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 11:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose the introduction of this policy for svg files. Because of easy translation (and relatively small size of vector files) it is unadvisable to want to convert all svg images to numbered versions. This makes reading the diagram often very difficult. A simple text editor is all one needs to construct the necessary language version when required. Anyway, language neutral versions do not exist. In some languages arabic numbers are not even used. I would however accept such an advice (but not as strong as making it a policy) for bitmap based pictures (jpg, png, gif). Lycaon 00:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, phrasing this as a recommendation/suggestion/advice is better than "policy", you're right. Best to prepend the phrase "It is strongly recommended", then. :) pfctdayelise (说什么?) 01:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with the suggestion, that this should be made a recommendation. I however am convinced, that this should apply to SVG images as well, a different format does not justify exemption from the recommendation. The reason are as follows:
    1. A recommendation is what it is, it simply tells users, that things can be done in a different (and hopefully better for all) way. It does not mean, that all SVG images must be converted to a numbered version. Noone said that.
    2. For millions of people on Earth, reading a numbered diagram captioned in his/her language is much less difficult than reading an English-captioned diagram (not to speak of Dutch, or any other given language).
    3. Asserting that converting a SVG image to a different-language version is simple, is an understatement. In the easiest case, it means 1. downloading file from Commons, 2. downloading a SVG editor, 3. learning to use a SVG editor, 4. translating labels, 5. uploading to Commons. Using a simple text editor is not so simple either: One would have to have at least a basic understanding of the SVG (XML) markup language, which is even more difficult.
    4. Having different language versions for SVG images means, we would potentially have some 250 language versions for each file (currently the number of Wikipedia projects). Having language-neutral versions as much as possible (note: possible!) would prevent this resource hog in the future.

--AtonX 10:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. We should have a recommendation (or maybe rather “best practice”) to consider creating language-neutral images. But to state it as a requirement for all images goes waaay too far. Numbers are fine if they are few (but still, they are culture-dependent), for images of certain complexity, it is IMHO impossible to create a version both useful and culture-neutral. What exactly is the problem you are trying to solve?

Note to point 4 above: having different languages for SVG images means we would potentially have 250 language versions for each file. OK, while having language-neutral versions would mean… what? Having one image with 250 paragraphs of number↔caption mappings below? (So if I am not using Afar or Abkhaz, I will need to scroll down and up to learn what each number means?) Or what?

--Mormegil 18:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess that the main idea is that you can use the image in your local Wikipedia, and add captions in your local language. Most of the times, it's enoguh to write the English captions in the picture itself... Yuval Y • Chat • 02:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

So that now Commons is English-only project? (With a recommendation to create images that “other languages” might use, too, but please, do not put them on our English-only Commons.) Don’t think so. --Mormegil 09:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I meant that it's better to use images with numbers instead of captions, and when you write the legend in the commons, you don't have to write it in all the 250 languages. Sorry for not expressing myself clearly... File:Blush.png Yuval Y • Chat • 10:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

If the image has the caption "outside" - i.e. on the description page (e.g. in English), the image can be directly used in any language version of any wikimedia project (or elsewhere). The caption can be then used in the translated version in the target document. This would eliminate the need to download, modify, upload various language versions. --AtonX 14:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Numbers make it more difficult for the reader to understand the image, especially with 10+ numbers. What is better? For one person to take the time to update the captions on either an SVG or a "blank" PNG, or for every reader to take extra time to try to understand which numbers go with which caption? Changing captions in an SVG is not difficult at all. Many people are spending a lot of time to create the SVG's in the first place, it takes much less time to update the captions. If really needed, a page could be set up for requested SVG caption changes. --Interiot 04:59, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

There is always some weight applied to all arguments, and all options have certain advantages es well as disadvantages. Numbered or colour-coded images (regardless of file format) can be used straight away in (almost) all language versions of all Wikimedia projects, albeit with the added effort of the reader to understand the image, in case he/she has—say—10+ items to identify. All what is needed is for the author to translate the caption for the target text and for the reader to correlate between labels (numbers/colours) and description. Note, that these are both file-format independent. Then, in the second place, comes the effort needed to convert a language-specific image into a different language. In this case, in addition to the language profficiency (to translate from the source) and reader effort (to correlate), image manipulation and Commons-contributing profficiency is required. Moreover, this is file-format dependent. Again, nobody says, all images must be number/colour coded. However, as seen above, there are clear advantages in encouraging authors to provide language-neutral images; either primarily, or in addition to language-specific forms. --AtonX 09:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't a "Requested Caption Changes" page cover all those? --Interiot 10:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

And what would be that? --AtonX 14:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

That would obviously be a page where you can request caption change, given a translation table... Lycaon 14:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about it a bit more, I think these should be our priorities:

1. For important diagrams, we strongly encourage the creation of a numbered/language-neutral version, because that is the easiest way for new languages to incorporate the image into their article (as easy as Inkscape and GIMP are, many more people know wikitext, and users who aren't already familiar with Inkscape/GIMP will find it easier to incorporate the numbered version right away).
2. If someone has gone to the effort of making a local-language translated diagram available, under no circumstances will the numbered/neutral version be preferred over the translated version, for that specific language. (as long as it's otherwise equal in detail, etc)
3. We never discourage someone from going to the effort of making a translated non-neutral version available for their local language.

