Words and what not

"I do not know the language" in more languages

2012-02-02T15:11:00.000+01:00

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

2012-02-01T07:16:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-30T15:14:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-30T14:10:00.001+01:00

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

2012-01-25T11:34:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-24T21:56:00.001+01:00

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+

2012-01-23T13:45:00.000+01:00

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

#Mifos in #Georgia

2012-01-22T11:56:00.001+01:00

One of the projects at translatewiki.net that has its own dynamic is Mifos. It does not just rely on the existing community of translators and it no longer relies on the Grameen foundation for further development. It is now developed by a community of developers with SolDevelo in Poland taking a lead role and implementing new features.

When you follow the translations for Mifos, you will find that the localisation for Georgian is well organised and largely done and that Mongolian is being started. At the same time, localisations in languages like Dutch, Hungarian, Khmer and Tagalog are doing fine.

Mifos is doing fine; its customers are asked for what they feel Mifos is lacking, there are several cloud implementations of the software and with a growing number of organisations implementing the software, more people have access to basic banking.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikimedia #Netherlands #NewYear reception

2012-01-22T10:31:00.003+01:00

The Dutch chapter organised its start of the New Year again in a Museum. What was not clear was that you had to register because there is a limit to how many people can have a tour at the same time. It was SO popular, that it was oversubscribed before this registered on most of us. The Teylers museum prepared a spectacular tour for us; it included a look at the first print of the Diderot and d’Alembert encyclopaedia.

For the Wikipedians this is obviously a treat: seeing the first Western encyclopaedia and knowing that Wikipedia is just the latest incarnation of what started in the Enlightenment is quite awesome.

At the reception it became clear how many of the regular Wikimedians were absent. However, when several of the people present participate in the Teyler's writing challenge, it will be proven well worth it.

Other subjects that were discussed were quite diverse as well;

a Geograph project for the Netherlands and combining this with the Wikimedia smartphone apps
statistics and whether the API data use is included
having pictures of persons on the Internet with or without names
...

All in all a magnificent start of the year for Wikimedia Nederland.

Thanks,

GerardM

#Testing, 123, testing, testing

2012-01-20T19:12:00.000+01:00

Testing #MediaWiki is fun. There are many, many Wikis and they are all different. Yes, we can create tests for a plain vanilla WMF Wiki. In reality they are all different. They are different because most have their specific modifications, their own gadgets. All have the potential to fail what passed the integration tests for plain vanilla wikis.

To known this, you have to have tests in the first place and the WMF Localication team is getting to grips with the testing platforms and building the tests that enable continuous integration.

Building tests is fun. You start with software that seems to be working perfectly and the tests prove that it has issues. This may sound odd, because it is not as if the software was not tested. A test that can be automated is validated in different ways. When a browser shows characters only a little bit different when comparing output, an automated test will catch this when it compares it to what is defined as correct. In many ways, automated tests test on a lower level then what humans do.

It is just that we do not have the humans to test over and over again.
Thanks,
GerardM

#DBpedia supports #WikipediaBlackOut

2012-01-18T17:03:00.001+01:00

#MediaWiki #I18N triage

2012-01-18T10:02:00.001+01:00

Today with the English #Wikipedia blacked out, there is still enough to do for the Wiki die hards. Obviously there are more projects than just the English Wikipedia; there are Wikipedias in other languages and there are other projects like Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikibooks all deserving attention.

When you rely on language technology and when you are interested in helping with the MediaWiki language support, you may enjoy joining the I18N triage that will be on IRC at 15:00 UTC. The planning was done in advance on an etherpad and we hope / expect that many people will chime in on both the planned and maybe even with unplanned issues.
Thanks,
GerardM

#WikipediaBlackOut for #Wikipedia

2012-01-18T08:58:00.001+01:00

Overcoming the #Babel effect

2012-01-16T21:41:00.000+01:00

One wonderful #Wikimedia tradition is to welcome newbies and as I am creating a lot of profiles, I am welcomed in many languages. Probably I am getting a lot of advise on what it is I am getting into, what I can do and how welcome I am to make a difference for that community.

On all my user pages I am adding Babel extension information. Not only do I indicate what languages I do speak, I also indicate that I do not speak the language that is local for that project.

Now that the Wikimedia Foundation is testing what messages send to users makes a difference, it seems obvious that a message in a language I do speak has a greater impact than a message in a language I do not know at all.

