Project:Language policy

This Language policy contains guidelines that must be followed, but they are not actual rules.

Suggestions

Any suggestions to alter these guidelines can be freely expressed on the discussion page.

Available languages

Any language supported by the software is supported by Genseipedia, which includes more than 400+ languages at the time of this writing (mediawiki 1.41.0). So don't hesitate, just write in whatever language you prefer and don't worry about it.

Translations

Genseipedia never intended to have only one main page in say English (or any other language!) that should then be translated into all other languages. Hence, no translation extensions have been installed. Instead, Genseipedia aims to have any page - regardless of the language - be unique. A page in English can be written in one way, and a page in German can be written in another way. The pages might use different approaches to the same subject, or they might actually be about two completely different topics, as the title of the pages might mean different things in different languages. Translations are of course welcome in order to start a page, or simply to make the information of one page available in other languages, but there is no main page that is meant to be translated into all other languages. Every page in its own language is supposed to be unique and can contain different information depending on the aim and interest of the creator and editors of that particular language page. In other words, any user can create any page in any language and write about any topic regardless of whether or not other pages in other languages on the same topic already exists. And of course, anyone can edit any already existing pages. An English page could - for example - focus on an English person, while another page in Dutch could focus more on another person living in Germany and so on. How to go about it, would be up to the creator and editors of that particular language page to determine. The discussion pages can be used to express ideas etc. if need be.

Language Categories

In order to have an easy way to distinguish the different languages (some languages are more widely known and obvious than others), and in order to have an easy and quick way to get an overiew of the pages available in any particular language, every page must be included in the appropriate language category. For example, if you create a new page in English, that page must be included in the "English" category. If a page is in German, the page must be included in the "German" category and so on. If you create a page written in a language that does not yet have an existing category for that language, you may create the new language-category. If you forget to do that, don't worry, other users may spring into action. The main thing is creating pages. All the sorting is secondary, and can always be done later.

A language category must only contain other categories and pages written in that particular language. For instance, a German page does not belong in the English category and vice versa.

Content language

The base content language of Genseipedia is English. This actually doesn't matter much when someone searches for content or reads a page. It only matters, when you want to create a page, or move (rename) an already existing page. All pages must be placed at their proper location with regards to the language in which the page is written. All pages in the content section (main namespace) with a title in the format of 'PageTitle' is assumed to be in English (in this case the /en is not added). All other languages must be properly located as a subpage, which means that a page in Dutch must be located at 'PageTitle/nl'. For i.e. Finnish, German and Japanese this would put the pages at 'PageTitle/fi', 'PageTitle/de' and 'PageTitle/ja'. Simply put, any page must be given a title of your own choosing followed by a '/' and the language code. If you do not know the language code, don't worry. Simply create your page, write it, save it and that's it. If you need to put a language code, for instance if another page using the same title already exists, you can just write the name of the language instead of the code in this manner: 'PageTitel/languagename'. Other users will see what is missing and collaborate in order to place it correctly.

Structure of page titles (in the main namespace)

All pages created in Genseipedia must follow this structure:

• Pagetitle, all pages in English (english). No language code. The language code /en is NEVER used.
• Pagetitle/da, all pages in Danish (dansk).
• Pagetitle/es, all pages in Spanish (español).
• Pagetitle/fi, all pages in Finnish (suomi).
• Pagetitle/fr, all pages in French (français).
• Pagetitle/is, all pages in Icelandic (íslenska).
• Pagetitle/ja, all pages in Japanese (日本語).
• Pagetitle/nl, all pages in Dutch (nederlands).
• Pagetitle/pt, all pages in Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa.
• Pagetitle/pt-br, all pages in Brazilian Portuguese (português do Brasil, português brasileiro).
• Pagetitle/sv, all pages in Swedish (svenska).
• .......and so on...

User Interface (system) language

The default interface or system language of Genseipedia is English. This means that the system, MediaWiki core etc. is running using English, and this cannot be changed. The content (pages) in Genseipedia can be in whatever language the creator or editor prefers, which means that the creator and the editors of any particular page has full control over the language used. The 'user interface' (not to be confused with the default system interface) can be changed on the fly, meaning that any user (both registered and anonymous - non-logged in - users) can change the displayed language used for menus and more, just by clicking the language link in the top right menu. If you are logged in, you can also change this setting and a lot more under the "Preferences" section easily customizing Genseipedia to fit your needs.

Language template

The pre-created language template can be included with any page in order to make it easy to instantly know which languages a given page is available in. This approach forces the page to automatically generate links to all other pages with the same title in different languages. The template automatically creates direct links to any subpages such as 'PageTitle/de', 'PageTitle/fr' etc. You simply add {{languages}} to the top left of the page, and a language bar with links to other languages is automatically created after you save the page.