User:EVula/opining/The Zen of Interwiki

still being written

I have a reputation for being a prolific interwiki editor. This is something I'm rather proud of, but gets me a lot of "what the hell is wrong with you?"-type questions, not only from people in real life who I try to explain this to, but also from my fellow Wikimedians (and if they don't get it, the average person doesn't stand a chance).

What most don't understand is that I have a very, very strict philosophy regarding interwikis. Read on to better understand the Way of the Interwiki.

The Basics

EVula, what the hell are you talking about?

Firstly, this is my essay, not yours, so I'd appreciate it if you had a bit more tact. Thank you.

When I refer to interwiki links, I'm talking about the "In other languages" box that appears to the left of most pages (a good example would be Earth).

Why do all that work?

A common variant of this question is "what the hell's wrong with you?"

It is true that there are bots that help maintain the links. However, I'm wary to be 100% reliant on bots for most things; I routinely find things that they've missed, and so I take the opportunity to fix the links myself.

Having so many accounts also comes in handy for my various Commons- and Wikipedia-related administrative duties. For example, I use my accounts to fix duplicate images found at commons:Category:Duplicate,[1] or to add images from Commons to foreign-language Wikipedia articles that have either Fair Use images[2] or no images at all.[3] Often my edits will span across multiple projects (such as multiple Wikipedia editions,[4][5] Commons,[6] and Wikispecies[7]).

The Philosophy

Their purpose

Interwikis represent, to me, the purest essence of the Wikimedia Foundation's desire to present the sum of human knowledge to the world. Yes, we've got the information, but there are hundreds of languages spoken on our planet; what good is English to someone that only speaks Italian? By maintaining the interwiki network, I'm helping to bring us one step forward in presenting as much information as possible in as many languages as possible.

I'll admit that it sounds rather high and mighty of me, but that's pretty much it. ~~I should be committed~~ I'm strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge.

Operating in a non-English environment

I have very strict rules for my edits outside the English projects:

Never edit content. I'm there to modify interwikis and/or add imagery from Commons; typos, fixing disambig links, and other such content-modifying edits are totally outside my scope.
Use language-neutral edit summaries so that my language ignorance doesn't impair the ability of my fellow editors to tell what I'm doing.
- When adding something, I'll use a "+"; when removing, I use a "-". These are fairly universal symbols for adding and removing, so my edits are unencumbered by language.
- If I'm adding interwikis, I'll put that link in the edit summary.[8]
- If it's an image, I'll link to the Commons page for that image.[9]
- Language-neutral edit summaries get tossed out the window, however, if I'm editing in my own userspace, or if I'm doing something more complicated (such as reverting vandalism), or if I'm editing on a very, very small wiki where English is quite prevalent at the onset.
If I need to contact an editor, I'll put "[en]" in the topic to properly identify it as an English discussion.

I'm an outspoken critic of any non-English speaker who attempts to mix it up here. That may seem hypocritical of me, but if a non-English speaker comes and starts messing around, they need to be blocked for disruption; quite simply, if you're unable to contribute in a particular language, then don't try to do so.

Setting up shop

Before I make my first edit on a new project, I'll generally do the following things:

Now that single-user login is active, I no longer have to create an account, but that was the first step. I signed up for more than 370 projects before I unified my account(s).
Set up my preferences; date and time, show preview on first edit, put pages I edit on my watchlist, etc. Now that I can, I turn on the "get an email when your talk page is edited" option.
Localize my signature (EVula // talk //). Specifically, I change my "talk" link to whatever "talk" is in that language.
Save my generic userpage, replacing the "XXlanguageXX" text and adding a babel box to express to users that I can't read anything they write.
- I have all my foreign-language pages link back to my English userpage on that project. Generally speaking, I try to make the English userpages my "hub" to the rest of the languages. That way I only have to update a fraction of the userboxes when I receive a promotion somewhere.
- Just because I say "hey, look, I don't know your language" doesn't stop people from leaving me generic welcome messages. The few times I get welcomes in English are wonderful.

Beyond Wikipedia; Being a True Wikimedian

Wikipedia is, far and away, the largest and best-known project under the Foundation's umbrella. However, to truly follow-through with the pledge to make all knowledge accessible, one must work on the other projects as well. Wiktionary and Wikispecies are both full of important information, but that information has no place in Wikipedia itself. I behave myself on those projects as I do here and elsewhere.

The Matrix

Various musings about my ever-increasing usermatrix at m:User:EVula/matrix.

Why?

~~My massive ego must be satisfied~~ Keeping track of where I am and am not active is a logistical nightmare. Keeping track of all the accounts in a matrix makes it much, much easier to track my edits, and served as a method of verifying the identity of any "EVula" that may have registered on a smaller wiki (some English Wikipedia administrators had problems with impersonators).

Post-SUL

Now that unified login has been rolled out for administrators, people have asked why I still maintain my matrix. Several reasons:

Holy crap, it's a ton of accounts. I like looking at the list because it's pretty damn impressive to me. :)
Similar to how I edit around here ("here" being WMF projects), I do lots of small edits on a wide variety of other wikis. Listing them in my matrix is much easier than bookmarking them all, and allows me to access them from anywhere (I often edit from two different locations, home and work).
- This is the same reason I list out all my Wikia accounts; they've always had a unified login system, but I edit differently on each project (for example, I'm the local bureaucrat on one, while just a wikignome on others).
While the need to verify my name on Wikimedia sites is now non-existent, it's still good to verify who I am on third-party wikis (similar to what I noted above).
I need to be able to track where I've been. Sometimes I'll initiate discussions on foreign-language wikis, and I need to follow-up with them. Similar to #2, it's easier to refer to my matrix than bookmark every time.

I will say that having a unified account makes my life much, much easier when doing massive interwiki maps. I love it, but it doesn't entirely do away with the need for a user matrix.