I agree with everything said above, except for the "250 versions of an image is bad" part. As far as I can tell, it's already common practice to provide multiple translated versions of a PNG or SVG. And if we really do have 250 people who are willing to spend time to improve the readability and ease of use of a diagram for their language, then we shouldn't stop them. But it's also good to have the neutral version available as a backup. --Interiot 18:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a version I can totally agree with. It might be useful also to think about a standard way of organizing the various versions of an image. (I guess the best way is to list all language-specific versions on the neutral image description page and to link only to the neutral version from the specific versions.) --Mormegil 11:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

hallo, as SVG allows layers, another way is to put the languge-version of the description to an extra layer of the image (even numbers). thus, internationalization of the image will only need to replace the layer - or, put them all into one file and hide them in a language-version. in fact, the language-neutral version could use some layers of descriptors, numbers in latin as we use, chinese symbols, und so on, which could be used by many different WPs, so maybe we'll only need a dozen of versions with "easier images" - greetings --W!B: 13:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC) - PS besides, the categories to language-neutral images should be extended, which makes it easier to find them..

Roman emperors in Latin?

I see that categories for popes are in Latin. Shouldn't be Roman Emperors in Latin as well, considering they ruled over such vast areas and no "nationality" so to speak can claim them as only theirs? See for example Category:Marcus Aurelius. Gryffindor 12:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Listing the popes by their latin names is modern language neutral, but really makes no sense other than that. Lisiting Roman Emporers by their latin names makes sense because that how they were referred to at the time, and many are still known by those names.--Evrik 05:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. Gryffindor 10:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Listing of saints

It is the common practice that saints get referred to by the standard name in the language being spoken or written. Hence St Paul in English, San Pablo in Spanish, Sao Paolo in Portugese, etc. Since English is the lingua franca here, I want to suggest that we name articles about the saints and the corresponding categories in English with redirects from the other languages. --Evrik 05:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe to be more neutral they should be listed in Latin whenever possible. Apart from that in their native names. I don't see how a Portugese saint should be listed with an English name.... Gryffindor 10:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The standards for naming saints on the English wiki are here. As for English versus latin ... English is today what latin was 1000 years ago. Since most of the business of the commons is in ENglish I say we stick with English as often as possible and have lots of redirects. --Evrik 21:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

And the standard for naming popes is Latin [3]. I am not objecting to saints being named in English, however fact remains that St. Peter is the first pope. Gryffindor 09:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• Show me wher he is referred to as Petrus in English. --Evrik 22:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The Commons guideline says that popes should be in Latin, St. Peter was the first pope therefore Petrus or Simon Petrus if you will. Gryffindor 08:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Since the Pope is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the head of state of the Vatican City (where Latin is the official language), using Latin for popes makes sense. Saints, on the other hand, may be Eastern Orthodox, or date from a time before the schism when Greek, rather than Latin, was the lingua franca. I bet most of the saints mentioned by name in the New Testament (Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, etc.) couldn't speak a word of Latin. I think using English as the modern-day lingua franca is much more NPOV than using Latin. —Angr 17:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• There is a whole thread on St Peter here: Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/Disputes#Saint_Peter. --Evrik 13:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Need some help with category names

In the last weeks I've had my hands on some categories and galeries of municipalities in the district Niederschlesischer Oberlausitzkreis. In the last days I begann to create the rest of them. Some of the missing categories and galleries aren't very problematic, but some of them are. Please have a look at my watchlist and tell me whether the following names are okay (all suffixes are in German, is that okay?):

• „Boxberg/O.L.“ (short formal name); „Boxberg/Oberlausitz“ (formal name); „Boxberg (Oberlausitz)“ (common name with a Wikipedia like suffix)
• „Gablenz (Oberlausitz)“ (common name with a Wikipedia like suffix)
• Krauschwitz (There are two municipalitiess of this name, one in Saxony-Anhalt, one in Saxony/Upper Lusatia. What's the best suffix here?)
• Markersdorf (This is the only municipality of this name, but there are several subdivisions of the same name in other German states and Austria.)
• Vierkirchen (There's a second Vierkirchen in Bavaria.)

