Wikipedia toktok:Ol polisi

Welcome, and feel free to participate in this discussion of the current proposed policies for this Wikipedia.

Initial thoughts

Here are some initial thoughts I have:

In general, we take an approach of openness, mutual respect, and civility wherever possible.
Multilingualism: in general, I believe this should be simply a Tok Pisin Wikipedia - no need for English-language copies of articles within this wikipedia. Liberal use of interwiki links to fully integrate with the other wikipedias.
Use of English within articles, etc: in general we should maximise the use of Tok Pisin, and minimise that of other languages, but I think in some cases a limited use of English has benefits for clarity: for instance, adding (Tok Inglis: English title) where appropriate, especially on articles where the Tok Pisin titles or terms are relatively recent transliterations of the English words. Note: the above can be done with the new en template like this: {{en|English title}}.
A good principle might be to say that we should aim to have as much as possible that is seen by a reader (as opposed to an editor) be in Tok Pisin. This means that article titles (and article content) and category titles (and category content) should be in Tok Pisin, but that things like template names and template doc don't have to be.
Personally I'd like to minimise the use of templates which place large boxes on the page and don't add much to the reader's experience. For instance, Stub templates are distracting and pointless, I think, and I'd support removing them from this wikipedia. It should be obvious to editors which pages need expansion. If we really need to have a category listing pages needing expansion, fine; it doesn't mean we need a giant banner across an article - the first thing a reader sees - about its stub status. We could either have no visible message (just a category for stubs) or a very small, unobtrusive note at the bottom of the article.

Wantok 07:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed english WIkipedia is a bit more attached to it's bulky templates than most other language wikipedias, possibly we could look at some other language wikis to see some better ideas to get this information across? Aliasd 09:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Mabye it WOULD be a good idea to start moving templates to their Tok Pisin names too. I borrowed a few templates from enwiki without adaptation because they were needed, but am happy to help with renaming them. Aliasd 09:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

One more thought! the big templates thing sounds more like a guideline than a policy. Aliasd 09:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Geographic names

Here are some thoughts about a guideline on geographic names (names of countries, provinces, territories, etc).

I see two main options (though there may be others - please suggest!): using transliterations or local names as our article titles.

The transliteration option would mean we use the Tok Pisin transliteration of the place name in English (as used on the English Wikipedia), or in the local language, if there is no different version for English. In the opening sentence of the article we provide the local-language name, and the English version (if differently written from the local-language name).

In a few situations I think we should not do a direct transliteration, but a partial translation: possessives, or names of types geographic features that have distinct Tok Pisin names. But no need to convert plurals to the proper Tok Pisin form including "ol".

For instance, the Tok Pisin version of "British Virgin Islands" should not be a direct transliteration ("Britis Vesin Ailans"), nor should it be fully converted to the plural-islands form ("Ol Vesin Ailan bilong Briten") but a version with the possessive but not the plural ("Vesin Ailans bilong Briten"). My reasoning here is that there already plenty of cases of plurals of geographic features being transliterated into Tok Pisin ("Hailans" for the Highlands of PNG), but possession by another country is significant information that should be clear in the Tok Pisin.

Examples of use of names of types geographic features that have distinct Tok Pisin names: better to use Atlantik solwara or Pasifik solwara (solwara = ocean) rather than a direct transliteration like Atlantik Osen or Pasifik Osen.

Examples:

1. "Roma" is the local name for the capital city of Italy, but there is an English version: "Rome". So we use a Tok Pisin transliteration, which is written differently from the English. The article might start like this:

Rom (Tok Itali: Roma, Tok Inglis: Rome) emi kapitol...

2. "Новосибирская" is the local name for a province of Russia, but there is an English version: "Novosibirsk". The Tok Pisin transliteration is (arguably) the same as the English. The article might start like this:

Novosibirsk (Tok Rasia: Новосибирская) emi provins...

3. "Huelva" is a city in southern Spain, and there is no special version of the name for English - the English Wikipedia article name is the same as the Spanish name. So we use a Tok Pisin transliteration of the local name. The article might start like this:

Huwelva (Tok Spen: Huelva) emi kapitol...

The alternative is the local names option. That means our article titles would be the local-language names (rendered in Western European characters). In the opening sentence of the article we provide a Tok Pisin transliteration, and the English version (if differently written from the local-language name). Using this approach the examples above would be:

Roma (toktok olsem: Rom)(Tok Inglis: Rome) emi kapitol...
Novosibirsk (Tok Rasia: Новосибирская) emi provins...
Huelva (toktok olsem: Huwelva) emi kapitol...

All comments welcome. Wantok (toktok) 02:47, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Section break for editing ease

Comment: Suggest transliteration of the local name if possible, and transliteration of the english name if transliteration of local name is not possible. Aliasd 03:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we must put the name in local language (Huelva, Catalunya) and put a redirection page in Tok Pisin and English. I think we have to base all the name's in English language 'cause Tok Pisin is based on this language. Spanish names are not translated very often into English so, I think we can put them in Spanish.

I've a problem with this. Does Tok Pisin have the same phonems like English? I think this is a important question. The representation of the phonems is other question. Sorry, my English is not very well. --Jeneme 09:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a good question. Tok Pisin phonemes (i.e. range of sounds) are not the same as English, and neither is the orthography (written alphabet). See w:en:Tok Pisin (though, now that i look at it, that article doesn't cover as much as it should). Wantok (toktok) 11:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

That being said, the phonemes are closer to english than spanish. Aliasd 22:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... OK, in fact there are 5 options. Using Saint Petersburg (Russia) as an example:

1.Local name in local script: Санкт-Петербу́рг

2.Local name in romanised script: Sankt-Peterburg

3.Tok Pisin version of local name: Sankt-Pitabeg

4.English name: Saint Petersburg

5.Tok Pisin version of English name: Santu Pitasbeg (or Sen Pitasbeg, depending on whether we use Santu for Saint everywhere or not)

I think we can rule out option 1 - Cyrillic, Chinese, etc script is not appropriate for article titles on a Tok Pisin wikipedia. Aliasd, I think you're saying you support option 3. Jeneme, I'm not sure which one you support. Larabci User hasn't commented here yet, but based on previous edits I suspect his/her support would be for option 5. I am not completely decided but I favour option 5 at the moment.

Bear in mind we're only talking about a policy for article titles here (and the usual link text from other pages) - we would of course normally include one or more other versions in the first sentence of the article, and create appropriate redirects. Wantok (toktok) 13:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Option 5 seems like the most logical to me: "Santu Pitasbeg (ru:Санкт-Петербу́рг, en:Saint Petersburg)..." I'm not sure we even need the English name every time. Aridd 20:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Section break for editing ease

I favour option 3 for the most part, but places where there is a direct translation of part of a name, like saint, it would be useful to translate that part of the name. That being said, should Los Angeles be "Bigtaun bilong Ol Ensel"? Can that be considered a Spanish name, or an English name with a Spanish background? Aliasd 13:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess I support 3, but direct translation of words in the name when the words are widely translated in other languages. Aliasd 13:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Main page of this article

Hey, I just discovered this Tok Pisin Wikipedia, I'm really excited about it as it looks like a great resource, and I was interested in reading up on policy before getting involved in working on anything, but the actual page you have for "Ol polisi" doesn't have any policy on it. There's a lot to be found by reading through this tok page, of course, but my first impressions when I found links for this article were that I would be able to understand some basic ideas before reading through people's comments on them. Just thought I'd mention this, and if there's a way that we could take some of the major policy points that have been discussed and decided on and actually put them into the policy page, that would be great. Wakaro 10:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)