You can tell a lot about a language from WIKIPEDIA

Bangla   Wed May 13, 2009 4:02 pm GMT
My native language is Bengali and therefore, you can assume that I am not bias toward any European languages. I mostly looked at Spanish, German and French Wikiepdias.

German: Even though German language have lot of information; however, vast majority of the information are not cited. German has second most articles after English but the depth of articles are not good. German wikipedia has the least cited materials from all the languages that I looked into; even the featured articles are not cited extensively like the English or French. German Wikipedia is not organized (ie putting articles on categories, setting up different projects to target related articles). German tend to borrow English and other language's vocabulary words compare to other major European languages (probably except for Italians). German usually borrow English words when describing technological or scientific terms that the world normally use (ie I view this as a positive).

Spanish: I was kind of disappointed in Spanish Wikipedia. More than half of materials on Spanish Wikipedia directly copied/translated/pasted from English Wikipedia and other language Wikipedias. Even most of the featured Spanish articles are copied and posted from English articles. For example, Spanish Wikipedia did not upload a single image; they use images uploaded to the other language Wikipedias like English, German and French Wikiepdia. Spanish language articles tend to be good at Spanish related stuff but not good on other stuff. It is not very organized.

French: I was highly impressed with French Wikipedia. I would rank French Wikipedia to be the second best after English. French Wikipedia is highly organized (ie categorized, setup different projects to target related articles and etc). French Wikipedia articles have high degree of depth. Unlike many other Wikipedia's, French Wikipedia do not copy/paste from English Wikipedia as much (even though there are lot of articles that copied and pasted from English articles) as other language Wikipedias do. I was highly impressed with featured articles because they are highly cited and are really good articles, many of them are even better than the English featured articles.

Portuguese: More than 3/4 Materials are copied/translated/pasted from English Wikipedia and other language Wikiepdias.
bangla   Wed May 13, 2009 5:32 pm GMT
bump
bangla   Wed May 13, 2009 5:32 pm GMT
bump
w   Wed May 13, 2009 5:51 pm GMT
How good is the Bengali version of Wikipedia.
bangla   Wed May 13, 2009 6:20 pm GMT
<<< How good is the Bengali version of Wikipedia. >>>

There are more 200 million native Bengali speakers but the racist software developers (especially Microsoft) constantly trying de-promote Bengali and thus, trying to make Bengali speakers learn English. For example, you can't read Bengali fonts without downloading special font software yet Microsoft support more than 50 different scripts. Even if you download the font software, it is hard to read Bengali on Wikipedia because the font size is too small. Bengali language is yet to have their keyboard. Hopefully, I will be lucky one to invest in Bengali computer industry and become a billionaire.

With all those problems, Bengali Wikipedia is thriving. Bengali language has more depth than Polish, Japanese, Dutch and more image than Spanish. Give another 20 years, Bengali Language will dominate the internet.
bangla   Wed May 13, 2009 6:27 pm GMT
Best of all, Benagli Wikipedia do not copy/translate/paste from English Wikipeida like 90% languages do. Every Bengali article is original material since there is not any translation softwares exist Bengali and English or other languages.
alphabetitis   Wed May 13, 2009 6:31 pm GMT
<<For example, you can't read Bengali fonts without downloading special font software yet Microsoft support more than 50 different scripts.>>

I'm using Windows XP, IE6 and no special software, and this webpage seems to display OK:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/bengali.html

Maybe I'm not seeing real Bengali characters on the screen (that would be impossible to tell, of course, unless you know Bengali)?
blanc   Wed May 13, 2009 8:13 pm GMT
just ignore him

He's just another idiotic troll
Blank invitee   Wed May 13, 2009 8:25 pm GMT
"German has second most articles after English but the depth of articles are not good."

I do not agree.

Both French and German Wikipedia are of equally very high quality.
French is second to English ar for number of pages, German is second as for number of articles, and both display a remarkably reliable content.

French and German can be described as "legacy culture languages".
They still enjoy therefore a special Wiki-status.
Bangla   Thu May 14, 2009 4:37 am GMT
<< I do not agree.

Both French and German Wikipedia are of equally very high quality.
French is second to English ar for number of pages, German is second as for number of articles, and both display a remarkably reliable content.

French and German can be described as "legacy culture languages".
They still enjoy therefore a special Wiki-status. >>>

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

Look at depth of each language in the link that I gave you above. German has a depth of 83 and where French have a depth of 119. Even though French have less articles than German, French has more number of pages (about 1/3 more) than German; how is that possible? French Wikipedia is very organized, categorized unlike German and many other languages. The main problem I have with German Wikipedia is that most of articles including featured articles lack proper citations. One thing I love about German Wikipedia is that they tend to have materials on things that are far out from Germany where French Wikipedia and other Wikipedia tend to only focus articles that are related to them somewhere or something that they have heard. For example, German might have a nice article on a popular TV star in Bangladesh or popular TV show in Bangladesh but many other Wikipedia (including French) would never have such articles.
Ataturk   Thu May 14, 2009 1:52 pm GMT
Depth of Turkish Wkipedia is 124, so it's quality is better than French and German wikipediae.
Guest   Thu May 14, 2009 2:10 pm GMT
it's interesting to note for example that Polish Wikipedia, despite having more articles than Spanish (600 000 vs 400 000 more or less), has depth 10 whereas Spanish has 108. This demonstrates the spurious use people give to Wikipedia. In the case of the Polish Wikipedia there must be people who are interested in opening articles but not good articles really. Maybe they want to make Polish appear as "important" because it has many articles. This leads me to think that maybe Wikipedia does not prove at all how languages are, but in reality how subject to manipulation the Wikipedia is.
CommonAswhole   Thu May 14, 2009 2:17 pm GMT
Turks also claim they're related to the Etruscans and the certain Celtic tribes have Oghuz ancestry. Retard nation.
nonwikian   Thu May 14, 2009 4:40 pm GMT
<<Depth of Turkish Wkipedia is 124, so it's quality is better than French and German wikipediae. >>

Apparently, this "depth" metric is indicative of the amount and quality of the Wiki-type collaboration, not the academic quality of the articles.
Guest   Thu May 14, 2009 4:44 pm GMT
Nobody supposes academic quality to any Wikipedias.