Quote from: weisoq on December 22, 2013, 01:47:07 PM

Thats not what its about at all. I don't think there's any particular reason why it can't be done, it's that pragmatically it's very difficult to do properly. There are currently people involved in signing up writers, others who vet articles for plagiarism and general copy, others who categorise and organise the site, others who administer marketing and revenue, others who host and maintain it. That's all to build the site as a repository, supporting open-source content and more recently revenue generation to be able to put back into building devcoin and what it's about. And thats still not yet enough.

The main aspect is that Devcoin is about open-source. This extends to Devtome. This means there's an issue of copyright. A text written in a foreign language, if it's your own, and translated would be fine in principle. But does an english translation of a german text written by somebody else breach the original author's copyright? Probably. The same problem exists for submitting foreign language writings. There has to be a means of ensuring they're original because once on Devtome it's open-source, and this will take a pretty significant number of people to monitor - many more than now.

People can offer to translate from german to english, if anybody's interested in taking them up on it: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_translators

Even on translations, that has to work in the same way as for submitting english work. You can't just take a foreign language text, translate it word for word into english and submit it as original. Checks on this aren't perfect, but there are checks. But existing foreign language articles could be improved upon and submit as 'collated' which means it's based on another article, but rewritten in your own words with improvements, or bringing together various sources for example - and making it clear what those sources/original articles were.

It's still quite early days with devtome. I'm not sure what to say except that as a project started by english speakers it's going to take a while until there's enough of a trusted foreign language base to translate and check articles. You may be open, honest and understand the ethos of open-source but not everybody is. As you can probably imagine people are quite hot on checking that other's aren't abusing the system with complete nonsense, effectively giving a growing foundation of accountability. Even then it's still sometimes necessary to delete/edit writings. That's difficult enough in english and just not possible in other languages until more non-english natives get involved over time.

As Devtome is evolving from simple earnings for words to earnings for quality and readership, that builds the system towards one that might later be able to incorporate more. But imagine if now it was open to all languages without a base of global native speakers with the added ability to actual vet the submissions. Id guess even wikipedia had to begin in one language.

Thanks for trying to clarify.

I still don't understand it 100%, but new (more general and not necessarily related) questions arise, since I consider myself still a devcoin-noob.

For example this link you gave : http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_translators

I have no idea how I could have ever found this link on my own. What other devtome-site does link to this specific subsite?

That is one of the big problems I have with devtome. I understand there is a lot of knowledge hidden in it, but I really struggle to find all the right articles and lists, because there seems to be no suitable structure behind it, to make it easy for me to find the information I am looking for.

For example I can't even make out on devtome where the separation line is between the wiki-style articles and all the devtome-related articles and discussions that are going on.

Also when is something true content (like a wiki article) , and when is it more like a news-piece / opinion of somebody (like for example http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=what_does_dogecoin_teach_us)
I can't imagine to see http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=what_does_dogecoin_teach_us ever on wikipedia, because it wouldn't meet the criteria, it is not a descriptive article, but rather an opinion.
Seriously? "What does dogecoin teach us?" could never be in an encyclopedia, but it can sure be a blogpost or a small slant in a newspaper...
So does devtome just lump all the content together in one place? Encyclopedia-articles mixed with slants, blogposts and poems? Is there a structure to separate inbetween those categories?

Also why does no article at all mention any source whatsoever? No links, no referalls, no sources. Is this the basic rule? To NOT post anything?
I understand that a poem I write does not need any citation. But an article about the WW2 sure does.

I still haven't grasped what devtome tries to achieve (other then distributing DVC to the participants)... is it more a wiki (encyclopedia) or more just text-submits of all sorts (for example I could write a poem or fiction)

If devtome wants to have both, it really should separate those content styles.

I will need more time, I admit I am a little confused. But it's quite a struggle...

(sorry for this messy deranged post, I am just reflecting my state of mind, lol)