Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Intertranswiki

Discussion on disallowing use of the ʻokina in Chinese romanized article titles
There is currently a discussion that may interest you. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style proposes that the ʻokina gennerally be prohibited from article titles derived from Chinese whenever it does not adhere to the English Wikipedia policy to use commonly recognizable names. Plese join the discussion. Thank you. Peaceray (talk) 17:12, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Women in Red May 2024
--Lajmmoore (talk 06:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Missing template for Biography
At the end of a category (Buildings, Culture, Geography, etc.) there is a template for navigating to '&lt;category> Intertranswiki by language'. The template is formatted as '', e.g 'Intertranswiki/Buildings' gives:

This template appears to be missing for Biography (i.e, `Intertranswiki/Biography` is not defined: Intertranswiki/Biography). However the 'Biography' category is defined by default in the header. Tule-hog (talk) 02:00, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * (i'm savvy enough to express the issue, but not enough to find the remedy! apologies) Tule-hog (talk) 02:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * (as an aside observation, it appears Russian is the only Intertranswiki with the Biography category page created.) Tule-hog (talk) 02:10, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Copyvio reminder regarding translated articles
For those editors who are reviewers of articles translated into EN-WP, see this new comment/instruction/friendly reminder at WP:NPP: Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Edit Summary when using the Wikipedia translation tool
Hi. I do a lot of WP:NPP. In that role, I reviewed 2 articles today written by. One was a translation from German Wikipedia and the other was a translation from Hebrew Wikipedia. The Edit Summaries didn't comply with Help:Translation, so I brought it to the editor's attention here so they would know for next time. The editor replied that they assumed the appropriate Edit Summary would occur when using the Wikipedia translation tool. That makes sense to me, but I wanted to check in with you as I haven't used the Wikipedia translation tool for years and I don't know what the Edit Summary prompt looks like. Hoping you could give us feedback on this issue. Thanks. -- Rosiestep (talk) 21:07, 15 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello @Rosiestep - Thank you for bringing this up. After checking the edit history of the article it looks like the page may not have been created with the Content Translation tool as it is missing the tag that is automatically added to new pages created with it. The edit summary format is also different. For reference, the current format can be seen in this other article that was created recently. The ContentTranslation (or ContentTranslation2) tag is automatically generated and should have been in the edit history. Perhaps we could confirm with @Commontater the process they had followed while translating this page to figure out what might have happened? Curious to learn more about this. Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 11:00, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply, . I see the translation tags as part of the Edit Summary for this article, Roswitha Hartl; the tags address the use of the tool. But I don't see, which I thought was required for addressing attribution. Help?  --Rosiestep (talk) 11:49, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This page about Hama bar Ukva which I translated does seem to have the appropriate edit summary. The article on Ḥiyya bar Ami mentioned by @Rosiestep also seems to have it. So if there is an error it must be in the way I created some pages, rather than the tool. I was not aware of this guideline, so it is very likely I unintentionally translated pages without adding it. I will try to do better in the future. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Commontater (talk) 18:07, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red June 2024
--Lajmmoore (talk 07:03, 23 May 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

OKA taskforce created
Hey everyone (in particular @Ipigott, @Rosiestep and @Mathglot),

As discussed above, I have created a taskforce for OKA at WikiProject Intertranswiki/OKA. I have added a short intro, useful links, and some instructions for how IntertransWiki editors can help us review AfC articles. Feel free to adjust anything (description, setup, etc.) and add your name in the active members if you are interested. I don't have much experience with WikiProjects so I would also suggestions in how to improve the setup.

Hopefully we can move any OKA-related discussion in the future to the talk page of the OKA taskforce. Should we also move all the OKA related discussions from this talk page there?

7804j (talk) 19:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Also, do you think we should create a link to the OKA taskforce from the homepage? I don't see any obvious place where to fit it; perhaps we could put OKA as a "Partner" in the "Members section", and also link the taskforce in the "See also" section 7804j (talk) 19:13, 23 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you, . In my opinion, yes, it makes sense to:
 * move OKA-related discussions from this talkpage to the OKA Task Force talkpage;
 * link to the OKA taskforce from the homepage;
 * link the taskforce in the "See also" section.