Asking for #Babel information is in a way exactly the same as asking people for their gender; it is to make sure that we address people in an appropriate way. There are plenty messages we want to share with our logged on users. Finding the best ones, translating them and using when appropriate will make me feel more appreciated, welcome and makes me more effective as well.
Thanks,
GerardM

#WikiLivres

2012-01-16T13:42:00.001+01:00

#Copyright is limited in time. The intention of copyright is twofold; it has always been a tool to curtail the distribution of information and it has been intended to extend the period an author can monetise exclusively a work authored by this person.

When you look at the politics of copyright, it is very much companies who insist on exorbitant measures to prevent activities they find objectionable. As they are not the beneficiaries of copyright, authors are, it places them as censors of the web; money is their objective. When you look at the track record of these companies and the organisations set up by them to do their dirty work, you find a long list of them not making payments to the authors whose rights they claim to protect. A great example are the compilation albums; the individual authors, bands almost never get what Big Content ought to pay them.

The situation is so stupid that it has been proven time and again that the people who download "illegal" music or movies are the same people who spend money buying DVD's or going to the movies. This does not prevent this industry to insist that people are "stealing" and that they are losing money as a result.

Wikilivres is a website with a rich amount of content. It is based in Canada because the Canadian copyright laws are not as miserable as the USA laws are. The hosting has so far been done by a person, it has become too much of a burden. The hope is that the Canadian Wikimedia chapter will take over this wonderful project. It will give the Canadian chapter a reason to fight against the introduction of changes that will make the current Canadian copyright restrictions as obnoxious as the restrictions that prevail in their southern neighbour.
Thanks,
GerardM

Translations in #SVG

2012-01-16T09:33:00.000+01:00

Scalable Vector Graphics provide wonderful crisp illustrations that look smart in any size. Texts can be included in such graphics for instance to point to a named detail. When text is included, it scales with the image.

It is possible to include texts in multiple languages in a SVG image. For us the trick is to make these translations available in MediaWiki.

After a first stab at translations for SVG at the Toolserver, Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250) has gone one better and started writing an extension that will allow for the translation of SVG texts at Commons. To do this, Harry needed access to the Wikimedia source repository. He did get access and has written a prototype extension. He submitted a patch that allows the same SVG to be rendered in different languages, but it may take time for that to become part of MediaWiki core.

Thanks,

GerardM

The object of objects

2012-01-14T18:26:00.001+01:00

The Museo del Objeto del Objeto is the latest museum that contributed pictures to Commons. This is a museum from Mexico and it is a museum about objects. Objects that are used in everyday live and particularly objects that are used in Mexico.

When you think of it, many objects that played a major role in the early parts of your life are now obsolete, they have been replaced by later iterations or just went away. Some of these objects still exist and for some, people have to guess what they were used for. A museum that saves such objects is exactly the kind of museum that has pictures that are easy to use in our Wikipedia articles buy are hard to categorise.

The picture of the Dromedary cigarettes is the one I like best. It looks like the Camel cigarettes package and it actually has a camel in the picture. It is as wrong as the Camel package because that does show a dromedary.

Anyway, enjoy the first contribution by the Museo del Objeto del Objeto.
Thanks,
GerardM

#EOL will update its language picker

2012-01-13T13:40:00.001+01:00

At #translatewiki.net we support the localisation of many projects. One of them is the Encyclopedia of Life. Currently there are 2641 messages that need localisation and for several languages the localisation is almost complete.

For the EOL software it is a novelty to have one language with two scripts. It will be interesting to learn how they will deal with that in their language picker.

We have been told that they are about to update their software with additional languages. I expect Macedonian like Serbian to feature brightly. It will be cool when more languages are supported. This is a wonderful moment to take up the challenge and provide your language with a user interface in this most prestigious website.
Thanks,
GerardM

2000

2012-01-13T12:38:00.001+01:00

April 9, 2005 knew the first blog post and today I celebrate blog post no 2000. At the time I announced that I would promote the good cause of the "ultimate wiktionary" now OmegaWiki and at this time it has broadened to the support of Wikis, languages and things I find relevant.

Blog post no 1000 was only two years ago and number 1500 was in Februari last year. According to Blogger there have been 211143 page views and given that my blog is also aggregated the true number of page views must be larger. What matters to me is that the message of languages and language support is getting its public.

Seven years ago, supporting other languages was not considered much of a priority; support was very much focussed on Wikipedia and European languages at that. Nowadays, language support is provided in MediaWiki itself by a development team and the support includes localisation, support for gender, plural and grammar in messages, web fonts, input methods, direction.

With the increased support for languages we are getting more and more a situation where it is almost as easy to edit MediaWiki in most languages as it is in English. It is understood that we will only reach this situation when any application uses the same building blocks for language support. Once these building blocks are defined in standards, libraries and code generators can implement them making them available to any developer for any application.

