Re: [Foundation-l] wiki for interwiki (was: Foundation too passive)
On 21/03/11 09:27, Andre Engels wrote: I guess I'm awfully inadequate at that then... Moving interwikis to a separate site is something that I first proposed back in 2002 (although then saying it was 'something for the (far?) future'), that has many community members and I think also developers behind it, and yet it's 2011 now, and it still seems that it will not be there in the near future. This idea still have my support Andre! -- Ashar Voultoiz ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] [Announce-l] Wikimédia France report for July - December 2010
Wow Adrienne, thanks a lot for the helpful overview. It is very enlighting for understanding what WMFR has been doing! Best, Lodewijk 2011/3/23 Adrienne Alix adrienne.a...@gmail.com Dear Chapters, Please find below the chapter report of Wikimédia France for July, August, September, October, November and December 2010. It is also available on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_France/2010-07-12 == Partnerships == === French National Library − BnF === After several years of talks, a partnership was concluded between Wikimédia France and the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France). Signed in April 2010, it consisted of two parts. First, an experiment in collaborative proofreading taking place on Wikisource, with the donation of 1400 books in the public domain, including scans and OCR text (automatically generated during the digitization process and prone to many errors, especially with old texts). Second, the exploitation of the authority files of the Library on Wikimedia projects. A team of three chapter members undertook the technical work. Three board members oversaw their work, acting as a steering committee, and interfaced with the Library staff; one acted as a Library Science and Wikisource advisor. Their work consisted in an extensive study of the formats used by the BnF and on Wikisource, and in the design and creation of a production line for the material. This line had to be able to sustain the sheer load of 1400 books, and handled the analysis and processing of metadata, format conversions, smart trimming and cropping of the scans, and preparation of a deliverable for the final upload to Wikimedia Commons. Because of the number and size of books, the actual upload was requested to WMF system administrator Tim Starling and was done in July. After that, the team produced various documents, help pages, project reports for the chapter, and a progress report. This last document contains fairly advanced statistical analysis of the characteristics of the proofreaders body, and the work done, making use of mathematical tools to measure the amount of work accomplished during the proofreading process. See the the hub-page on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BnF_%E2%88%92_Wikim%C3%A9dia_France_cooperation_project === City of Toulouse === As part of the partnership with the City of Toulouse, signed in October 2010, two projects were undertaken with local cultural institutions. The first one, named Phœbus project, was with the Muséum of Toulouse. It involved mobilizing Wikimedians to take high-quality photographs of objects in the non-permanent collections of paleontology and prehistory. The photographs taken in June by volunteers Rama and Ludovic were uploaded in November, and join the ones uploaded by Didier Descouens in April. More than 450 documents are available on Wikimedia Commons, many of which were assessed Featured Pictures, Quality Images or Valued Images. See on Wikimedia Commons the project page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Projet_Phoebus and the images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Supported_by_Projet_Phoebus The second project involved the Archives of the City of Toulouse, who contributed digitised photographs by its former curator, French naturalist, mountaineer, geologist and photographer Eugène Trutat. A Wikimédia France volunteer processed the extensive metadata provided by the Archives, in order to fit it into Wikimedia Commons auto-translated templates and provide accurate categorisation. The 200 resulting files hit Commons in December. See on Wikimedia Commons the project page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Archives_municipales_de_Toulouse the images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fonds_Trutat_-_Archives_municipales_de_Toulouse and brief Signpost coverage http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-10/News_and_notes#In_brief == Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 == On 3–4 December, Wikimédia France organised the « Rencontres Wikimédia 2010 » in Paris, in an annex of the Palais Bourbon, the building of the French National Assembly. The event aimed to gather as many cultural actors as possible to discuss new online collaborative practices and opportunities to take free access to culture a step further. The conference was part of the Glam-Wiki series, and included a series of talks and panels given by wikimedians, professionals from the cultural sector, local representatives, and representatives of government cultural agencies. See the detailed Signpost coverage http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-12-13/Rencontres_Wikimédia and Wikimédia France blog posts http://blog.wikimedia.fr/tag/rencontres-wikimedia-2010 == Activities == === Participation to international Wikimedia events === GlamWiki UK Five members of the chapter and staff Bastien
[Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