For the names used in the Wikipedias there are two interwiki links pointing to the same list in the German and the English Wikipedias, all articles exist there. --32X 23:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Naming policy

Hiya, where should I be expressing a concern about this "native name" policy? I routinely work on Islam-related topics, and the native names are in Arabic, which I can't read. I'd thought the most reasonable thing to do here was to keep articles at the Latin-spelling of the names (such as Mecca and Muhammad), but I see that some of the pages are getting moved to Arabic. This makes my watchlist pretty much unusable, since I can't tell one name from the next. Or if I'm looking at a gallery, I often can't remember which gallery I'm looking at, since the title is incomprehensible to me. I don' want to get into move wars here... Where can I express concerns about this new policy? Or, is there a possible technical solution, where a page can have multiple names, and we can use settings to determine which language we want to view them in? --Elonka 06:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Describing drawings with numbers rather than english names

• A pair of bad examples
  A pair of bad examples
• A pair of bad examples
  A pair of bad examples
• 
  A Good examlple

Is there a guideline (and a template) to prefer (and ask for preferring) numbers when naming parts of something depicted by a picture? Because it's quite difficult to translate English descriptions into every single language with a graphical program.

Thanks, --KGyST (talk) 19:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

There's {{Remove caption}}, but it seem's (looking at the images tagged with it) a caption is not exactly the same as descriptions in the images. Do you or anybody else know the English term for those descriptions like in your example? --Slomox (talk) 20:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Labels? Lycaon (talk) 10:49, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Is that a question or an answer? I assumed there was perhaps a specific term referring exactly to this special kind of descriptions/labels/... --Slomox (talk) 11:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

That was a proposed answer ;-). Annotations may also fit the bill. Lycaon (talk) 12:56, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

And I found {{Convert to international}}. That fits your examples better than {{Remove caption}}. --Slomox (talk) 20:16, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, this {{Convert to international}} seems to fit my needs. --KGyST (talk) 09:56, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

For SVG images, {{Translation possible}} is often a better option. Lycaon (talk) 10:47, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Multilingual descriptions language order

Hello, I am interrested in translating help and commons pages from English into German. At the moment I am translating Commons:Templates for galleries and that leads to my question: is there any guideline for the the order of language-description on e.g. gallery pages, like it seems to be for the language link box at the top of pages completely translated? By now it seems to be no “official” policy or guideline at Commons even in the case of the language box. Kind of regards --Godai2 21:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

What I see: usually in alphabetical order (by native name sound or by two letter abbreviation), sometimes with the native language of a topic first. See related: m:Interwiki sorting order and [4] --Pmsyyz 03:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! So I won't add any further information concerning the language order at Commons:Templates for galleries and it's German translation. Kind of regards --Godai2 08:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Note: But what I already did, was to show on the example the (most widespreaded) practice on Commons, German (Deutsch) before English description. --Godai2 08:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetical order (in native tongue) so Deutsch {{de| before English {{en|. Gryffindor 15:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

proposed amendment

ah, fitting here:

proposed amendment : the numerous descriptions should not adversely affect the legibility of the article, so that the media files presented in the articles don't appear after three pages of description. One language should be chosen for main description at the top of the article, other languages should be used at the end of the article.

I can't agree that: besides the - unquestioned status of English as a lingua franca on commons - all languages without exception should be treated equal, there is no intention to describe any article or category in any specific language - in fact, we will get about 200-500 languages, so its illusive thinking about "primary" language

we have {{en|''english texttexttext''}}, similar to en:Template:Lang it will set

<div class="description en" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><span class="language en" title="English"><b>English:</b></span> ''english texttexttext'' </div>

which will be enough for any software to deal with languages - any further correction should not be "hard-coded", but by CSS User style - which follows WCAG 1.0 Accessibility Guidelines of modern webdesign - thus, if one doesn't like to see suaheli or samoan - or english - text, it could easely done by putting into ones personal CSS:

div.description en  { display: none; }

maybe we will get sometimes an extra Preferences-section to choose the languages one wants to see or not - only guideline should be

proposed amendment : MARKUP ANY language-specific text with our lang-templates

(besides the one written in english as a "technical tool") - thats including the given "multilingual" Concave mirror-article --W!B: 09:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

POV pushing in file descriptions.

I have noticed some persons inserting their own POV/OR in file descriptions[5][6][7][8]. Is there a policy about that? // Liftarn

• Commons:Project scope/Neutral point of view Evrik (talk) 18:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Using Hanzi and Kanji in a file name

What is the consensus in using Hanzi, Kanji and for that matter any other non western script in file titles. Some users are asking for the renaming of all files in non western scripts that they come across to the point of renaming files with descriptive titles in Hanzi/Kanji with non descriptive titles with letters and numbers.KTo288 (talk) 21:15, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I have declined these types of requests in the past and will continue to do so if the image guidelines (image page requirements #2) are not amended. --O (谈 • висчвын) 05:53, 07 December 2008 (GMT)

I refused these renaming too. Is there something new since 2008 . Cdlt, VIGNERON * ^discut. 12:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I support renaming of them. LERK (Talk / Contributions / Mail) 12:40, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki links

Where do I find the policy/guideline/consensus about setting iw links in files? If not existent, how could we reach a consensus? I'm asking because this edit. --Mattes (talk) 10:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• The interwikis should be part of a gallery or category. Evrik (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Rename page

To better describe this page, I suggest we move it to the title "Language usage". -- User:Docu at 17:16, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

•  Support my proposal -- User:Docu at 17:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment Only if it's "Language usage policy." Evrik (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Back to square one

While we are at it, I like to recall some basic principles because there are a number of holes in the definitions and a number of questionable "practices" have crept in. Feel free to comment (and sign) below. --Foroa (talk) 18:14, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Multi-lingual community

Commons is a multi-lingual community so there are no fundamental technical reasons to limit language, font and script usage unless justified here under.

