#betacowork ; a great place to work in #Brussels

In time for #FOSDEM; #Wikimedia people were looking for a place to work, have great connectivity and talk shop. At BetaGroup Coworking we found a warm welcome, and experienced how its customers are provided with what they need. For us it was a white board and guess what, someone brought chocolate cake..

We found a quiet spot where we discussed the usability and the user interface of the Translate functionality. Having Jon Harald with us proved to be a boon. He did the project management for the Fundraiser localisations and brought us a large amount of observations and suggestions.

Having a white board allowed us to easily visualise our ideas and as easily replace them with something else, something better. Once we achieved a common understanding, Jon Harald's input was translated in a "user story" by Siebrand and this will eventually end up as more work for Niklas.

PS According to Jon Harald it is not cold ... not cold enough to wear a coat.
Thanks,
      GerardM

"I do not know the language" in more languages

When you have a user of every #Wikipedia, it is fairly obvious that on most Wikipedias you do not know anything of that language. When I provided this information on the Wikipedia in Haitian, the message came out in French.

This was wrong on many levels particularly because the localisation of the Babel extension in Haitian is hardly recent. It pre-dates the current release of MediaWiki.

The good news is that this bug has been fixed. We know that it affected the Babel extension but it would not surprise us when it affects other extensions as well.

When you find all of a sudden many more localisations available for your language, you can assume that it is because bug 33768 has been fixed by Roan.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Supporting a #language

There is a #Wikipedia in 280+ languages. However, not all languages are equal. Some of the languages are not recognised as languages. From a support point of view this is not good. We prefer to make use of information that is available in standards. When the standard bodies have accepted information about a language, we can be relatively certain that what we do will be exactly what is done by other applications.

For the "Normandian" Wikipedia, the language is not recognised. It does not mean that there is no support possible or available. The language can be localised at translatewiki.net. The language falls back to English but looking at the text, it may be better to have French as a fall back language. It is unlikely that we know about special needs like plural or if we need to address women using the grammatical female form.

We are reaching out to all our languages and we we aim to provide proper support to all of them. With "Nourmande" it is extremely obvious that we do not know what to do. It is unlikely that any of us has the literature that answers these questions and really, as each of our Wikipedias must have people knowing enough of their language to support us.

You can support us by becoming a member of a language support team. You can support MediaWiki by localising the software in your language.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia celebrating Februari 21

Every year the UN celebrates International Mother Language day. It is a moment to reflect on the many languages spoken and what we can do for their future in our society.

Some say that having a Wikipedia is one of the best ways of demonstrating the vitality of a language.  In a way it is. It is a place where a language is used to articulate all the knowledge in that language. When a subject is explained that is rather foreign to that language it is a challenge to cope. People manage by inventing new words or by borrowing from other languages.

Technically, we do need to know details about the grammar of the language, we need to know what script is used. These details are the same details that enable software developers to support a language in their application. This includes word processors, browsers. Everything you need to be active in this modern and increasingly digital world.

The Wikimedia Localisation team will host another "Office hours" on Freenode on February 21 2012 at 18.00 UTC. It will be a perfect time to discuss everything we do to support languages including web fonts, input methods, localisation. It will also be a perfect time to ask what you can do to support your language.

We want knowledgeable people to support us by being active in their "language support teams". We want them to verify what we do in MediaWiki and we want people to verify, append and amend what is known about a language in the standards like the CLDR.

Doing this for your language is what allows easy and obvious use of a language. It allows for information that is recognisable as being in your language. Helping you help your language is what we do. Helping you use your language is what we develop in MediaWiki.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Use #Mail not #Facebook

At the #Wikimedia Foundation we use open standards, free software and for what it is worth we do reach out to people using social media including Facebook. However, if you mean business, you truly want to get me to do something, Facebook does not provide me with the tooling that I need.

When you send me a message, a mail from within Facebook, I have to go into Facebook to read your message and possibly to reply. I do not have that mail in my mail environment. As a consequence I can not readily find it.

Facebook created in its mail a walled garden. I can use Facebook when I want to post some information, an opinion whatever. It is useless to me when people use it to send me mail; I cannot manage the information it contains.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A doctor a day keeps the #Apple away

The #Wikimedia Foundation is into education. Apple is in the business of making money, preferably to the exclusion of others. Recently it proposed "new educational" tools that were supposed to make for a rich educational experience.

There is nothing wrong with providing tools that will provide students with a rich educational experience. However, when it breaks the standards that allow for the cooperation on such an experience, combine this with a EULA intended to prevent further distribution it proves rotten to the core.

For me it is clear, Apple moved completely and utterly to the dark side. The benefit of its possible superior technology is completely offset by the negative impact it has on the rest of society. Apple used to compete and do well because of its superior products and its customers were willing to pay a premium for this. By excluding cooperation and interoperability, the Wikimedia Foundation cannot sign up to what have the potential of  becoming a great educational product. It is sad that it has been poisoned by unacceptable conditions.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Wikipedia for free in #Africa with #Orange

Orange is the first to sign up to Wikipedia zero. Our ambition is a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. It is really awesome that the 70.4 million customers of Orange will be able to access Wikipedia in 20 countries for free on their mobile phone. They are in Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Jordan, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda, Niger, Senegal, Congo and Vanuatu.

Obviously, many languages are spoken in all these languages. It will be particularly interesting to learn what the effect will be on the editor community. So far, most if not all editing is done on computers. With this new potential for growing our readers, the availability of content is what will limit our growth.

These are the languages spoken in Africa, the numbers however reflect global traffic. As you can see, the existing traffic for the languages native to Africa is still really small.

For the Wikimedians interested and involved in Africa, this is the time to write content for Africa. When this content is what people read, it now has much more of a potential to really make a difference in sharing the sum of all knowledge with every human being.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Facebook or #Google+

My mother decided not to look at her e-mail every day; it prevented her from doing things she likes more; reading a book. With so many options to procrastinate, I do not have too much time for either Facebook or Google+. I do need to follow up on news stories and to do that I use Google reader. I use it for a long time now and it works for me.

Recently the comments I used to add for people who followed me on Reader appear on Google+. This makes both Reader and Google+ more effective for me. People can share my comments and this has resulted in more people following me.

As it is easy and obvious to group people in one or more circles, I can target what to share with whom. It is not that I would not be happy to share this on Facebook, it is just that I do not care for Facebook that much. Personally I feel the same way about it my mother does about e-mail; I have better things to do.
Thanks,
      GerardM