[Oct 13 update] A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

[swam260]

Hello Bulbapedia and Encyclopaediae Pokémonis,

I’m the creator of 神奇宝贝百科 ( http://wiki.52poke.com/ ), which is a Chinese Pokémon wiki under 神奇宝贝部落格 ( http://www.52poke.com/ ). The aim of 神奇宝贝百科 is to create a professional, community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia in Chinese. And all the time, we hope to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis.

We start 神奇宝贝百科 3 years ago, previously using MediaWiki. Due to some technology and performance issues that our previous hosting had, we began to refactor 神奇宝贝百科 and write our own program in early 2009. Since then, 神奇宝贝百科 grew fast, and now have articles about all (until Generation IV) Pokémon, Moves, Abilities, and dozens of articles about characters, locations and other Pokémon-meta.

In Apr 2010, we moved into a VPS server in Fremont this summer, we have much better resource and performance than before. In Aug 2010, we start to move back to MediaWiki platform, and we finished this work on Sep 1, 2010.

In September of this year, we have more than 50 updates everyday on average. In late September and October, we did our coverage of Black & White, and finished all articles of new Pokémon, Abilities and Moves.

Our superiority comparing to other alternatives:
* We choose our Creative Commons license at an early time, and now all articles in 神奇宝贝百科 are covered under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which is compatible with Bulbapedia and several other Pokémon wiki.

* We have a Standard (provided below) about translation of Pokémon terms, and we fully uses official Chinese(Mardarin) names of Pokémon, Moves, Characters, Abilities, Locations, etc.

* We have already more than 1600 articles and growing, covering all Pokémon, Moves, Abilities of Generation I to Generation IV, as well as all Items in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum.

* 52Poke.com is a outstanding Pokémon news sites in Chinese community, often refer as the most reliable news source by Chinese fans.

In a word, 52Poke.com team and myself take 神奇宝贝百科 seriously for years, and we promise we’ll continually develop 神奇宝贝百科 with all our strength. We hope we could have a opportunity to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis. If there’s still any requirement necessary, we’ll give our full support.

Much thanks for reading this, we hope your response.

Appendix: the standard about translation of Pokémon terms
Online version: (Chinese)
http://wiki.52poke.com/wiki/译名标准

In this article, the term Official Translation is refer to the Chinese Pokémon terms used in products which published by a producer licensed from Pokémon-affiliated companies. These licensees are listed below.

Rules:
* The term Pokémon should be called 神奇宝贝.
* The names of No.001 to No.493 Pokémon in Natinal Pokédex should use Official Translation (Mardarin).
* If a term has only one Official Translation, which doesn’t have a wrong meaning, it should use the Official Translation.
* If a term has more than one Official Translations. Then it should use an Official Translation which is closest to its origin meaning, used most widely, or fit the usual practice of Modern Standard Chinese most.
* The names of Generation V Pokémon which don’t have Official Translations should use Katakana directly.
* If a term doesn’t have an Official Translation, and the Japanese term could be spelled in Kanji, and the Kanji has the same meaning in Chinese, then it should use the Kanji.
* If a term doesn’t have an Official Translation, and both the Japanese and English term use words of foreign origin, then it should use phonetic transliteration of its Japanese term.
* If a term doesn’t have an Official Translation, and it could be paraphrased easily, then it should use paraphrase. Otherwise it should use phonetic transliteration.

Licensed producers and sellers:
* Top-Insight International Co., Ltd (HQ in Taipei)
* Shanghai Viz Communication Inc. (a Shogakukan office)
* Shanghai Good Music Entertainment Co., Ltd.
* 亞米可實業有限公司
* Jilin Fine Arts Press
* Ching-win Publishing Group
* 21st-Century Publishing House
* Pro-Insight International Co., Ltd
* Toys “R” Us

 

[Archaic]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Thanks for your post Swampert Ilex. We'll get back to you as soon as possible, after we've had a chance to confer with some of the other Encyclopaediae Pokémonis website owners. I certainly have to say though that your request here has impressed a lot of our people.