There are still plenty of challenges ahead of us.
Thanks,
GerardM

Need a #translation workshop?

2012-01-13T08:39:00.000+01:00

The #Wikimedia Foundation is an international organisation. Its projects are in 280+ languages and are developed by 280+ language communities. When a message is to go out to all these people. a serious amount of outreach and translation is needed.

At translatewiki.net, the localisation of the MediaWiki software has been taking place for many years now. Lately it has gained all kinds of extra functionality that make the Translate extension it uses ready for the translation of texts. The latest work for instance is writing user help texts.

Siebrand announced a workshop targeted at developers. It may be the kind of workshop that other people are be interested in as well. Let us know if you have an interest..
Thanks,
GerardM

Support for #gender and #plural in #JavaScript may mean refactoring code

2012-01-09T23:44:00.000+01:00

There are all kinds of valid reasons to revisit code. Improving the design of existing code is definitely one. Often code is changed because additional code needs to be applied. Sometimes, like in the case of implementing JQuery in our JavaScript code, it leads to code that performs better and it has many additional features that are now available to use.

One of the ambitions at translatewiki.net has been the support of GENDER and PLURAL in the messages used in JavaScript code. In order to provide such support, there is a need for functionality that provides the same functionality we have had for so long in PHP.

The JavaScript code to support GENDER and PLURAL has been written. It makes use of JQuery functionality and when the maintainers are lucky, their code already supports it. For the localisers at translatewiki.net, the answer "the software is written in JavaScript" is no longer a valid reason not to expect messages to be changed,
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikipedia #help text is written all too often

2012-01-08T20:40:00.001+01:00

A great help text is a help. Potential problems with help texts are legion:

they may not exist
they may not reflect the current functionality
they may not exist in translation
a translation may not reflect the latest original
it may be badly written

trying to be everything to everyone
high on terminology low on easy words

When the help text for the WebFonts extension was written, it was written for users. Documentation <grin> that is help text for developers or implementers </grin> already existed for quite some time. What we learned was that documentation did not help the people who use it.

What we produced solves some of the issues;

the original text being written in a Wiki
the documentation reflects the software that is in production
translations are created with the Translate extension; this allows for easy maintenance when changes occur
translations will be shown when they exist

Help texts exists in many places. It would be good when these text are merged into the central documentation. When the functionality of MediaWiki is supported centrally, it means that developers may take an interest as well. It becomes more obvious to include "stories" where a user understands the latest functionality after reading the help text...

When we agree that help text helps, if follows that help text needs to be up to date and accurate. Writing help text in a central place and translating the help text centrally should therefore be obvious.

Thanks,

GerardM

Supporting a #font for #Arabic

2012-01-08T16:23:00.000+01:00

When you write about the sum of all knowledge, one thing is obvious; there will be citations from the Quran. It is expected to write these exactly as they were written down originally in Arabic and yes, you may provide a translation.

There have been recent additions to the Unicode specification that enable an exact rendering of citations. There are fonts that support these latest changes and many people do not have them.

The WebFonts extension for MediaWiki is capable of using a specific font for a specific text. Therefore it is possible to make sure that any citation from the Quran is rendered well.

The Amiri font is a font that may serve us for showing citations from the Quran. It is freely licensed and it seems very much ready for use. It may even be useful as a generic font.

Making a font that is freely licensed available as a WebFont is technically easy. However, we prefer to have input from knowledgeable people, people who are part of the language community. As there are so many languages each with their own issues, we need people to organise themselves in Language Support Teams.

At this time there is one person member of the Language Support Team for the Arabic language.
Thanks,
GerardM

Ask and it will be given

2012-01-05T09:36:00.000+01:00

Stating that you can speak a language has long tradition in the Wikimedia projects. For more then 280 languages there is a Wikipedia and finding someone with whom you share a language is powerful. It helps building communities particularly for the languages that have a small footprint on our servers.

At translatewiki.net we are always on the lookout for people who localise for a language that does not have the Babel extension localised. We do ask people to give priority to localise Babel and typically we are happy with the results.

We asked people to localise Babel for the Kirghiz and the Kongo language recently and both have been localised.

Have you checked if the Babel information is correct for your language? Do you know a language that may not have a translation for the strings indicating your proficiency in the language? Please check it out at translatewiki.net.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad

2012-01-04T11:30:00.002+01:00

When seventy-five people turn up on a cold day, on a working day for a photo safari, it is safe to call it a success. It is wonderful to see not only pictures of monuments, buildings but also things like the colourful mouth freshener they use in Ahmedabad to appear on Commons.

At this precise moment 606 images have been uploaded and many more are likely to be uploaded. It is of interest that all pictures have their description in English but it is possible to add translations to the descriptions.

