Proposal talk:Combination of all languages into a unipedia

From Strategic Planning

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 01:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions about proposal

The following are opinions about combining as a Unipedia:

  • Oppose. It is just too difficult to make webpages seem well-balanced with logical titles across numerous languages. I work in only 20 languages, but that's hard enough. Although many European languages will look similar, other languages have unusual split-line typesetting and forced placement of images that hinders easy translation with other languages. Plus, there are inherent limits to the word-based lookup of articles by title, rather than by concept words, or by clicking on images of bananas or camels. I cannot emphasize enough about the bias in titles: even with English-language "en:American Civil War" versus "en:War of Northern Aggression" so that the same subject is presented with differing priorities, including the spoils of the victor, versus the suffering of the losing parties in a war. I would predict extreme conflicts (of bias or prejudice) when trying to homogenize all languages/cultures into a unified "unipedia" of what titles should be chosen. A unipedia really would quickly become a "en:Tower of Babel" with users struggling how to move forward, with so many conflicting languages/cultures trying to re-structure the tower from their own viewpoints (Is article "Nice" about kindness or Nice, France? Is "Diet" about eating or the "Diet of Worms"?). Let each language create its own "Tower" of linked words versus disambiguations, and continue the current practice of interwiki links between them. -Wikid77 12:36, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

unilanguage

Past experiences of a unified human language have been futile, regardless of it being an ideal, for various reasons. Educating people to work with - express and understand - a new language - not to mention their native - is a world challenge as it is. Developing one especially for Wikipedia seems infeasible. --أحمد 11:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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