 

[Archaic]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

A question for you from Filb (of filb.de and pokewiki.de). Do you have a recent changes feed on there at all?

Also, I should let you know that we'd all probably prefer if you could go back to MediaWiki, mainly because it might actually be a bit difficult to do the interwiki links between our existing MediaWiki's and non-MediaWiki software.

 

[Kavidun]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Though our home-made wiki program is less functional than MediaWiki, we still support MediaWiki-style entries, categories, code. And all registered users are able to create new articles and upload new images, as approved users can modify articles, create categories, etc. I can also modify the program myself if any new function is required.

While I am not in any authority here, I have a quick question which may help Archiac or Encyclopedia Pokémonis, shouldn't it be so only Approved users can make new articles, as a Spam-Bot could easily make hundreds of new articles, and if it Joins Pokémonis it will get popular and thus more at risk. I needn't remind Bulbapedia of The Great Turkey Shoot...

 

[White Len]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

I'm pretty sure that isn't the case with Bulbapedia or any of the other Pokemonis sites.

 

[swam260]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Thanks so much for interest and concerning.

And here's the recent changes feed: http://wiki.52poke.com/recent.php
Articles doesn't have modify time are produced by special templates (Pokémon, Moves, Abilities, Items, CDs), contributors involved in these work are listed in the About page.
Also because this system only save the last revision, only the latest changes of an entry is listed on this feed.

According to this, it's easy to make Interwiki with 神奇宝贝百科, since our URLs are compatible with MediaWiki.
I tried “INSERT INTO interwiki SET iw_prefix='zh', iw_url='http://wiki.52poke.com/wiki/$1', iw_local=1, iw_trans=0 ;” and that's OK. I'll also do some quick work on my program to support interwiki links with other wikis.

In addition, we already began our work to switch to MediaWiki , but it may take weeks to do works like write templates and config caches. In the mean time, we'll continue our work on our current 神奇宝贝百科.

 

[Chao]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

I'm not in any authority here either, but I do have a question. Since there are two different writing system in Chinese, is it possible to have another version that uses traditional Chinese, similar to that of the Chinese Wikipedia (维基百科/維基百科)? I think that it may be important, since not everyone (such as myself) is used to simplified Chinese. If not, then please disregard this comment.

 

[Archaic]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

It may be possible, yes. Cantonese (simplified) and Mandarin (traditional) are commonly considered two separate languages.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

It may be possible, yes. Cantonese (simplified) and Mandarin (traditional) are commonly considered two separate languages.

You have it backwards there...

But, I don't really see the point in having a separate traditional Chinese site if it's going to be in Mandarin as well. In that case, you can just use the same trick the Chinese Wikipedia uses to automatically translate between the two character sets.

On the other hand, I'm not sure there would be much of an audience for a Cantonese site...

 

[Zekurom]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

You have it backwards there...

Well, really, traditional Chinese is still sometimes used in China. Cantonese is not the only language that uses traditional Chinese as a script.

But for those purposes, yes, it is backwards.

But, I don't really see the point in having a separate traditional Chinese site if it's going to be in Mandarin as well. In that case, you can just use the same trick the Chinese Wikipedia uses to automatically translate between the two character sets.

I assume that some of the actual words will be different in Cantonese - transliterations, for example. Although, if you get the template right, it wouldn't be a gargantuan problem...

(Disclaimer: Neither am I in any authority.)

 

[swam260]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Thanks again for the replies.

Mediawiki has a feature to automatically convert between Traditional Chinese(Zh-Hant) and Simplified Chinese(Zh-Hans). They are only about Writing System. Both Taiwan and China Mainland use Mandarin(or Modern Standard Chinese, it's about pronounce system), but Taiwan use Traditional Chinese, while China Mainland use Simplified Chinese.

