Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination
This page will eventually be refactored to be a list or presentation of our foreign language versions. But for now, we can use it as our International Wikipedia 'Talk' page.
I have set up [catalan.wikipedia.com Catalan Wikipedia] and [deutsche.wikipedia.com Deutsche Wikipedia] (German) and [nihongo.wikipedia.com Nihongo no Wikpedia] (Japanese), and I anxiously expect there to be some problems or complaints as people start to use them.
I think that we should have French and Spanish next, but I don't know how to write 'French' and 'Spanish' correctly. If someone will tell me, I will set them up.
And then any other languages can be set up very quickly.
I would anticipate that a certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing and playing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So I encourage anyone who likes to have a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it. :-)
How's about using ccTLDs instead (like de, fr, it, jp, tw and so on). This might save some trouble.
Not a bad idea, but some of those are difficult for Americans to get. --Jimbo Wales
But the alternative language wikis aren't for Americans. All Germans, Austrians, etc. will instantly recognize de.wikipedia.com. -- Larry Sanger
Spanish has two problems. If you go with Español, you have the problem of the letter "ñ" that you can not use in links. But not all Spanish speakers will call their language Español, but Castellano (Castilian). I do not know what is the current consensus. I'll do some research. (Every Spanish speaker will recognize Castellano and it has standards. It seems that every Spanish speaking American community has its own local variations. -- DickBeldin)
Notice that there I do not need a single answer. I can point multiple domain names at the same Spanish language site. So I can use:
- espanol.wikipedia.com
- spanish.wikipedia.com
- castellano.wikipedia.com
- supaingo.wikipedia.com (Japanese!)
That sounds good, though I doubt of the usefulness of supaingo :)