Re: Wikilegal-l Digest, Vol 3, Issue 4

I have troubles following this whole conversation, so
I hope you will clarify what is decided in the end.

But I wanted to mention two things

First, most translations from one language to another
are not indicated as such, hence stripping entirely
the original authorship.

Second. I have been trying to work on the ecology
article for about a month now. Since it is (to my
opinion) an important article (I mean quite central of
the topic), I had the weakness to desire it to be in
good english, not the bad english I put on most
articles. For this reason, I asked a couple of people
to help me with the translation, and while one was
available on line at the same time than I, I put a
paragraph in french in the english article to be
translated. 

In so doing, I was notified it was very bad behavior,
because an article had to be readable at any minute.
I will not say anything of the state of some edit war
article :-)
I understand the point quite well, and though it is
not mentionned anywhere as a rule, I now comply in
never adding anything in french, but in putting
everything as hidden text instead.

I may mention that french wikipedia tolerate quite
well that some articles are work in progress and may
have some english in them temporary.

But anyway. I do not put french visible any more.

In so doing, no one sees there is something to help
translating, so I regret this. It also make section
edition impossible (as the hidden text is considered a
section). And of course, it is harder to translate
without seeing anything of the result.

Two people mentionned to me I was doing it the wrong
way.

First one told me I should write in english directly.
I will not comment that point at all.

Second that the text should be translated off line,
and then posted. Or third, that the french content
should be posted on the talk page, someone would
translate it and post it in the article.

In second and third options, my contribution utterly
disappear. I wrote about 90% of the current article
(part french, part english), but if I ask someone to
help with the translation (which is also a creative
contribution naturally), the translator is referenced
as the unique author of the text, and me a
no-participant, except for tiny fixes of links.

And if I post the translated article myself, the
translator contribution does not appear at all.

So, on one hand, I have been told I do illegal things
when I merely copy a three lines article to a new
article, mentionning I am not the original author,

And on the other hand, I am told it would be best that
I limit myself to editing the talk page, let someone
translate the text, thus loosing all authorship on it.

So ??? What ???



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