How can mature Wikipedias like English and German support the development of local language Wikipedias?

How can mature Wikipedias like English and German support the development of local language Wikipedias?

How can mature Wikipedias like English and German support the development of local language Wikipedias?

Dafer4521:01, 19 November 2009

The most obvious way is by technical and information support. That means help about using sophisticated techniques, complicated templates, etc. and a coordinating project for local language editions, whose active users speak the larger language (German and English, as the question puts it). There is some positive experience in Russian language project ru:Википедия:Проект:Малые разделы Википедии на языках России (linked from the main page at ru.wiki). Amikeco 07:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Dafer4521:01, 19 November 2009
 

Projects in languages that have a relatively small size often translate articles from the larger projects in English, French, Spanish or German. I found that when I write an article at wp-en, it gets often translated in a couple of smaller languages within a year. Especially the English Wikipedia seems prone to this effect. The problem is that Wikipedia is not devoid of errors, and these errors get copied too with translation. Whereas the larger projects have plenty of users that will quickly address such errors, the translation at a small project will stay there for years or decades. To prevent this, larger projects should do more to rate and visualize the value of their content according to the pillars of Wikipedia. Such ratings are signals for translators from smaller projects, that show them weather the content they are translating is actually trustworthy/encyclopedic/neutral/etc. Woudloper 23:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Dafer4521:01, 19 November 2009
 

Typically these "mature" wikipedias have no feeling for the needs of smaller Wikipedias. They impose their "superior" ways. When you then consider that the newbie experience is really nasty for these "mature" wikipedias AND that the growth of editors is key to the health of smaller projects then it is not so clear cut that they help at all. Thanks,

GerardM08:52, 20 November 2009