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Difference between revisions of "Talk:Countries and regions"

(Latin vs South America)
(Language discussions)
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==Language discussions==
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I added a new column linking to the "Discuss this wiki" pages for different languages. Please revert if you don't like it.
 
 
 
I don't know which countries speak Portuguese vs. Spanish, so I could only fill in half the list.
 
 
 
Also, wouldn't it be better if these pages were titled in the discussion language, for example "Discuss this wiki in French" should move to "Discutez ce wiki en Francais" (or whatever an educated Frenchman would say)?
 
 
 
[[User:Steelpillow|steelpillow]] 12:13, 14 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
:(In Latin America, Brazil is the only country that speaks Portuguese.)
 
 
 
:The reason for non-English discussion pages having English titles is so that us English speakers can spot when someone's made a non-discussion page in a foreign language.  If someone makes a page called "ฟต์แวร์", I can't tell if that's ok or not.  I can't even tell if it's spam or not.  But if that page is "Discuss this wiki in Thai", then I know that's grand.  I'll still have difficulty separating spam from real discussion on that one page :-) but that's a risk I'll take.
 
 
 
:(FWIW: the original plan for dealing with other languages was that we'd soon have an fr.swpat.org, es.swpat.org, etc.  Seeing how much work it's been getting one wiki to this stage, I'm now wondering if there's a less ambitious / more achievable goal we could set for providing info in other languages.  Maybe this wiki should be in English and the endsoftwarepatents.org site should contain a few summaries which could be translated) [[User:Ciaran|Ciaran]] 12:22, 14 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
:I wonder what could be done to avoid encouraging non-English speakers to go to their own language page (although the blankness of the non-English pages implies this isn't an urgent problem :-) ).  The Portuguese discussion page is useful if there's a gang of Brazilians discussing a Brazilian topic, but if a Brazilian can speak good English, then for general topics, it would be best if they joined in the common discussion in English.  [[User:Ciaran|Ciaran]] 12:32, 14 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
::Well, I see several scenarios here, but I am not sure which one/s {{SITENAME}} has in mind:
 
::*'''{{SITENAME}} discussions''': Do we expect people to chat in say French before one of them writes up the outcome in English? I am not sure that non-English-speaking French people would dig that far into an English-language wiki.
 
::*'''Global campaigning''': Is there any value in an internationally-based sister site to {{SITENAME}} in any other language? Unless {{SITENAME}} gets constantly translated across, I cannot see such a site gaining anything like the same content.
 
::*'''Local campaigning''': A local campaign in say France would be conducted mostly in French. It is obviously impractical for us English-speakers to maintain a locally-focussed fr.swpat.org. IMHO the best we could do would be to offer fr.swpat.org wiki space to French speakers, on the basis that they maintain the content themselves.
 
::Once we are clear about our approach to other language speakers, then what to do about it should become clear too. [[User:Steelpillow|steelpillow]] 14:12, 14 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
:::A reading knowledge of English is quite common in many non-English-speaking countries.  Writing is harder.  If the [[France]] page is mostly being written (in English) by French-speaking people, then maybe it's best to let them conduct their discussions about France topics in French.  ...but this is all theoretical, since nobody's said anything on the other language pages.  For now, the only thing I think we can be sure of is that plans should start modest.  Making other-language wikis as campaigns tools might be good, with no anonymous posting and some good spam blocking software to minimise the need for maintenance.  I'm still thinking this over... [[User:Ciaran|Ciaran]] 00:37, 16 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
::::Makes sense.  Either these folk are ignoring us for a reason or they just don't know about what we offer. Maybe the next step could be to contact local FSF members/patent campaigners and start a dialog to see what they would find useful. 'Fraid that's out of my field though. [[User:Steelpillow|steelpillow]] 07:48, 16 August 2009 (EDT)
 
 
 
:::::I've been trying the outreach approach a bit already.  When I send out an ESP mail looking for info about a region, I usually search for related groups etc. and contact them.  I'll keep that up, but I think the path to victory is via making an important site that people point each other to and that people find via search engines.  I've started a page to attempt to monitor progress: [[en.swpat.org:Progress]]. [[User:Ciaran|Ciaran]] 08:46, 16 August 2009 (EDT)
 
  
 
== Patent offices of countries ==
 
== Patent offices of countries ==

Revision as of 08:46, 23 May 2011

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Patent offices of countries

I found a good list of patent office websites and just wanted to note it somewhere:

done. Ciaran 23:42, 26 August 2009 (EDT)