Category naming limitations

The major and basic system constraint is that the Wikimedia software supports only one single category system that has to link everything together, so there can be only one language used in the categories. English as the "lingua franca" has been chosen, but this solves not all the issues. Consequences are:

• Species categorisation uses the Latin names and hence the basic Latin alphabet
• For well known exonyms and items in the English language (references in recognized encyclopedia's, google scholar, ...), such English names are to be used.
• Even in so called "English" names, all the characters of the extended latin alphabet can be used, but no other scripts. This rule is applicable for any category name, except redirected categories, where there is no such limitation.
• If no such common "English" names exist or are rather sporadic, artificial, existing in several spelling versions or bad translations/transliterations, a generally accepted and internationally recognised endonym or English descriptive name (such as church of ..., castle of , ... ) is acceptable provided it fits within the limits of the character set and script above. (See Note below)

Note: In addition, we need to discuss improved naming conventions for buildings, churches, castles, streets, windmills, ... but I propose to do this later when the ground rules are agreed upon.

File name limitations

I see no fundamental reason to define limitations, but some people might do.

Article name limitations

I see no fundamental reason to define limitations, but some people might do.

Proposed or Policy?

Can we come to an agreement on what has consensus? I would like to elevate this page to policy, with citations of what we have already worked out. We can point people to this page and encourage discusison on what we are still working out. Evrik (talk) 15:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

We already have policy for galleries and categories. Why do you want this separate policy page? Only for the naming of files? This policy page seems rather redundant to me. Multichill (talk) 15:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

This document predates naming conventions for galleries, and this was never finished. I'd like to move it forward to completion as it is often cited by people as they are chnaging names. Also, the while the gallery discussion was useful, it was not complete, nor was it inclusive. This is also a one stop resource that covers a specific topic, that of language. Evrik (talk) 15:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

We should three distinct policies; files, galleries and categories

These policies should be covert on three distinct pages. This page should merely link to those three policy pages. Multichill (talk) 15:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• • Yes, the policies should be self-referential. However, the language policy has never been fully completed. We should work here to move it to completion. Evrik (talk) 15:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
    • The would be redundant. I suggest you create a file naming policy page so we can discus three separate issues on three separate talk pages. Multichill (talk) 15:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
      • There should be one place for language. Evrik (talk) 15:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with Multichill. There is really only the file part the includes elements not yet on Commons:File renaming, but it appears to be somewhat outdated by MediaWiki features. -- User:Docu at 15:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Despite the admirable work done on the gallery page, it was incomplete and I don't think it involved enough of the users here on the commons. That still leaves us with ... is what's on the page right now something we can agree upon? Evrik (talk) 15:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
    • So discus it at Commons talk:Galleries. Don't mix it with the other policies.
    • No, the current contents of the page is partly incorrect and partly redundant. Multichill (talk) 15:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
      • This is the place where we should discuss language. Especially since some of the policies conflict with each other. Evrik (talk) 15:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
• Since User:Docu has now reported me on Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks & protections for violating the 3 RR rule, something that doesn't exist here on the commons, I'd like to request that we keep the page static for right now. 64 edits have been made in the last three days and i'd like to think that the page looks much better and is more coherent than it was three days ago. Evrik (talk) 16:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't this page summarize the consensus from the three subpolicies (files, galleries, categories) and cover anything else that is language-related but may be missing from those? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:57, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Summary of proposal by Multichill

• The page should be moved to three distinct pages: files (new), galleries (existing, one or two elements missing), categories (already redirecting).

