Fhem for non-German speakers ?

[Zrrronggg!]

Hi all,

first of all: some know that  I am actually one of the mentioned admins of the wiki. I don't know how this happened, I guess it started when I had the feeling that the wiki could need some support and did some maintenance work. I guess the first dozen articles or so as well as the first templates are also based on my work, I just wrote down what I finally understood back then. I was a fhem beginner at that time (Even today I guess)

The decision towards a german wiki had 2 aspects:

1. most users where german. I did not see the benefit of writing a whole wiki in (probably only mediocre) english - which IS additional work even for people with good language skills - only to be read by mostly non english speakers.
I have to admit: my writing in english is slower as in german and that would have limited my contribution. At a time where - as mentioned - the usefulness of the wiki was not that clear, my focus was to write down as many information in the wiki I could to get it started. And that was easier in german. And we just guessed that that would be the case for most contributors back then.

2. Maintaining a mulitlingual wiki is much more work. I always had (and have) the feeling, that it is no problem if somebody just writes something in english.

Instead we should open up the wiki to English articles written by English users for English users.

That is actually the case. It is not forbidden or something to do just that. That would not add that much load to the current admins. Even my own page on the wiki where I explain how to get an account is bilingual.
But a true multilingual wiki is something different maintenance wise. Its not even just double the work its more then double. There was a time, where only 2 or 3 persons where doing such admin and maintenance work on the wiki. As a matter of fact I think this still is the case right now.

So the decision to make it basically a german-focused wiki was more due to the limited resources we had/have.
I work for the wiki almost every single day now: adding users, correcting articles, discussing stuff, write as an author, delete obsolete files etc. I know that at least 2 other persons do such work also frequently - and the wiki has only some 250 articles and some 150 users (where only 30 or so are actually active). And as pah pointed out many articles are suboptimal and need rework (some of the stuff I wrote 2 years ago among them).

I guess the current wiki "staff" simply cannot accomplish the additional work of a true bilingual wiki.

if the admin votes "no", this is "NO" - and certainly I will not push this because I lack the time.

Well, the current admins "no" is not an absolute "no". I don't consider myself as the godfather of the wiki or something. I only say: I cannot do it - because of the same lack of time pah quotes. I guess akw feels the same way.

To make a long story short: If we are looking for a true bilingual set up (e.g. with an english main page etc) then my suggestion would be to

set up a fresh wiki and use InterWiki links to connect them (like Wikipedia does)

.

And then a new set of admins - native speakers - must be found to maintain that. Of course it would also need a new set of authors, no matter if they just translate german articles or write new ones from scratch. Also some of the german authors may write a basic translation of their contributions.

This would also solve the problem with he different needs such as fritzbox articles may not make sense in other countries.
They are simply not translated/written then.

[micomat]

1. most users where german. I did not see the benefit of writing a whole wiki in (probably only mediocre) english - which IS additional work even for people with good language skills - only to be read by mostly non english speakers.

Correct, but why not? What do you or we have to lose? Sure it's more work, but in the counterpart, me and some other guys are still translating the commandref into german. Why not going the same way in the Wiki translating things to englisch?

There was a time, where only 2 or 3 persons where doing such admin and maintenance work on the wiki. As a matter of fact I think this still is the case right now.

As the community is growing you shold find more help I guess that the number of contributors will still rise.

I work for the wiki almost every single day now: adding users, correcting articles, discussing stuff, write as an author, delete obsolete files etc. I know that at least 2 other persons do such work also frequently - and the wiki has only some 250 articles and some 150 users (where only 30 or so are actually active).

right, but can you never be responsible for articles you didn't wrote by yourself. you can find obsolete articles even in the big brother wikipedia. thats a fact in wikis.

And then a new set of admins - native speakers - must be found to maintain that. Of course it would also need a new set of authors, no matter if they just translate german articles or write new ones from scratch. Also some of the german authors may write a basic translation of their contributions.

Why? Look at all the wikis in the world. i would guess 90% of them are in the most spoken language of the world: BSE (bad simple englisch). Is it the target to have a perfect Wiki? i guess no. it should help people start with FHEM and give them help with it. nobody cares about grammatical errors. and if so they can correct them

Why talking about FritzBox in the US? Okay, when somebody there want's to use fhem, nice. But i think the focus first should be Europe. And even here, Englisch is the perfect language for.

Markus

[Zrrronggg!]

I actually have the impression, that you did not understood my post.

[micomat]

Okay, where did i go wrong?

[Zrrronggg!]

Okay, where did i go wrong?

Maybe you didn't -  maybe it was my fault (that could be a proof, that my english is not good enough). I just thought that I actually answered almost all of your questions allready.


I tried *several times* now to answer your post in detail but failed, because its more or less always a rewritten version of my first post.

So maybe its the other way round: I don't know what you want to say.

[micomat]

hey no problem, i'm also not a native speaker
but let me sum up, as my work life is more international then local, i'm a supporter of an international version.