[Mediawiki-i18n] [Wikitech-l] Language codes vs site codes

Denny Vrandečić denny.vrandecic at wikimedia.de
Wed May 9 13:31:52 UTC 2012


Thanks, the conversation indeed helped me!

Cheers,
Denny

2012/5/9 Siebrand Mazeland (WMF) <smazeland at wikimedia.org>

> Hi Denny,
>
> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Denny Vrandečić
> <denny.vrandecic at wikimedia.de> wrote:
> > (Siebrand, I am unsure if this will arrive at mediawiki-i18n, feel free
> to
> > forward it you consider it interesting to them).
>
> It does after the list admin approves it, but you may just want to
> subscribe[1].
>
> > OK, I've written a few lines of Python [1] which actually helped me
> answer
> > my questions. Sorry to bother.
> >
> > And the answers are yes, yes, no, but close, and i hope so.
>
> No problem. We like people answering their own question. More time for
> us to do other things :).
>
> > There are a small number of wikis which use a different language code
> than
> > their site code is, namely:
> >
> > crh -> crh-latn
> > als -> gsw
> > be-x-old -> be-tarask
> > roa-rup -> rup
> > simple -> en
>
> There are a few more, actually. See includes/DefaultSettings.php,
> $wgDummyLanguageCodes.
>
> > But, at the same time, the given *site* codes exist as *language* codes
> as
> > well, i.e. the languages/messages files exist for them, but they just
> > fallback to the given language code (i.e. MessagesAls.php just names gsw
> as
> > a fallback).
>
> That's an issue with the Wikimedia setup, I guess. If the language
> code could be different from the subdomain name, that is what should
> be done. It's probably not as simple as it looks. See next item.
>
> > I would not be surprised if each of these five examples would have an
> > anecdote to explain why they are the way they are :)
>
> That, and a past in which there was less attention for trying to stick
> to a particular standard. Doesn't really matter, we're stuck with it
> for now, and should try to not make it worse, and fix it on the long
> run. For the 5+ years that I'm involved in MediaWiki development,
> there have been requests to rename wikis to more appropriate subdomain
> names, but for some reason, no progress has been made on it yet. These
> 10+ requests are tracked in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/19986.
>
> > P.S.: There is one thing I do not understand though. According
> > to https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo the
> > language of simple.wp is "en", but MessagesSimple.php seems to be taken
> into
> > account (instead of "edit" it has "change" in the UI, one of only two
> > changes in MessagesSimple to MessagesEn).
>
> Thanks for mentioning. That shouldn't have been there. Fixed in
> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/7035/.
>
> > So it seems that the language is
> > "simple" -- why does it say "en" in the siteinfo?
>
> Because it *is* English. It just should be English with a reduced
> vocabulary. There have been many debates in the past over its
> usefulness, and if possibly other languages should also get a simple
> vocabulary Wikimedia project (and subdomain). This is just for
> reference, please do not comment on this in this thread, but start a
> new one if you'd wish to discuss simple language versions.
>
> Not sure if this made your insight clearer, but at least I hope I was
> able to add some details :).
>
> [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n
>
> Cheers!
>
> --
> Siebrand Mazeland
> Product Manager Localisation
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> M: +31 6 50 69 1239
> Skype: siebrand
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>



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