-- User:Docu at 17:18, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Keep the naming of galleries at Commons:Galleries, the naming of categories at Commons:Categories, make a new page for file name policy and just link to these pages from this policy page. This page could include some general language directions like this section. Multichill (talk) 17:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Votes

•  Oppose Let's keep it all in one place. Evrik (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
•  Support especially since both galleries and categories already have agreed upon conventions. The file name part doesn't really say much about language either. -- User:Docu at 17:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  •  Comment WHen did this become a vote? The "agreed upon" conventions of the galleries was made by a few users and ignored those things that had already been agreed upon here. Why are we voting on this anyway? Let's just focus on developing policies that we can all agree upon. Evrik (talk) 17:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
    • The convention for galleries is at Commons:Galleries#Naming convention. A couple of days ago, you made a proposal to modify this policy (at Commons talk:Galleries#Naming convention). It was suggested that you made this proposal to justify renaming galleries to English language. Renamings such as you had done before Special:Log/move (User:Evrik). Today, you withdrew your proposal, agreeing to the current text. -- User:Docu at 18:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Umm no. I never agreed to the text. The conversation there had wandered far away from the original proposal. The reason I said it should be changed was because it conflicted with this. I still think the two documents are not in agreement which is why I have been encouraging everyone to work on this document. Let's just focus on developing policies that we can all agree upon. Evrik (talk) 18:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
        • In Dutch we would say: "Nu komt de aap uit de mouw". Tss, renaming Konstanzer Münster to Cathedral of Constance. That sure is against current practice! Multichill (talk) 18:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Lost

I am completely lost. What is the situation, in what documents and discussions we have to look for ? What is the reference document ? The proposal on top of this page; does it concern galleries, categories, files ?

Anyway, changing constantly the current policy is not a good approach (especially for such a touchy document), changing it while discussing it even less, changing and discussing on several places in several files at the same time simply cannot work. --Foroa (talk) 12:22, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Join the club. Stuff got moved around and now things are not very clear. I'll try to do some cleaning up tomorrow. Basicly Evrik changed the page to reflect his opinion of current practices. He invited a lot of people here to discus it but most people don't agree with him. Multichill (talk) 17:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Put at new proposal here. Multichill (talk) 19:38, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Good work. Congrats. -- User:Docu at 06:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Feel free to improve it. If there aren't any objects I will update Commons:Language policy with the text at User:Multichill/Zandbak. Multichill (talk) 09:08, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I updated Commons:Language policy. Multichill (talk) 11:41, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I like it, but I would recommand removing the short sections and write it all in one paragraph, using bullets. It would be much easier to read. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure. Feel free to improve the page. Multichill (talk) 22:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

 Done. I think it's better like this, short and sweet, for reading, because the sections very too short and the toc was just misplaced there. In this version, it's a short summary of the rules, as I think it should be. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

What do the other languages think of it? Currently, other languages are based on various older versions. Maybe they should at least be marked "pending update" or "outdated". -- User:Docu at 10:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

How about sandboxing this

Other pages reference this page, stuffing around with it before concensus is reached is not very nice! In particular the lack of the material that relates to Commons:File naming conventions means there is no where to direct people about conventions (like not using camera generated file names). I propose to either create the page Commons:File naming containing the material that used to be here, as a draft for that page, or just revert this page to something meaningful for the time being. --Tony Wills (talk) 11:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

As you might have noticed, the page is stable after I replaced it with a new text. I created Commons:File naming. Feel free to improve it or discus it at Commons talk:File naming. Multichill (talk) 11:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

From my reading it looked as though it was still rather in limbo. But thanks for your prompt creation of that page, much appreciated. --Tony Wills (talk) 11:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Current proposals

Please see

• Titles of articles for discussion
• talk page: Name of files for discussion.

This is a summary/reorganisation of the proposals made to this day : see talk page - proposals for proposals and talk page - Questions to be answered for questions raised by the proposals.

please add any other examples you might see fit for these

Type of subject	Policy	Example
music, art	native	Die Zauberflöte, not "The Magic Flute"
people	native	Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский , not "Fyodor Dostoyevsky"
saints	native	Jeanne d'Arc, not "Joan of Arc"
places	native	Breizh or Bretagne, not Brittany
specialty foods	native	Cassoulet, Rösti
anatomical, embryological and histological structures	latin	glandula parotis, os hyoideum
other	free

test added 16:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Music Arts

• I propose that we go with the name (in English or otherwise) that is the most common usage with redirects from other languages. Evrik (talk) 16:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Gryffindor (talk) 17:16, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

People

 Comment For clarity can we ask, or can we say, that we prefer the images to carry a "roman" script. I have problems sometimes when Chinese characters and cyrrillic are used. I think that for most of the world, 胡锦涛 is less utile than Hu Jintao, same with 江泽民 (Jiang Zemin) or Vladimir Putin versus Владимир Владимирович Путин. Evrik (talk) 18:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

 Disagree I am not included in "we". Sometimes I have some problems to find which romanization is correct. Kwj2772 (msg) 12:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The romanizations vary depending on what (roman) language you are using. And I would certainly find it strange to use a foreign script for names of local people in a "multilingual" project. LPfi (talk) 12:41, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Saints

Common practice is to list saints in the language being spoken or written in. This is an old convention. This means IMHO that the page names should be in English here on the commons. Evrik (talk) 04:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Gryffindor (talk) 17:16, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. Is English "the language spoken"? Wasn't Commons supposed to be a multilingual project? --LPfi (talk) 11:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Places