{{Information|description={{en|1=Ahmedabad Mouth Freshener which people are fond to eat after lunch/dinner or after taking any meal}}{{nl|1=Een Ahmedabad mondverfrisser die mensen graag eten na een maaltijd.}}

has the following as its result:

People can write a description in any language and have it translated to English or any other language. This is quite appropriate because it starts with having the material uploaded to Commons to make it available in one of 280+ languages we support.

I wonder if any of the pictures of this photo shoot will be considered as a featured picture candidate.
Thanks,
GerardM

Preferential treatment

2012-01-03T21:56:00.001+01:00

The latest #translatewiki.net localisation rally had a twist. To qualify, the localisation for the Kiwix and the Wikipedia Mobile applications had to be completed for the language before MediaWiki messages were accepted.

Our thinking was: the most used messages are typically already complete and at this time growth of our content is very much taking place off-line or on a mobile phone.

For mobile phone use we have statistics that show a growth of 144% compared with last year December. Our support for mobile phones and the support for different writing systems on mobile phones is improving. As more people buy increasingly sophisticated mobiles, this growth may even increase.

During the localisation rally 30 additional languages were completed for Kiwix bringing the total to 65. For Wikipedia Mobile we now support 68 languages completely. We hope that our December 2011 rally sets the stage for a wonderful 2012 with even more people sharing in the sum of all knowledge.
Thanks,
GerardM

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T16:29:00.001+01:00

For the last couple of years I wished everybody a happy New Year with one of the cards in SignWriting. This years card is by Valerie herself :)

My wish for her and us all is that the aspirations for bringing knowledge to the people who sign will become as much a reality as our efforts in bringing knowledge to the people who speak.

PS Yes, all the usual wishes like health, wealth and happiness to us all.

Thanks,

GerardM

Top to bottom

2011-12-31T14:21:00.000+01:00

The scripts used by the languages that have a #Wikipedia are written either in a right to left or in a left to right direction, the Arabic script for instance is "rtl" and the Latin script is "ltr". Supporting all these scripts is difficult enough. There has been a constant demand for improvements that make editing in languages like Arabic, Hebrew or Urdu easier.

Mongolian is one language that turns things on its head; it is written top down. Even though it is a living language, it is hard to find documents on the Internet. It is hard because at this time only Internet Explorer supports the Mongolian script in its production versions and applications like MediaWiki do not support it at all.

When Mongolian is to be completely supported by browsers, there are several issues;

the shapes of the Mongolian script need to be supported by Harfbuzz and other shaping engines.
supporting versions of the shaping engines need to be included in the browser people use
it still needs to be shown in the top down direction

Mongolian is not the only script that is written in a top down direction. SignWriting is another one. SignWriting is used by sign languages, there are several hundreds of these languages and SignWriting is the only script that can be used realistically for day to day use.

There are several requests for Wikipedias that need SignWriting support. All these requests are waiting because of missing technical infrastructure or other issues

SignWriting characters are not yet defined in Unicode
there is a freely licensed font based on Unicode specifications but it is not stable by definition
browsers do not support top down; for now top down needs support in the application

All this can hardly be considered "low hanging fruit" and as there is so much that needs doing. Supporting top down languages in general and Mongolian and SignWriting in specific is something to wish for. It is technology that needs champions that make it a reality.

Thanks,

GerardM

#SOPA threatens the relevancy of the #USA

2011-12-23T10:57:00.000+01:00

The laws of the United States are more and more determined by special interest groups. The SOPA is a law that is intended to stop "piracy" in such a way that big companies effectively get "legal" means in the United States to suppress websites wherever in the world.

Such bullying tactics will result and are resulting in a backlash.

It is important to understand something about how the Internet works; every website can be found on the Internet because an IP-number is connected to a domain name. DNS or dynamic name service connects the two. DNS servers provide this service and typically these servers are best located near to the client who makes use of DNS. However, there is no reason not to use DNS from servers located outside the United States. Such functionality is readied for use in Firefox.

When a domain is registered with a company in the United States like Go Daddy, it is possible to stop the service of a domain with the support of a domain registrar. However, for organisations outside of the USA registrars like Go Daddy will be reconsidered as a trusted service provider particularly when they not only can be compelled to stop providing domain support but also, like in the case of Go Daddy actively support SOPA.

The problem with big companies is that they already have a track record of threatening legal procedures trusting that their opponent does not have the money and / or the presence to enter proceedings in an US American court of law. The consequence is that there already is no equality under the law. With SOPA even more power to abuse the system is handed to the special interests of big companies.

