99sobi
1
Hey all,
I was just wondering what the consensus on the {{notinenglish}} template was.
Personally, I feel that the template shouldn’t be slapped onto every non-English article. The majority of non-English articles are simply spam articles and should be tagged {{speedy}} and nothing else. A quick run in Google Translate can help differentiate between a spam article and a genuine how-to article that should be posted in another version of wikiHow.
That’s what I think but I wanted to know if there is precedent for this.
Thanks.
Yes, I’ve noticed many russian for example spam article that have the template.This is true, I always go on google translate for those articles and see if it’s spam or vandalism or not.
It usually is.
I agree with you, Sobi.
system
3
I agree, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to add {{speedy}} to any article not written in English if you can determine it’s just spam.
I went through the Not in English category, and NFDed anything that matched the deletion policy. I deleted a few others that were blatant spam.
SarahB
6
I also do a language check and add the correct nfd template but also add the not in English template and out of courtesy tell the user of both.
Batreeq
7
The template is used to mark articles that aren’t in English, but I honestly think it’s not that important for spammy/NFD articles as long as they are tagged appropriately with {{speedy}} or {{nfd}}, so it’s what you want to do. Pro tip: In Google Chrome, right-click on the page and click “Translate to English” to quickly translate the article.
I mean, honestly, does it actually hurt to have it there? Idealy, it shouldn’t be there, but is it worth putting resources into maintaining that?
system
9
Hi Pugle,
It’s not an insult, nor a slap. It’s actually a useful tool for the site.
We categorize them as “not in english” so someone at the wikiHaus can transfer them over to their language project if we have a sister site in their language.
https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Language-Projects
Some are not spam. But where do i find the category for articles not in english?
Yeah, I have noticed that many of the articles that are not in English are either vanity articles, advertisement, or not a how-to. I used Google Translate to try to translate the articles to English, and go through them. Some that are legitimate that can grow, I translated them.