• I propose that we go with the name (in English or otherwise) that is the most common usage with redirects from other languages. Evrik (talk) 16:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree for categories. Articles may be in native language though. Gryffindor (talk) 17:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

specialty foods

• I propose we go with the native name with redirects in other languages. Evrik (talk) 16:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

anatomical, embryological and histological structures

• I say we go with Latin. Evrik (talk) 15:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Gryffindor (talk) 17:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Remarks on this proposal

I can't really agree on this proposal.
People don't necessary know the local name of the subject of a photograph.
I have nothing against cyrillic people, or any other people not using the latin alphabet,
but photographs with cyrillic/ greeks/ japanese/ chinese names will be unpractical to verify and search for, for the people not able to read those languages.

I mean we have the example of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский),
he is known in Occident, outside of the Russia, if this proposal was adopted in the current state, would we have to rename all the images to fit this rule?
And for what benefits? To have the file names indexed in cyrillic and not in english anymore? To lose search facilities linked to this usage for almost all non-cyrillic users?

In my opinion, if the filename used is appropriately written in the uploader language, it should be kept under this language, unless there is a serious reason to rename it.
Redirects should be created to handle the alternate and possibles writings, what ever is the language and the scripture used.

On another note, we have interwikis, they should be placed between categories & articles of wikipedia, and thus allowing the search engine to find the various writing, for at least the categories.
Esby (talk) 14:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, interwiki's are not indexed nor found by the Wikimedia search engine. I don't know if this is configurable.

We have indeed to be more precise (definition needed) about character sets: Extended ASCII, Extended Roman (name ?), all scripts and sets. (Stating that any language is allowed but limted to extended ASCII makes not much sense). Then we can say what is allowed in what case. --Foroa (talk) 17:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem to render CJK, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and even very complex script. I think I have no need to rename files in Roman. Kwj2772 (msg) 03:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I would not be for renaming, I think files are meant to be used by the users who produce them first. If they can be used by other users, then it's better. The most important here is still to categorize properly. Esby (talk) 09:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Placement of "Single language content areas" section

The section fits better Commons:Galleries#Naming conventions. I suggest we move it there. Please participate in the discussion at Commons talk:Galleries#Naming conventions. -- User:Docu at 08:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

---

• I disagree. This is the appropriate place for the language discussion. Evrik (talk) 14:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

ASCII?

ASCII chart

Sorry, but that is not current practice. Lots of file contain characters not part of ASCII. Multichill (talk) 15:06, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Which section are you referring to and how would you like it to read? Evrik (talk) 15:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Language policy#Names of files. And besides the ascii part this section probably goes too deep. The current best practice could be summed up as "don't assign stupid names to your files". Multichill (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• That's funny. Seriously though, while I don't think the names should be in English, for clarity can we ask, or say we prefer the images to carry a "roman" script. I have problems sometimes when Chinese characters and cyrrillic are used. I think that for most of the world, 胡锦涛 is less utile than Hu Jintao, same with 江泽民 (Jiang Zemin) or Vladimir Putin versus Владимир Владимирович Путин. If this is the "commons" then we should be working on commonality. Evrik (talk) 17:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

You say that you have problems typing these characters. Now imagine people for example from Russia or China where they use different characters. If we all use ASCII characters, then these people will have the problem you have. Especially if they don't have them on their keyboard. Also, Commons is multilingual. Multilingual also means that you use other characters that some people might not have on their keyboard. People should just use the filename that is most convinient for them. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

If they don't have ASCII on their keyboard, they should check to see if they're using a computer. All computers have ASCII enterable by keyboard, or else how could they enter a URL or email address?--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:40, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, we cannot require ASCII, it goes against Commons' mission statement. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Removed ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Status

On November 5, I added a notice on various translations of the language policy that it's being updated.

Archives of this talk page are at Commons talk:Language policy/Archive 1. For some reason, it's not the most recent discussion that got archived last. Anyways, the most recent comments are at:

• Commons_talk:Language_policy/Archive_1#Lost
• Commons_talk:Language_policy/Archive_1#How about sandboxing this (October 22)

Thanks. -- User:Docu at 19:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Full internationalisation idea

It doesn't seem this idea has been proposed before but it seems obvious to me that we only need three things to make full internationalisation of Commons possible:

1. a way to translate page titles;
2. a way to specify sort keys for each categorisation in each language;
3. a way to select redirection targets per language.

