Board Thread:Support Requests - Designing Your Wiki/@comment-842519-20130615142408/@comment-188432-20130625232531

Razorgirl wrote: Out of curiosity, should the Wikis created in other Languages have the same name, or should they be named as is appropriate to their language(s).

eg.


 * gotascent = Game of Thrones Ascent
 * es.gotascent = Juego de Tronos Ascenso

... Or should the Spanish version of the Wiki also be called Game of Thrones Ascent, or maybe Game of Thrones Ascent (español)? I'm coming a little late to this party, but I'd argue on the other side of Thisismyrofl's advice on this point. While Thisismyrofl is quite right to say that it doesn't technically matter whether, say, the Romanian version of your site has the same SITENAME as you, there are advantages to requiring it.

First of all, people will start multiple wikis about your topic in another language, just as there are multiple versions of topic wikis in English. Let's say you start a wiki on Peanuts and you call it w:c:peanuts. Well, maybe some disgruntled ex-user of your site splits off one day and starts up w:c:snoopy. If you insist that all your global partners have the same URL as you, then it'll be clear to others that w:c:it.peanuts is your Italian equivalent, and not the Italian version of w:c:snoopy.

Second, if everyone in the "Wikia Peanuts family" has the same URL base, then your users will know how to find your equivalents. The question, "Do we have a Spanish version?" is easily and immediately answered by typing in w:c:es.peanuts and seeing if anything's there. If you've just connected to wikis without regard to keeping a clean URL line, then you make it harder for users to discover your global "branches".

Third, it can complicate template work, if you create templates that help create inter-language links. If everyone has the same base URL then all you need to do is change the precedent language code — which can be very convenient as the ties between your branches grow.

Finally, note that you can insist upon the same base URL but still let individual branches be … individual. The notion of a URL mask allows wikis to have more than one working URL. For instance, we at w:c:tardis are actually w:c:doctorwho. And w:c:fr.doctorwho is actually w:c:docteurwho. So we neatly have around 10 partners, but none of them must use the English name. We only require that, in some way,  leads to them.

Ultimately editors have to create links between the wikis for the inter-language project to mean anything. If your bilingual Spanish/English editors are confused about how to get to the Spanish version, the chances of getting those inter-language links emplaced diminishes. And, insisting on having things named a certain way means that you will have had to have had some contact with the actual person running the other site. This means you'll have someone to talk to who you know is taking care of the non-English site. That personal connection likely means that the sites will become more intertwined as well.