 * Also, in my opinion, at the top of this section, List of paid editing companies, add a link to the OKA Task Force page. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:28, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Done! Thanks for the suggestions 7804j (talk) 20:18, 23 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you, . This is a step in the right direction. It seems to me important for OKA to be as open as possible about its background, activities and participants. It might also be helpful to explain what kind of instructions paid editors receive, particularly in regard to how they are advised to select articles for translation. It will be interesting to see how things proceed over the next month or two when it will become easier to see how draft articles are being processed. The advice given by reviewers should prove useful in encouraging improvements to drafts and should help to make translators more aware of Wikipedia's requirements for the acceptance of new articles.--Ipigott (talk) 05:54, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Instructions that OKA editors receive

 * The instructions that our editors receive are at oka.wiki/overview -- I've added that link in the taskforce overview. We're also open to let ppl from IntertransWiki make changes or improvements to the instructions if anyone is interested. 7804j (talk) 15:04, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * , perhaps consider putting editing instructions on-wiki on your Task Force's mainpage, or a subpage of it? Sometimes, I'm hesitant to click on off-wiki links and I assume other editors might share that sentiment. But perhaps there's a good reason to not have OKA's editing instructions on-wiki? --Rosiestep (talk) 18:06, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The primary reason is that it's a Google Doc, which is easier for us to collaborate internally (adding comments, suggestions, images, etc.). Our instructions doc changes very frequently. Another reason is that the instructions cover multiple Wikipedias, so they are not specific to EN Wikipedia. 7804j (talk) 21:29, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry to be so late in responding. I agree with Rosie that it would be good to include your instructions to OKA translators in wiki format. The instructions in your Google Doc seem to me to contain excellent advice and could no doubt be shared more widely. I think those critical of the project will probably be particularly interested in the section headed "How are articles prioritized for translation?". I would strongly urge you to make this part of your wiki write-up. I can't remember where but I in one of your earlier communications I read that you encouraged translators to deal with topics corresponding to the interests of your financial supporters. I thought this might be the reason there have been so many articles from various translators on topics such as horses, mining and Switzerland. From your current instructions, it appears this is no longer the case but it would be useful to have clarification as it could help to improve the acceptability of the articles translated.--Ipigott (talk) 17:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The main challenge I see in moving the instructions to on-wiki is that our instructions contain a lot of images. These would need to be uploaded one by one (which is much more time-consuming than using Google Docs), but they would then need to be hosted in Wikipedia, which I understand is only possible for copyright-free content. Since a lot of our images contain screenshots of other tools we use (e.g., Google Docs, Clockify), we likely do not meet that criteria.
 * Do you have any suggestions on how I could overcome the images limitation to move these inside a Wikiproject page more easily?
 * The reason why we have a lot of pages about horses is that one of our translators is passionate about it, so she picks these out of her own interest. For mining, it is primarily because a lot of FR Featured articles are about mining, and we added all of them to our list. For Switzerland, it is because I am close to the topic (being Swiss), thus regularly add pages about Switzerland to the tracker of articles suggestion. We never give any instructions to people on what they should work on, but we do curate a list of "suggested articles to translate" (which translators are free to ignore) and this list is indeed sometimes containing a higher ratio of articles of a given topic (e.g., for translations to ES/PT Wikis, I tend to prioritize articles around STEM topics, in particular computer science, because I feel these are important and underrepresented in these Wikis).
 * 7804j (talk) 17:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

