Wikivoyage:German Wikivoyage Expedition

The German Wikivoyage Expedition is an expedition to create a German language version of Wikivoyage.

For more information on multilingual Wikivoyage policy, please see Project:Language version policy.

Rationale

Germans, Austrians, most Swiss, and others in Europe speak German. About 130 million people world-wide have German as their mother tongue, which means that a German version of Wikivoyage would serve a wide audience.

In addition, contributions in German would help the other Wikivoyage language versions. Many German-speaking parts of Europe are major travel destinations; having locals update information in their native tongue (which could then be translated to other languages) would make for better information in all the Wikivoyage guides. German-speakers are also frequent travelers and would have a lot to contribute on other destinations and topics.

Goals

This Expedition has the following goals:

• To collect a good base of German-speaking users willing to take this project further.
• To choose a go-between who can keep users on the English-language site up-to-date on developments on German Wikivoyage, and vice-versa
• To translate the interface files for Wikivoyage into German
• To launch the new German-language Wikivoyage.
• To translate the pages and create the infrastructure necessary to make German Wikivoyage useful and friendly for new German-speaking contributors.
• To make German Wikivoyage an integrated part of the Wikivoyage family.

Steps

The Language version policy lists the steps necessary to get a German-language Wikivoyage in place.

Gathering a team of users

To get this project started, we need at least 5 German-speaking users willing to help start the German Wikivoyage. This means helping to translate the interface files, create content on the new Wikivoyage, and to create the necessary infrastructure to make Wikivoyage welcoming and useful for the next wave of contributors.

If you're interested, please create a user account on this (English) Wikivoyage, and sign the list below. To sign, edit this page and just type ~ 4 times, like "~~~~".

• (WT-en) Cyril2000 07:31, 14 Mar 2004 (EST)
• (WT-en) Denisoliver 10:03, 25 Mar 2004 (EST)
• (WT-en) Hansm 10:00, 2004 Apr 17 (EDT) (not for translating into English.)
• (WT-en) EBB 15:42, 25 Jul 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) Sabine 09:04, 09 Aug 2004 (CET)
• (WT-en) Cecil 04:57, 9 Aug 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) Bernie 16:26, 7 Sep 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) A.bendig 00:56, 18 Sep 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) Hedavid 10:54, 27 Sep 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) mo 09:57, Oct 2, 2004 (EDT)
• (WT-en) Friedjoff 16:31, 3 Oct 2004 (EDT)

More than 5 users are welcome to sign up, but we need at least 5 to get started.

129.237.252.43 11:55, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

Go-between

Part of the process of having a language version is having a single person responsible for reporting on issues in the larger Wikivoyage community to the German language version, and reporting on issues in the German language version to the larger community.

The go-between should be conversant in English and German, experienced with Wikivoyage in other languages, and willing to make monthly reports and be an active participant in the German Wikivoyage community.

Previous language versions have picked a go-between by voting. See Project:Romanian Wikivoyage Expedition and Project:French Wikivoyage Expedition for details.

I'd propose the following procedure (differs sightly from the french election mode):

1. I e-mail each of us a personal invitation to the election.
2. The candidates for go-between are the users listed below.
3. Only people who nominated themselves under the "Gathering a team" section can vote.
4. Each team member can give each other either a positive or a negative or a neutral vote. So each of the 11 nominies has 11 votes.
5. If you would like to vote one of these people, please put your username next to their name, in the "got positive vote from" section. If you would like to make a vote against someone, please write your username next to their name in the "got negative vote from" line and then a reason for this. You also can vote neutral .
6. The election is over after 4 weeks (13-10-2004) or when all of us have voted.
7. To win, you must have no negative votes and the most positive votes.
8. If any of the candidates feels that there were something wrong with this election system, please contradict as soon as possible.

Example: User Egon wants to vote for user Emma. He votes the following way:

• Emma
  • got positive vote from: (WT-en) Egon
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:

Thus, Egon can vote for Emma by writing "~~~" behind the "got positive vote from" section of Emma.

--- (WT-en) Hansm 09:09, 2004 Sep 15 (EDT)

• Cyril2000
  • got positive vote from: (WT-en) Hansm
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Denisoliver
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Hansm
  • got positive vote from: (WT-en) Cecil, (WT-en) Denisoliver
  • got negative vote from: (WT-en) Hansm, my English is too poor.
  • got neutral vote from:
• EBB
  • got positive vote from: (WT-en) Hansm
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Sabine
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Cecil
  • got positive vote from: (WT-en) Hansm, (WT-en) Denisoliver, (WT-en) Friedjoff
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Bernie
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• A.bendig
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Hedavid
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Mo
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:
• Friedjoff
  • got positive vote from:
  • got negative vote from:
  • got neutral vote from:

Result

A nice trial. (WT-en) Hansm is still "temporary" go-between until someone else is willed to do the honorous job.

Language interface file

MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikivoyage, uses a language interface file to make the links and names and prompts and stuff readable in other languages. We need to customize a new version to work for German Wikivoyage.

We can collaboratively do this at Project:LanguageDe.php. It's started off with the Wikipedia language file, and we can use the English Project:Language.php file as a reference for things that need to be changed. It's mostly just changing the name of the site (Wikipedia -> Wikivoyage), the name of the license, and the names of some important pages.

Issues

• There's already a German-language travel wiki available. http://www.travelopedia.de/ has the beginnings of a good site, but seems to be moving sort of slowly. It's questionable whether we should start a competing site, offer to join forces, or not create a German-language Wikivoyage, instead defering to them per the Fellow Traveller Expedition.
  • I wouldn't defer to them; they don't seem to have the same aims we do. Among the first articles are Lachs and Forellenfische, which are fish, not destinations. -(WT-en) phma 00:24, 11 Mar 2004 (EST)
• What word can we use to indicate that this is a German-language, and not German-national, travel guide?
  • Deutschsprachige. -(WT-en) phma 19:23, 14 Mar 2004 (EST)

It depends a little on context. "German-language Travelguide" -> "Deutschsprachiger Reiseführer" is correct, though. -(WT-en) Nils 20:26, 14 Mar 2004 (EST)

I'd propose the following: "German-language Travelguide" -> "Wikivoyage, der globale Reiseführer in deutscher Sprache". -(WT-en) Sabine 09:04, 09 Aug 2004 (CET)

Keep it short -> "Wikivoyage in Deutsch"

Please - good German is "Wikivoyage auf Deutsch" --(WT-en) zeno 20:13, Sep 7, 2004 (EDT)

wie wärs mit --> Reise-Wiki ?

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Please, discuss all this topics above on the German Wikivoyage, now. The German "Traveler's Pub" is called "Stammtisch". -- (WT-en) Hansm 11:41, 2004 Oct 8 (EDT)

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