All that can be done simply by adding some code to the page being "translated". This works equally for categories, galleries and files, although in the case of files translating the title should not be allowed. Let me show you how it would be done with an example, a simple "Churches in Germany" category. The code to add to "Category:Churches in Germany" would be as follows:

{{Int
|de
|Heading=Kirchengebäude in Deutschland
|Defaultsort=Kirchengebaude in Deutschland
|Churches by country=Deutschland
|Germany=Kirchengebaude
}}

{{Int
|en
|Heading=Churches in Germany
|Defaultsort=Churches in Germany
|Churches by country=Germany
|Germany=Churches
}}

{{Int
|fr
|Heading=Églises d'Allemagne
|Defaultsort=Eglises d'Allemagne
|Churches by country=Allemagne
|Germany=Eglises
}}

Note that all parameters except the language code in the templates above could be optional; only specifying the language code would therefore be a quick way to select the page "default" language, which is not necessarily English when people create categories for non-standard, local subjects.

Note also that the code is added to the page: usual categorisation code is still there and still needed.

Alternatively, one could use separate templates for title translation and sort keys so that languages can be grouped, like this:

{{Heading
|de=Kirchengebäude in Deutschland
|en=Churches in Germany
|fr=Églises d'Allemagne
}}

{{Sort keys
|Churches by country
|de=Deutschland
|en=Germany
|fr=Allemagne
}}

{{Sort keys
|Germany
|de=Kirchengebaude
|en=Churches
|fr=Eglises
}}

Of course, MediaWiki should be updated so that when a specific language is selected by a user:

• the translated title is displayed when showing a category or gallery;
• when showing a category, members are displayed using their translated names and sorted in the category using the appropriate sort keys (of course hyperlinks would still point to the real member names as before).

The same kind of code could be used to "translate" redirects (the same word can mean something else entirely in another language, so we need that capability). For example, for the word gift, we could have this code in a "Gift" redirection page:

#REDIRECT [[:Category:Gifts]]
{{Redirect
|de=Category:Poisons
|sv=Category:Poisons
}}

This solution has the advantage that it doesn't duplicate the concepts structure (which is independent of languages) and doesn't change the way categorisations and default redirections are done. In particular, all the code is kept in the same page and it doesn't add any special human maintenance work—of course there may be some pure translation work to do on a page if that page is renamed, but renaming categories doesn't imply more than a bot updating internationalised sort key code in sub-pages according to their new categorisations, and updating redirects.

What do you think? I guess the main difficulty is with the MediaWiki implementation. — Bjung (talk) 08:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

See also mw:Multilingual MediaWiki. --Mormegil (talk) 20:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Language mix in category naming

A relevant conversation: Commons:Village pump#Language mix in category naming.--Codrin.B (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Naming conventions

On the page Commons:Rename a category, I can read: "category name in line with Commons' naming conventions (currently: Latin binomial for lifeforms, usually English otherwise)". A link directs to this page. However, I find nothing about "Latin binomial for lifeforms" in this page. I find this confusing. Has the naming convention changed? Or is there more to read about this elsewhere? --Skogsfrun (talk) 05:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Where is the language Help page?

I come from COM:Translation and here stays only what this page not is (a bit boring in the face of what is common). I search for a Translation Help, is there any on Commons?? THis is in fact the greatest joke on a multilingual project!? If people don't understand they go away or do wrong things! Good day! -- Perhelion 08:17, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

When to use the mld template

The object of the mld template is to reduce clutter on description pages by only displaying the user's preferred language (if available). This template has a downside - not all wikilinks are available in all languages. For example, the description on this file reads

DescriptionLanguage policy/Archive 1	English: Zelden van Passe windmill, Zoeterwoude-Dorp, Netherlands. The windmill dates from 1642 and since 1982 has been in the care of the Rijnlandse Molenstichting (Rhineland Windmill Foundation). Nederlands: De Zelden van Passe molen te Zoeterwoude-Dorp. De molen, een poldermolen, dateert uit 1642. Sinds 1962 is dit in het bezit van de Rijnlandse Molenstichting
Date	12 February 2009
Source	Own work
Author	DeFacto

Although the two texts are approximately the (any errors in the Dutch text are due to my poor Dutch), the wikilinks are quite different. The English Wikipedia does not have links to De Zelden van Passe (the name of the windwill) or to poldermolen. In addition, the Dutch Wikipedia has a specific article dedicated to windmills that are used for drainage purposes (poldermolen) whereas the English WIkipedia only has an article on windmills. If the mld template were to be used on this description, anybody who has English as their preferred language, but who is willing to look at the Dutch version might not be aware that a Dutch version is available.