In the last few months i was deeply involved with several big translation projects for Wikimedia: The Fundraising, Sue's March Update letter, and the Editor's survey. What's common to all of them is that the original English texts were written without keeping localization in mind, or maybe not keeping it in mind *enough*. I wouldn't ask for such a thing from a poet or a journalist, but i would expect it from a writer of a text that has a particular function - to raise money from various countries, to describe the state of a multilingual community, or to conduct a worldwide research - and about which it is known that it will be translated to dozens of very different languages, each with a culture behind it. I can give several examples: ==Eternal September== Sue's letter links to the English Wikipedia article [[Eternal September]]. The fact that it's an English Wikipedia article is already a problem - for people who don't know English linking there is pointless. But there's more to it. Since the letter was published, it was translated to several languages, and some translators also went the extra mile to create the [[Eternal September]] article in their respective Wikipedias. Until here, all good. Now, i don't know about other languages, but in the Hebrew Wikipedia such articles are sometimes proposed for deletion, because they are about foreign expressions which are not used in Hebrew. I completely disagree with such reasoning and i created this article nevertheless, but the fact is that it happens and in addition to translating it could have had to jump through the hoops of a deletion discussion. This is only one possible implication out of many that are imaginable. I'm not telling the future writers of letters to the community not to link to the English Wikipedia; i'm just telling them to keep in mind that it may involve more than they think it does. ==WikiLove, Twinkle and Huggle== Sue mentions the WikiLove gadget in her letter. To the best of my knowledge WikiLove only works in the English Wikipedia, but the letter invites all readers to use it. Believe it or not, some Wikipedias don't even have barnstars. The survey mentions Twinkle and Huggle. These gadgets are also specific to the English Wikipedia. They were adapted to other projects, but not to all of them; for example, i couldn't find them in the very large French and Portuguese Wikipedias. Asking editors of these Wikipedias about Twinkle and Huggle is not just pointless, but patronizing, too. (This gadget thing is a part of a larger issue: gadgets development is not coordinated, even though many of them could be useful to all projects.) ==Gender in the survey== I already wrote about this: Surveys tend to be long lists of questions in the second person. This is not a problem in English, but in some languages the second person is strongly gender-dependent. IIRC, the translations are supposed to be finished by today. If the survey would be announced earlier, the translators would have time to write a feminine version and developers would have time to think of modifying LimeSurvey to actually support it. (Actually i haven't completely given up on it yet.) ==Nationality in the survey== The survey asks about Nationality. This term is not consistent even in English: it may mean the place of birth, the place of current citizenship, the genetic ethnic group, the national identity and other things. In Russian, my native language, the related word (национальность) refers *only* to the ethnic group. I happen to be aware of the ambiguity in English, so i bothered to ask about the precise meaning, but another translator - certainly, in good faith - translated it as ethnic group (i asked to correct it). And in the first place the survey should have been written as unambiguously as possible. ==Currencies in the Fundraising== In the Fundraising letters currencies were mentioned. These currencies are not relevant for the whole world. ==Repetition== Some texts are repetitive, for example whole sentences in the Fundraising letters and choose all that apply in the survey. But they aren't marked as such - they are just copied and pasted. MediaWiki has templates for that! Another thing that must be done to reduce repetitiveness is migrating to a proper translating platform instead of plain MediaWiki; see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28021 . I have many more examples of such problems. Of course, i understand that a writer in English cannot think of everything in advance and i don't want to stifle the creativity of the writers; and i do believe that there is creativity behind this texts, even though they are more functional than artistic. All i'm asking is to think about these examples and to remember that a. texts had to be translated. b. translation has more implications than you initially imagine. Thank you for understanding. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I
Re: [Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
Just to point out that that Huggle does work in the Portuguese Wikipedia, although it is not totally localized ( http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Huggle). I also felt that the letter was very specific to the English Wikipedia, which makes it hard to transmit the message to other languages. I ditto about gadget development. I know it is hard to know how things would work in many languages, but something could be done better to promote localisation. Not all communities have many programmers that can create these gadgets from scratch. User:GoEThe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] interwiki links
I can see the merit of having a central repository for interwiki links, currently an article like Barack Obama exists on well over a hundred versions of Wikipedia, so when each of the hundred projects that doesn't currently have such an article creates one there will be over a hundred bot edits to update all the other projects. As the smaller wikis create articles for core subjects articles with 100 interwiki links will become more and more common, having just two edits, one to the repository and one to the new article would be much neater. Assuming the central repository points both ways, it would also become easier to split apart groups where interwiki links are linking different people. I probably fix one or two of these a month that come up as anomalies via the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Death_anomalies_table At present if you have two people of the same name with articles on 7 projects you have to edit all 7 projects to split them into two projects with an article on one person and five with an article on the other, whilst with a central repository you would only need three edits, one centrally and two to the articles you were separating out. But how would this process handle situations such as the EN wiki article [[David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley]] having an interwiki link to the DE article on his late mother? Currently this comes up as a death anomaly because one is living but the other deceased. Would the central repository handle such linking by showing such links as redirected, or would we continue to have such anomalies? Or would DE wiki consider it an error to link these two articles? WereSpielChequers On 21/03/11 09:27, Andre Engels wrote: I guess I'm awfully inadequate at that then... Moving interwikis to a separate site is something that I first proposed back in 2002 (although then saying it was 'something for the (far?) future'), that has many community members and I think also developers behind it, and yet it's 2011 now, and it still seems that it will not be there in the near future. This idea still have my support Andre! -- Ashar Voultoiz -- Message: 2 Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:31:15 +0100 From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] [Announce-l] Wikim?dia France report for July - December 2010 To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Adrienne Alix adrienne.a...