Talk:Freistil

Article wishes & feedback

Untitled

Longing for a text about that particular interest of yours? Seen something on TV that you'd now like to read about in German? Got a soft spot for some local German speciality? Then this wishing well is for you. Click on the "+" button on the navigation bar on top of this page, drop in your thoughts and we'll see what we can do.

This is also the place to give general feedback about what you like and dislike about this project. As all wikibooks, Freistil is a "living" project and you as a reader can directly influence its development. Since we're not getting any feedback from sales figures, as do authors and publishing houses, we're glad about any comment that shows us this book is actually being read.

German dialects

For me, it's interesting that German has so many different dialects, even in one country. I know it's a very broad scope, so perhaps there may be a series of articles, each one about one region (not neccessarily for every land, but for regions which have their own dialect). I imagine these articles could give some of most interesting expressions in local dialect compared with High German equivalents, together with some historical background. If a text gets too long, there could be one day break after it (so that the author won't have to write too much and readers have time to read the whole ;-). I would like to see Lower German, Saksisch and Berlin dialect plus Austria and Switzerland (when I learned German in school noone told me that they don't use sharp "s" in Switzerland). Oh, when it comes to writing - I have heard something about a special way German people were once taught to write by hand and you can recognise native German speaker by the way he or she writes "z" letter (with horizontal line like z).

Plus perhaps small languages like Romansh, Frisian, Luxembourgish. I'm also interested in Sorbs in Germany. --Derbeth ^talk 18:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have contacted Wikipedian groups about the dialect issue. As I live in Heidelberg, I can only provide correct information about my home dialect Kurpfälzisch. There are indeed several differences when it comes to writing: the "z" always with horizontal bar, the "1" always with diagonal upper end, varying quotation marks „ and “ instead of " and ', different lengths of dashes – — and usage of blanks before and after them and last but not least the additional letters ä, ö, ü and ß. Over the years, script was subject to various reforms. Today, young people learn a simplified basic script and can barely read their grandfathers' Sütterlin-cursive. We will certainly have a set of texts about local German differences in language. I am not familiar with Sorbs though, and will look out for someone else who could do that. --Bitbert 16:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Look

I think that marking words having translation with blue colour is a bit embarrasing, as usually hyperlinks look like this. I find italic text or light gray underline a better solution. --Derbeth ^talk 09:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

On Talk:Freistil/Participate there has already been a discussion on this topic:

I would like to suggest some other visual identifier (probably color) in addition to (or possibly instead of) italics that would encourage people to mouseover the words while they read. This would aid in learning how to use the book without having to read the "how to use this book" page (which I suspect would often be skipped). Kellen ^T 17:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't stick to italics, only the markup must not distract the reader. I could imagine either a dark colour similar to that of links, i. e. dark blue or dark purple, or some sort of underlining, both of which could encourage people to hover their cursor. Maybe some changing visual key like the regular link markup would do as well. --Bitbert 20:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I have tried underline and dark blue color, and I think color markup works better. Let me know about your thoughts. --Bitbert 20:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In the German mirror project, the item lately has been addressed, too, with no conclusion up till now. --Bitbert 08:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Freistil/Participate. --Derbeth ^talk 18:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Advertising

If you know any internet portals for learning German, you can try to add link to Freistil there. You can also add it to some web directories. --Derbeth ^talk 09:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Article

I don't see any sense in giving license of image used in article. It only produces information noise and distracts readers from what is really important. You can find all neccessary details about a photo by entering its description page. I also don't see much sense in informing what license Wikinews is using. People who are curious about it can follow a link to the original text. --Derbeth ^talk 15:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The licence information is intended to be on the safe side with the licenses' requirements, not to help the reader access any data. Both Creative Commons licenses require the instance reusing a piece of work to name the licence itself. I am not an expert in copyright law, so I decided to rather give too much information than to risk a legal row. If you find that piece of text too disturbing, we can either change the layout or try and see someone at Wikibooks or Wikipedia who is more proficient in legal issues. In my eyes, the surplus rather makes the text more trustworthy, as it shows that someone actually spared a thought on the copyright issue. --Bitbert 16:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

But it's completely absolete to provide license for images if it can be checked by clicking on the image. --Derbeth ^talk 18:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)