Most Chinese users can read and know both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. And most Chinese users use Mandarin, users of Chinese divisions (Cantonese, Wu Chinese, etc) can also read and know Mandarin. The reason that Wikipedia has Cantonese, Wu Chinese, Classical Chinese is mainly to protect these language from fading away.

The Standard Chinese version of Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) is one wiki but use both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, articles could be easily converted depending on the visitors' selection.

For 神奇宝贝百科, we use Mandarin (since it's the official language in China Mainland, Taiwan, Singapore) and Simplified Chinese now. Since we're converting to MediaWiki, we'll support the auto-convert feature of MediaWiki and use both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. For editors, we both accept Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

For which translation to use, I detailed it in the post above.

A update on this request:
We're now moving to MediaWiki to meet the standard of Encyclopaediae Pokémonis. And we're trying to finish this work (move all 1600+ articles) before the Japanese release of Black & White.

The progress could be seen on http://wiki-beta.52poke.com

If there're any questions or requirements, please reply or contract me. Thanks.

 

[Afrael]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

A question, what would be a correct translation/transcription of the name of the wiki for those of us not familiar with Chinese language?^^

 

[Zekurom]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

A question, what would be a correct translation/transcription of the name of the wiki for those of us not familiar with Chinese language?^^

神奇宝贝百科 = "Pokemon Encyclopedia".

Literally, 神奇宝贝 means "Amazing babies" or "Amazing treasures", but in this case, it would mean something along the lines of "Amazing creatures" or, contextually, "Pokemon".

百科 means "encyclopedia".

 

[Chao]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

神奇宝贝百科 = "Pokemon Encyclopedia".

Literally, 神奇宝贝 means "Amazing babies" or "Amazing treasures", but in this case, it would mean something along the lines of "Amazing creatures" or, contextually, "Pokemon".

百科 means "encyclopedia".

宝贝/寶貝 (bǎobèi) also means "darling" (can't forget that), but I'm going with "creatures". 神奇 (Shénqí) also means "magical" or "miraculous" (It's in my username!). For those who can't read, 神奇宝贝百科 is read as Shénqí bǎobèi bǎikē (pinyin) / Shen2 ch`i2 pao3 pei4 pai3 k`o1 (Wade-Giles).

Edit: Just another quick question, is the wiki currently accepting new editors?

 

[swam260]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Yes, it's Pokémon Encyclopedia.
神奇宝贝 is the official Chinese translation of Pokémon, and used in Standard Chinese version of Pokémon Anime, Pokémon Adventures(神奇宝贝特别篇), and pokemon.co.jp.

We accept new editors, thanks.

 

[Zekurom]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Shénqí bǎobèi bǎikē (pinyin) / Shen2 ch`i2 pao3 pei4 pai3 k`o1 (Wade-Giles).

It can also read "shen2 qi2 bao3 bei4 bai3 ke1" if we take the pinyin accents literally.

 

[TTEchidna]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

And they say English is difficult!

 

[swam260]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis

Thank you all for the replies: )

A update:
We have now migrated all Pokémon, Moves, Abilities entries to our new wiki on http://wiki-beta.52poke.com, as well as some cities and many new articles. We also have done the configuration work to support Simplified/Traditional Chinese convert (just move the mouse near “页面 | 讨论” and select).

We'll finish the migration within next week, and officially move the MediaWiki-powered new wiki to our main address (wiki.52poke.com).

I wish to continue hear considerations and questions about this request from Encyclopaediae Pokémonis members, thanks again.

 

[swam260]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis (Sep 1 update)

As promised in the last post, we have finish the migration to MediaWiki today, and the new version of 神奇宝贝百科 (Shénqí bǎobèi bǎikē) is online on http://wiki.52poke.com/. The recent change feed is here like all other MediaWiki-powered wikis.

A detailed introduction of 神奇宝贝百科 is here (Chinese).

We wish to hear other considerations or requirements from Encyclopaediae Pokémonis members. Thanks.

 

[TTEchidna]

Re: A request to join Encyclopaediae Pokémonis (Sep 1 update)

Ooh. Roundycorners.