In-line references for every statement
So far, the main challenge we've encountered with AfC reviews is that some reviewers are particularly picky with having in-line references for every statement. Sometimes this is an issue from the source article that has it in the general bibliography (thus a fair ask), but sometimes there is already an in-line citation 3 paragraphs later that covers it, but difficult for our translators to then be 100% sure that it indeed covers every sentence without reading through the full source. Unfortunately, this is not always possible as some sources are a page in a book that is not available online, or behind a paywall, or sometimes the source is too technical for our translators to interpret. I've encouraged our team to spend more time on sources as ultimately it will improve the quality of the articles in Wikipedia, but if this becomes too strict then it might become no longer worth it from a donor perspective. Though it's a bit early to say as not many of the articles we submitted were reviewed yet 7804j (talk) 15:04, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You can cite paywalled sources or offline ones; there's no prohibition against that. For an offline source, it just needs to be reasonably possible to find the material (e.g., "Stuff about Things, John Doe, p. 123-125. Published by Foobar Publishing, 2020."). That would be sufficient for someone to know what work the material is in, where in the work to look for it, and how to find it. That would certainly be enough for me to go down to the library, say "I would like to get this book", and the librarian to be able to help me find it. Also, if you're using references more than once, you can use the "ref name" syntax (I have an example of that at User:Seraphimblade/Refdemo as to how it works for using the same reference multiple times in an article). The reader can't reasonably know that a source three paragraphs down is also supposed to cite something right here, so&mdash;cite it both places! Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:48, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, I didn't notice that last part. Yes, you must read sources and confirm that they actually say what the article will claim they do before you use them. Otherwise that's falsification of sources, and that is absolutely grounds for a block. If you cannot read the source and confirm what it says, you cannot use it (even if the original article did). The Wikipedia Library may be helpful in accessing paywalled sources, as may public libraries, university libraries, and the like. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That is ridiculous, . Have you ever translated an article? The whole idea is to take advantage of the work of our colleagues on other Wikipedias, and e.g. assume that they sources are used properly; if you had to re-verify every source used in the original, there'd be no advantage of translating over writing it from scratch. When I translated Vera Karelina from ruwiki, I didn't go to my local library and ask them to find the the memoirs of early 20th century Russian labour activists. If you feel this is grounds for a block, please go ahead. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 12:28, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * , if you think the expectation to have actually read a source before using it in an article is "ridiculous", I am not sure what else to say. Taking someone else's word for what it says is not a substitute for that. And you're telling me you didn't do that? Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:57, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. You are conflating using a source to support the addition of original material and taking a source that another editor has used in good faith. On purpose, I assume, but I can't see why. Do you re-read all the sources when you merge one article into another? Or copy text from one part of an article to another, for that matter? What's the difference? –&#8239;Joe (talk) 11:05, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
 * What about refactoring that involves swapping some sections around, or maybe just some paragraphs, perhaps deleting them from a section higher up, and moving them down to another section where they fit better? Do you have to reverify all the sources in the paragraph you moved? I would say no, and I would also say no to all of these cases involving copying or moving Wikipedia content around written by someone else, whether you keep the original language, or translate it. Mathglot (talk) 03:34, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Honestly AfC reviewers really shouldn't be holding up acceptance based on missing inline citations. The golden rule for AfC is to accept anything that has a decent chance of surviving an AfD nomination and if you nominated an article for deletion because not every statement was cited then you'd be laughed out of the room. The verification policy only requires inline citations for direct quotations and material that is contentious or has been specifically challenged by another editor – that should therefore be enough to pass AfC. However in practice expectations vary greatly from reviewer to reviewer and are often amount to something closer to "would this pass a good article review?"
 * As I've said at Village pump (policy) I don't think it's necessary or productive to require OKA articles to go through AfC. But if the consensus goes the other way, I could try and keep an eye out for OKA submissions in the queue and perhaps we could get together a small group of uninvolved volunteers to do the same. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 12:37, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot Joe!
 * My impression from the other thread on village pump is that we are not really converging towards a consensus on either direction (many people are against, many people are in favor, and many people respond out of topic or not having fully read the context). In such cases where the consensus is hard to really "read" from a thread, what is normally the process? Is it a deadlocked situation where the lack of unanimity leads to a "no change" decision? 7804j (talk) 12:13, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that's an accurate summary. It was unfortunate the discussion got sidetracked into translation issues. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 06:52, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I fear that some of the sidetracking was intentional by a few people who oppose the idea of OKA and therefore brought up irrelevant issues in the discussion. It's unfortunate that the easiest way to prevent changes from happening in Wikipedia is to create "noise" in discussions preventing consensus from emerging either in favor/against a proposal. 7804j (talk) 07:12, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Joe Roe @Piotrus On the topic of stuck AfC submissions, we just encountered the situation where the article Capitalism as Religion was rejected in AfC because it "reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article". The original article was a featured article in Russian Wikipedia.