I suggest therefore that a cautionary note be added to the language policy that where translations are not identical (including Wikilinks),the mld template should be used with caution. Martinvl (talk) 11:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I often found {{Mld}} very unsatisfying and unpredictable. Luckily you can use "ls_enable = false; " to disable it. --Jarekt (talk) 17:13, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

But how many users know about "ls_enable = false; " ? -- 17:33, 23 November 2015‎ Martinvl

In my opinion, anything which allows scope for different elaborations (as opposed to a simple rigid mechanical equivalence) is not appropriate for templates with embedded "langswitch", or which act similar to "langswitch". Langswitch was originally intended for software interface messages, and does not work too well in many areas beyond this... AnonMoos (talk) 18:06, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Naming of files

There is a draft proposal of more concrete guidelines for (re)naming of files. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:10, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

American or British English

I'm sorry if this is answered elsewhere, but I can't find anything on these policy pages whether British English or American English should be preferred in cases where they differ. I'm asking because of Category:Fire brigades vs. Category:Fire departments, and when I put that topic on the village pump page, I seem to have immediately caused some emotional reactions about "linguistic imperialism" and "big waste of time". So I'm still asking myself: is there a rule, and if there isn't, would it make sense to create one, or do we purposely not touch that question? Thanks --Reinhard Müller (talk) 07:45, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

There is no rule. Moreover in this case the are a lot of USA fire brigades with "Fire departments" as part of the official name. I suggest to transform Category:Fire departments into a disambiguation page to Category:Fire brigades and category:Fire departments of the United States‎--Pierpao.lo (listening) 17:47, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

user:Reinhard Müller--Pierpao.lo (listening) 17:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

One-letter shortcuts

Concerning: should not be used from other languages if conflict with base latin alphabet and meaning is very unclear (or conflicts with many other)!?

→ Actual example: Commons:Deletion requests/Template:M -- User: Perhelion 20:18, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't think this policy governs template names. It does not deal with "languages" in the sense of the relationship between Commons and non-English Wikipedias... AnonMoos (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

File naming policy

This policy pages states "See Commons:File naming for the exact policy." [emphasis mine] But Commons:File naming is just a proposal, not a policy, not a guideline. 4nn1l2 (talk) 02:25, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikitables in a multilingual content?

There are some file descriptions which contain simple tabular infomation (name-value pairs) and the current formatting (repeated <br>) is so broken as to require repair. Category:Photographs by Cees de Boer / File:Bol-bloemenmeisjes als praalwagen. (lenteparade 1968). Zie jaarboek Haarlem in 1968 blz. 68. Aangekocht van United Photos de Boer bv.JPG

A simple solution to this would be a wikitable. However they're also wrapped in {{nl|1= ...}}, which is in turn under the |Description= section of an {{Information}} template.

What's the best approach to fix this? I'd like to use the wikitable (see File:Bloemenmeisjes, NL-HlmNHA 5400467504.JPG), but AFAIK I can't wrap that in {{nl|1= ...}} as it will literalise the formatting. I'd still like to keep the {{nl|1= ...}} (it's valid annotation), although it's not a multi-lingual context.

There's no real likelihood of these ever being i18n or l10n in the future. At most there's a short description within this which could be translated, but that's so terse for this set of images generally that there's little value to doing it. Also many of these descriptions are so local or idiosyncratically Dutch that they're near-untranslatable. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

You could use the template {{Art photo}}. The headings in the template will align themselves to the user's preferred language. The user=added text can be wrapped in multi-lingual wrappers such as {{nl|1=bloemenmeisjes}}{{en|1=flower girls}} giving

Nederlands: bloemenmeisjes

English: flower girls

In your particular case, it would mean concatenating the country, province, town and locality into one line. Martinvl (talk) 14:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

For photos we have {{Photograph}}. The uploader unfortunately uploads everything like this. I tried to ask him to improve his uploads, but he has continued to upload like this. I don't want to press him, because the uploader is so sensitive that the last time I pressured him a bit on something, he had a fit and rage quit. The files he uploads are nice, the metadata is just crap. I gave up. I suggest you do the same or continue your conversation somewhere more suitable because this seems to be quite off-topic on this talk page. Multichill (talk) 17:26, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

• I can't really convert these (and have no interest to) to use a template with implicit named slots like {{Art Photo}} or {{Photograph}} without doing a lot of inferencing about the meaning of the named values in that block of name-value data. Whilst that might be a useful thing (mostly for uses beyond Commons' current use of such data), it's not within the scope of the much smaller task I'm trying to do today.

At present, my only aim is a presentational cleanup, because that's as much as is really needed (the current version has so much whitespace you can't see the page without scrolling). It would be useful to preserve the overall annotation as being Dutch, but I'd lose that if we have to. I'm asking, and asking here, because AFAIK I'm running against a technical limitation about putting a table through that language annotation wrapper - if there's a way around that I'd be well in.

Annotating each name and value as Dutch would be ridiculously verbose, in both content and presentation. Nor is translating 'bloemenmeisjes' useful - 'flower girls' in English are found at weddings, not specifically as marketing for the tulip industry.

As to the uploader, then I've worked with hundreds of thousands of their ANEFO images and not had this problem before, just with these ones from a different photo library. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: I translated the category that you added into English in order to get rid of a red link. Martinvl (talk) 21:03, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: You reverted my last change with the summary message "... introduced error ...". Please explain the error that I introduced? Martinvl (talk) 21:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Why would you even do that? Why would you do something so obviously wrong, it's even been spelled out to you already? Please stop wasting my time here. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)