@gmail.com Message-ID: AANLkTi=J8eC0=9zx50pwjwozf73ljsdbybgee0fty...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Wow Adrienne, thanks a lot for the helpful overview. It is very enlighting for understanding what WMFR has been doing! Best, Lodewijk 2011/3/23 Adrienne Alix adrienne.a...@gmail.com Dear Chapters, Please find below the chapter report of Wikim?dia France for July, August, September, October, November and December 2010. It is also available on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_France/2010-07-12 == Partnerships == === French National Library ? BnF === After several years of talks, a partnership was concluded between Wikim?dia France and the French National Library (Biblioth?que nationale de France). Signed in April 2010, it consisted of two parts. First, an experiment in collaborative proofreading taking place on Wikisource, with the donation of 1400 books in the public domain, including scans and OCR text (automatically generated during the digitization process and prone to many errors, especially with old texts). Second, the exploitation of the authority files of the Library on Wikimedia projects. A team of three chapter members undertook the technical work. Three board members oversaw their work, acting as a steering committee, and interfaced with the Library staff; one acted as a Library Science and Wikisource advisor. Their work consisted in an extensive study of the formats used by the BnF and on Wikisource, and in the design and creation of a production line for the material. This line had to be able to sustain the sheer load of 1400 books, and handled the analysis and processing of metadata, format conversions, smart trimming and cropping of the scans, and preparation of a deliverable for the final upload to Wikimedia Commons. Because of the number and size of books, the actual upload was requested to WMF system administrator Tim Starling and was done in July. After that, the team produced various documents, help pages, project reports for the chapter, and a progress report. This last document contains fairly advanced statistical analysis of the characteristics of the proofreaders body, and the work done, making use of mathematical tools to measure the amount of work accomplished during the proofreading process. See the the hub-page on Meta http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/BnF_%E2%88%92_Wikim%C3%A9dia_France_cooperation_project === City of Toulouse === As part of the
Re: [Foundation-l] interwiki links
2011/3/23 WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com: But how would this process handle situations such as the EN wiki article [[David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley]] having an interwiki link to the DE article on his late mother? Currently this comes up as a death anomaly because one is living but the other deceased. Would the central repository handle such linking by showing such links as redirected, or would we continue to have such anomalies? Or would DE wiki consider it an error to link these two articles? It should be an error to link those two articles, but in reality links to a section in another language are quite common. I don't really have a clever solution up my sleeve, but putting the links in one place will likely make these situations easier to handle but allowing the editors to focus on content and ontology, without worrying about updating a long list of links in a lot of projects (and no, bots don't always help). -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
On 3/23/11 6:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: ==WikiLove, Twinkle and Huggle== Sue mentions the WikiLove gadget in her letter. To the best of my knowledge WikiLove only works in the English Wikipedia, but the letter invites all readers to use it. Believe it or not, some Wikipedias don't even have barnstars. All of these gadgets, including Wikilove, exist in other languages. Not mentioning them because they haven't been ported to every language would be a bit extreme. I also don't really understand your point about linking to 'Eternal September'. You say that you aren't suggesting that people not link to English Wikipedia, but then what is the point of your argument? Are you suggesting that we pre-translate every linked article into all 269 languages and then protect them all as well? Obviously that isn't very practical. Ryan Kaldari ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
Well, Amir, correct if i'm wrong. Ryan, what he is saying is that all we translate is 100% (or 90% in some cases) focused in English spoken world (in some cases only in USA). Which is good for you to read, but for us - with differents languages and complete differents cultures - create many translations / understanding problems. We are not asking to remove all english references, only to think a little bit more in how things can be understand by no english readers. _ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/ (351) 925 171 484 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer.*** 2011/3/23 Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org On 3/23/11 6:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: ==WikiLove, Twinkle and Huggle== Sue mentions the WikiLove gadget in her letter. To the best of my knowledge WikiLove only works in the English Wikipedia, but the letter invites all readers to use it. Believe it or not, some Wikipedias don't even have barnstars. All of these gadgets, including Wikilove, exist in other languages. Not mentioning them because they haven't been ported to every language would be a bit extreme. I also don't really understand your point about linking to 'Eternal September'. You say that you aren't suggesting that people not link to English Wikipedia, but then what is the point of your argument? Are you suggesting that we pre-translate every linked article into all 269 languages and then protect them all as well? Obviously that isn't very practical. Ryan Kaldari ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Editors survey and gender
Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i write two versions of the survey, for example Hebrew-masculine and Hebrew-feminine and let the reader switch it? The results can be combined later. Actually, this is technically possible in LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey has the ability to display a particular question based on the response to a previous question. So for instance, if question 1 was: Select your gender: * Male * Female You could then display different versions of any of the other questions based on the result of that question. Arthur ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Editors survey and gender
Actually, this is technically possible in LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey has the ability to display a particular question based on the response to a previous question. For the curious, documentation on 'conditional' questions in LimeSurvey can be found here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Setting+conditionsstructure=English+Instructions+for+LimeSurvey Incidentally, there's a 'Gender' question type available in LimeSurvey - documentation can be seen here: http://docs.limesurvey.org/Question+type+-+Genderstructure=English+Instructions+for+LimeSurvey Arthur ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
That makes sense. I agree that much of the Foundation's messaging is English-centric, although I know it is sometimes challenging to accomodate other languages and cultures, especially on a tight deadline (speaking from my experiences during the fundraiser). Obviously the Foundation has room for improvement here, and I agree that giving more notice would be a good first step. Regarding the Translate extension, what is the current status of this? Can the Translate extension interface with MediaWiki messages directly or only via i18n files? Has there ever been a proposal to turn on the extension for Meta (other than the Bugzilla bug)? Are there any blocking issues that would prevent this from being feasible? I'm also interested in improving the translation system for CentralNotice, so maybe the Translation extension could help. Ryan Kaldari On 3/23/11 10:53 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: 2011/3/23 Ryan Kaldarirkald...@wikimedia.org: On 3/23/11 6:17 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: ==WikiLove, Twinkle and Huggle== Sue mentions the WikiLove gadget in her letter. To the best of my knowledge WikiLove only works in the English Wikipedia, but the letter invites all readers to use it. Believe it or not, some Wikipedias don't even have barnstars. All of these gadgets, including Wikilove, exist in other languages. Not mentioning them because they haven't been ported to every language would be a bit extreme. It exists in some languages; I didn't count, but it probably doesn't exist in even half of them. Correct me if i'm wrong. The letter is addressed to community members in all language projects and it mentions Wikilove as if it was universal. Consider this wording: In the English Wikipedia there's a tool called 'WikiLove'; if your Wikipedia has it, try it; if your Wikipedia doesn't have it, consider adapting it. It's factually correct and constructive. Just saying Wikilove and linking to the English Wikipedia ignores the existence of other language projects. In the Hebrew translation i took the liberty to translate it accordingly and added this tool works only in the English Wikipedia in parentheses. (It works in some others, but i didn't have an easy way to find out in which ones, and in he.wp we don't hand out barnstars at all, although we are considering to start doing it.) Translators to other languages just translated that part word-for-word, leaving the readers confused. I also don't really understand your point about linking to 'Eternal September'. You say that you aren't suggesting that people not link to English Wikipedia, but then what is the point of your argument? Are you suggesting that we pre-translate every linked article into all 269 languages and then protect them all as well? Obviously that isn't very practical. Yes, it isn't practical. I'm not telling anyone to do that. I'm just asking people who write something that is supposed to be translated to keep that in mind. See the subject. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace. - T. Moore ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Editors survey and gender
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would be a high priority. It wasn't mislabeled, why would you think that it was? The nouns in many languages have genders, and the default for that case is almost always male. It's not very fair, but females are used to it. :-) It certainly wasn't mislabeled. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] please announce translations earlier
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: How much earlier should it be? I did Sue's letter mostly by myself and it took me two full days. That's right: two full days. It was announced two days in advance, so i spent an entire weekend doing it. I'm a hopeless Internet geek, but i do like to take a walk in the park every now and then. I definitely think that the letter was way too rushed, but that is not the norm. I can also understand the desire to try to be transparent and post notifications as soon as possible, so that's a different case. Keep in mind, though, that the banners weren't put up for the languages we were missing translations from until a few days later... so there was definitely more time than just two days. As for the Editors survey, there are several people working on the Hebrew translation of that gargantuan page and we still haven't finished. I understand that it's a lot, and I really appreciate how hard you guys have been working on it (I've been watching your progress). However, I'm not sure it's really fair to say that there wasn't enough time. The workspace was originally created on March 1, more than three weeks before the due date. It's true that the translation request wasn't officially opened until March 10, but that still left two full weeks to translate. It's also important to keep in mind that the majority of the translation requests are not needed immediately. Most of the pages, such as the ones on WikimediaFoundation.org can be done at your leisure. For the other requests, we *are* cognizant of the fact that people have lives and even if a translation might only take two hours to do, it might be hard for you to find two hours in a row to actually do it right away. We do try to give as much time as possible. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Editors survey and gender