 * It seems strange to me to reject an article through AfC on such grounds, as the topic itself seems clearly notable and the article is well sourced so I suspect the "essay" portion would only cover a part of it (we could remove these contested portions, but they were not specified in the rejection comment so they are hard to identify). Do you think this is a valid reason to reject an AfC submission; if not, do you have any recommendation of the best path I should recommend our translators take to "contest" AfC rejections? 7804j (talk) 16:29, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This was a ridcolously bad AfC review. For the reason given by you (consensus at ru wiki that this is high quality article), a single reviewer at en wiki should not have the veto power to reject this and claim this is not encyclopedic. That article obviously belongs in mainspace, and only a consensus of editors (at AfD) should remove it. I'll publish it now, since IMHO it is good enough for mainspace (by a far margin), and AfC reviewers don't get to own articles, or keep them in the draftspace. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:35, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * My 2c. I tell my students that only referenced content counts for our class credit (they do translations for my classes), but I don't prohibit them form translating unreferenced content - I just tell them to find references for it if they want it to count towards their grade. (Whether the references they find actually support all of the content cited is another issue, but then, I expect quite a few citations in the original content don't - and this is a wiki-wide problem, we have many articles written on ewiki from scratch with the same problem anyway). The point is, lack of references (or weak refs) is not a reason for speedy deletion (and  I see AfC declines as similar to that, because they often rely on the judgement of a single editor). Now, I have no problem with such content being tagged with 'cite needed', removed with an edit summary citing WP:V, orthhe article being subjected to an AfD. But declining article due to isufficient citations at AfC IF it has referenced parts is IMHO not good. I'd rather see such article published, with citation needed tags added to all relevant parts. That said, since we are dealing with editors who get compensation ($$), it would be good to ask them to find sources (but at the same time, compensation would have to be higher). Anyway, I'd recommend advising them to avoid articles that have much untranslated content, since at the end of the day, such articles often need someone to rewrite them from scratch, verifying all content, and it is often a more tedious task then writing from scratch (based on my own experiences). So what is better for Wikipedia - having more poorly referenced but likely correct content or none, given that if we have none, we may get a better quality article faster than if we have a poorly referenced one that folks don't want to touch? (This is again based on my personal view that folks tend to leave lenghty unreferenced articles since writing from scratch is easier/more fun than verification). Still, at the end of the day, I think since there is no speedy criteria for poorly referenced content, drafts should not be declined solely based on this reason. (Again - no prejudice to them being published and send to AfD, or gutten with unreferenced content simply blanked per WP:V). PS. Last thought: I'd recommend not paying for translation of unreferenced content, or not counting it for much (just like I don't give my students much if any credit for doing so). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  05:02, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, for your helpful comments here and on the Village Pump discussion. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any easy solution to the AfC problem. In view of my own experience with machine translation since the 1970s, any comments I make will no doubt be viewed with scepticism but over the years I have reviewed and assessed a considerable number of articles based on machine translation and it certainly seems to me that the OKA translations are of a significantly higher quality and exhibit few of the problems of citation, etc., which frequently require so much attention. I am happy to see you have been successful in overriding AfC problems. Unfortunately I have not been so successful myself as an administrator has deleted all my attempts at promoting OKA articles listed on AfC. (I have therefore been unable to offer further support.) Maybe the best way forward is to continue to see to what extent OKA articles at AfC are treated fairly. If not, there may well be a case for creators to promote them directly to mainspace as before. It may also be useful to initiate a formal proposal to allow OKA editors to create new articles on mainspace and rely on the competence of NPP editors. Until recently, this seems to have worked surprisingly well.--Ipigott (talk) 13:55, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Piotrus already initiated that discussed here. I assume this qualifies as a formal proposal?
 * Could you provide more details regarding "an administrator has deleted all my attempts at promoting OKA articles listed on AfC"? Since you're not a member of OKA, I don't understand why an admin would be able to prevent you from reviewing AfC articles from OKA?7804j (talk) 14:10, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I am curious about it myself. Also, unless I am wrong, AfC is optional and anyone who has no COI here (ex. myself or Ipigott) can be bold and mainspace any article, which cannot be returned to draftspace without community consensus through AfD. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:22, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry to be late in responding,, but my attempted promotions of articles from AfC occurred shortly after the new requirements were established. The administrator involved was who returned several of my mainspace versions to AfC drafts. I asked for explanations but there was no response. I later discovered that established members of AfC were able to move the same articles to mainspace, sometimes with tags. I believe they were all listed on article space within a few days.--Ipigott (talk) 06:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * @Ipigott Per WP:DRAFTNO, just move them back, mention DRAFTNO in the edit summary to prevent anyone from moving it back (stealthy deletion, anyone?) and for best practice, say in edit summary that if anyone has problems with the article, AfD is that'a'way. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:10, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the advice,, but I avoid reverting as I find such action can frequently lead to heated discussion, sometimes resulting in severe warnings or worse. I always try to discuss things calmly. If I receive no response, too bad. There's always plenty of other creative work to do. In my experience, there are a number of administrators who are ready to penalize articles created by paid editors on questionable pretexts, however good their quality. In general, though, I'm pleased to say most of my moves of valid drafts by paid contributors to mainspace have proceeded without problems, even if most of them have been created outside AfC. Unfortunately, many of them require considerable checking and further editing. And once you help a paid editor along, he is likely to come back with further suggestions on existing articles as well as requests in connection with new articles. One of the advantages of working with OKA creators is that in general there has been little need for additional time-consuming work. If we can overcome the AfC obligation, I would be happy to return to reviewing and assessing.--Ipigott (talk) 10:37, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red July 2024
--Lajmmoore (talk 14:26, 30 June 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Katherine Routledge – French to English translation
We have a mediocre article on pioneering archaeologist Katherine Routledge on enwiki, but fr:Katherine Routledge is GA- if not FA-level. Is anyone up for translating it? could it be something for you guys? See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Archaeology. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 09:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I have added it to our tracker, in case an OKA translator is interested. It will probably be picked up eventually, but FR WP has a lot of other FA-level articles pending translation, so it might take a while :O 7804j (talk) 16:24, 6 July 2024 (UTC)