Wikipedia:Proposal to unify

The question

Should we unify the Malay/Indonesian Wikipedias?

Yes: the proposal

Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesia are as different as British and American English, nothing bigger than a few changes in spelling and vocabulary. Can you imagine how slowly the English Wikipedia would have advanced if we a had a separate encyclopedia for American, and another one for British? Maybe things would not have been so bad because the number of English speakers on the net is so much higher, but so far on the net, Malay and Indonesian are minority languages. This separation is hurting both of us. If we really wanted to build a wikipedia for Malay and Indonesian, we should work together!

1. id.wikipedia.org and ms.wikipedia.org remain active, but point to the same site
2. Content from the smaller site should be transfered to the bigger site. This probably means moving Indonesian articles to the Malay site.
3. The encylopedia should be "Wikipedia for Malay and Indonesian"
4. Articles about Indonesian things should be written in Indonesian; articles about Malay things should be written in Malay. All other articles should be written in same language throughout the article, whatever the language.

What do you think?

If somebody translates this, i will post it to the Indonesian talk page too.

Kowey 09:06, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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No: the vocabulary is too different

The ideas is with merit but not really pratical. Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia share basic word, but Bahasa Indonesia is more liberal in adopting English word. Not so for Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu.

Example below from

http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0107/09/jatim/monu42.htm

Bahasa Indonesia. "KRI Pasopati 410 ini dinonaktifkan dari jajaran TNI AL, 25 Januari 1990 dengan ditandai penurunan "Ular-ular Perang" dalam suatu upacara militer, di Dermaga Ujung Surabaya. Semasa aktif, kapal buatan Rusia ini dengan panjang 76,6 meter dan lebar 6,30 meter diperlengkapi persenjataan Torpedo steam gas 12 buah."

Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu "KRI Pasopati 410 ini dibersarakan dari barisan TNI AL, 25 Januari 1990 dengan penurunan "Ular-ular Perang" dalam suatu upacara ketenteraan, di Dermaga Ujung Surabaya. Semasa aktif, kapal buatan Rusia ini dengan sepanjang 76,6 meter dan lebar 6,30 meter dilengkapi dengan senjata 12 buah Torpedo gas stim."

The gist is still acceptable but not the details. Fully Malay speakers would be lost with Bahasa Indonesia, while those English educated might understand it. The Wikipedia target audience => "student" would get all their grammer and spelling haywire if they refer to it, both Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia student.

With the above argument, I propose thing remain the same, with some cross referance be allowed.

Regards

Ps: I'm not against it but it most likely alienated target audience which is student.

Yosri

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Modification to proposal

Would it prevent alienation if we added clarification text? Or would it just make things unreadable? For example:

"KRI Pasopati 410 ini dinonaktifkan (dinyahaktif) dari jajaran TNI AL, 25 Januari 1990 dengan ditandai penurunan "Ular-ular Perang" dalam suatu upacara militer (ketenteraan), di Dermaga Ujung Surabaya. Semasa aktif, kapal buatan Rusia ini dengan panjang 76,6 meter dan lebar 6,30 meter diperlengkapi persenjataan (dilengkapi dengan senjata) Torpedo steam (wap) gas 12 buah."

(I did this by copy and pasting: please excuse me if i messed up the language)

-- Kowey 19:01, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It is possible to do that, the only thing is how acceptable it is to the target audience. The other was is to put the same article in both language. Ie, Bahasa Melayu at top, and Bahasa Indonesia below it with proper labling. I would not know what would they (Bahasa Indonesia) say to it. Anyway, if someone took the trouble to added clarification text, might as well they copy and paste in Indonesia vs. Melayu Wikipedia.

On my part, I just try to provide local name, english name, and scintific name with brief description, to allow fellow future Wikipedian to know what to search for when writting details description on the subject. ie. they know a ketapang tree but what is it in english? Actualy, I also don't know at this time :).

My objective is to provide seed articles.

Regards

Yosri 12 Nov 2003

True, copy/pasting between Indonesia and Melayu doesn't take much more trouble than adding clarification text. Then again, one advantage of clarification text is that it becomes easier to modify articles when we only have to change one article at a time and not two.

The real question is whether or not the clarification texts would make things unpleasant to read... Anyway, it's not a big deal, but i'm curious to see what you think and how other wikipedians feel about the relationship between similar languages.

Cheers, Kowey 15:09, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Links on both Malayan and Indonesian Wikipedias?

I agree with Yosri. It would be confusing sometimes for an Indonesian to try to understand Malay and vice versa. I can guess some of the Malayan words, but still it is difficult. The same problem also faces the Malayan speaker, in my opinion. I think it is better to keep both Wikipedias separate, but we can work together by having links that refer to relevant article in both Wikipedias. For example, if there is still no article in Indonesian Wikipedia (since the Malayan Wikipedia is more active), we can have an empty page with a link to the article in corresponding Malayan Wikipedia. Hopefully somebody will re-write the article in Indonesian so it can be better understood. We can do the same thing on the Malayan side.

In short, I propose to have link for every new article (or every page that is interesting in corresponding Wikipedia) on both Malayan & Indonesian. I think from now on I'll start clicking "Recent Changes" in Malayan Wikipedia more often. :-)

-- Vyasa 11:32, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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No: Both will grow in time

Internet usage is still relatively low in Malaysia, especially amongst the Malay speaking population. Concepts such as open source and open content are relatively young. On the positive side, I work for an organisation called MIMOS which is involved in ICT development and Policy here in Malaysia. The top management is very well aware of the advantages of collaborative models such as open source and open content, and the need for local content material. The CEO mentioned Wikipedia to me the other day. So it is likely that in the fullness of time, either tools such as wikipedia for education will be promoted here in Malaysia, or possibly, Government funds may directly be allocated for improving / building such collaborative tools. I say keep the languages separate, a merge of Indonesian and Malay will cause long term problems. The smaller languages will catch up in the fullness of time. Imran William Smith, 161.142.100.81 08:44, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)