Hoi, I have asked women from different communities about this, I have asked men from different communities about this. For some languages the compromise is not one of selecting either but using unnatural language. For some languages women indicate that not being addressed properly makes them less inclined to participate. In the Russian Wikipedia they use templates to show namespaces depending on the gender of the person involved. For quite a number of languages we are waiting for this software to be implemented in our live environment with ready localisations. Mislabeled suggest a choice. As a result of our ongoing ability to implement gender in the strings it is only now possible to have gender specific name spaces. We do not have the functionality yet to have logs that are gender aware. We do not have a tool yet to localise / proof read only those messages with gender functionality. Our internationalisation has improved considerably over time and we are better able to treat both men and women with the respect they are due. Thanks, GerardM On 23 March 2011 20:14, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Given the recent uproar at the discovery that the User namespace has been mislabeled for female editors for years, I would think that appropriately addressing people who have volunteered to take a (lengthy) survey would be a high priority. It wasn't mislabeled, why would you think that it was? The nouns in many languages have genders, and the default for that case is almost always male. It's not very fair, but females are used to it. :-) It certainly wasn't mislabeled. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] keeping localization in mind
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 2:50 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: Regarding the Translate extension, what is the current status of this? Can the Translate extension interface with MediaWiki messages directly or only via i18n files? Yes, it can be. See http://userbase.kde.org/Translation_Workflow for a working example. Has there ever been a proposal to turn on the extension for Meta (other than the Bugzilla bug)? Are there any blocking issues that would prevent this from being feasible? Well, getting it reviewed is a big first step, then the translation community would have to evaluate the current process and the extension and see what would be the best thing to do. I'm of the opinion that both wikis and the translation extensions are *tools* -- we should use whichever tool works best for that specific request. Like Amir says, the translate extension does have places where it's awesome: repetitive surveys, fundraising messages, etc. However, there are definitely cases where wikis work better, such as whole pages or letters. We also shouldn't ignore the fact that we have even more tools that we can evaluate. A few French users recently worked on the survey translation in Etherpad. This interface allows them to all translate the same time, in real-time, with all of their edits in different colors, and with a built-in chat feature. All of the tools have their own pros and cons, and we'll have to evaluate those. We might end up choosing one tool for one request, a different tool for another request, etc. A major step is getting the extension reviewed first, though. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] please announce translations earlier
2011/3/23 Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org: I definitely think that the letter was way too rushed, but that is not the norm. I can also understand the desire to try to be transparent and post notifications as soon as possible, so that's a different case. I'm not convinced that frontloading a waiting period and repeated calls for translation for something like the March 2011 update is the right way to go. It slows down processes, and without having an actual message out there providing context, it's not necessarily clear to translators why this or that translation project should be prioritized. In spite of no notice whatsoever, the letter was translated very quickly into quite a few languages, IMO in part _because_ anyone could see that it was a significant communication. On the other hand, I realize that it sucks to have an English message pushed out to other languages, and it's frustrating for translators especially who know they could have provided a translation if they had been given advance notice. Perhaps we could make CentralNotice more flexible so that users can choose whether they want to receive English messages or not. Then, if you're on e.g. German Wikipedia, you could have a choice between receiving the English update when it comes out, or waiting for a translation. The English message would then also act as a notice for translators, and for internal community newsletters and noticeboards that want to pick up stuff as it happens. Together with a more flexible subscribe/unsubscribe system for topics, this could help us to communicate more regularly and more quickly with our communities without annoying users who don't want to receive updates in a language they don't speak, or who don't want to receive any WMF messages at all. Regardless of how we go about it, I do agree that we need documented protocols for this that WMF, chapters and others can follow, so as to not surprise or burden translators, whose work is amazing and much appreciated. :-) -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