When the dominant position of the USA on the Internet is abused in this way, the process of limiting the power of the USA on the global Internet will increase. Proposals for laws like SOPA are a wake up call to the world. It may lead to the end of the free and global Internet we love so much,
Thanks,
GerardM

Workable code is not always deployable code

2011-12-22T10:04:00.000+01:00

The #Wikimedia #Localisation team cranks out code, workable code - every sprint. At the end of the sprint, for us a sprint lasts a fortnight, all the completed "stories" are tested against their acceptance criteria and when the tests are good, they are signed off and marked as completed.

With this jargon out of the way, it is possible to consider features.

The Translate extension needs an additional feature to help translation administrators manage their work. Pages that have been marked for translation have a life-cycle; at the start they are marked for translation but at a later stage there is no longer a need for translation. Such a status change has an impact on what translators are to see.

There are many stories that make up the Translate status feature, for instance:

you can watch the list
you can change the status on a text
the list is different depending on the role of a user and the status of a text

A sprint is run in a fixed amount of time. In a sprint there often are stories for multiple products. When the stories do not provide enough functionality for a feature, additional stories will make it in the next sprint. When you read this carefully, you may appreciate that "enough functionality" is not the same as "feature complete". The point is very much that with Agile we get feedback as soon as possible.

When you are interested in the stories in our current sprint, have a look in Mingle (user: guest - password: guest).

Thanks,

GerardM

#Microsoft wants to upgrade your #Internet-explorer

2011-12-21T11:17:00.000+01:00

It has been a common practice for many browsers to upgrade itself to later versions. This practice not only brings the latest functionality to the end users, it also limits the versions web developers have to test their software for. Among web developers Internet Explorer 6 has a particularly bad reputation; a disproportionate amount of time is spend on making software work and often the result is not pretty.

The Microsoft announcement that they will upgrade Internet Explorer is therefore welcome news. Many more people will be moved towards a more modern and a safer browser. It will marginalise the use of obsolete even dangerous technology even further.

IE-6 was introduced when Windows-XP was young. The end of the line as far as Internet Explorer on XP is concerned is IE-8. This does not provide people with the best and more reliable browsing experience but it is definitely a step up.

Seeing people moved from IE-6 is wonderful. People can help themselves even more by upgrading to an alternative browser like Chrome or Firefox. It will improve their appreciation of what the modern web can provide.
Thanks,
Gerard

Wiki loves Art Nouveau

2011-12-21T09:04:00.000+01:00

#Wikipedia documents in many languages the buildings that are of such a significance that they are officially recognised as "monuments". All these articles need illustrations and Wiki loves Monuments is the photo competition that rallied people from all over Europe to take pictures of the buildings and its details.

Once all this pictures were in, Europeana selected some to create its first user generated exhibition online called: Wiki loves Art Nouveau. The exhibitions shows of European Art Nouveau in four themes: exteriors, interiors, details and author's pick.

If you do not know Europeana yet, visit their website. They are the portal that brings more and more of the European cultural to the Internet. They are also instrumental in gently pushing European GLAM towards using free licenses.
Thanks,
GerardM

The return of the LocalisationUpdate

2011-12-20T07:55:00.001+01:00

The #MediaWiki localisation is a continuous process. A continuous process because MediaWiki development is a continuous process as well. For some languages everything is done, for others the localisation is very much a work in progress.

As a lot of work is involved in getting all the localisations done, making sure that people remain motivated is a challenge. The reasons for them to localise are:

it is the best usability improvement available for any language
localisation is a requirement when new projects are requested

Such arguments are a bit abstract. What does convince many people is making the latest localisations available on a daily basis to all wikis. This is what the LocalisationUpdate extension is there for. It is why almost every day the latest localisations done at translatewiki.net are committed to SVN.

Something broke in the beginning of November but today the server admin log finally indicated:

02:04 logmsgbot: LocalisationUpdate completed (1.18) at Tue Dec 20 02:07:54 UTC 2011

On many wikis it will be noticeable that a months worth of localisations became available. It will be good when the people who lost some of their motivation will give translatewiki.net another try. They will see again how much difference their effort makes. Not only because their work goes rapidly into production but also because it is and remains the best usability improvement for their language.

Thanks,

GerardM

The new #Android

2011-12-20T07:02:00.000+01:00

The new "ice cream sandwich" release for the Android smart phones has one feature that makes many Android users in India with a previous release wish for an upgrade..

As you can see to the left, Android supports our WebFonts. Wikipedia articles can be read while other websites in for instance the Kannada language will show the infamous Unicode boxes.

Android is open source software and consequently it should be possible to figure out what it takes to make Webfonts work for the existing installed base. An alternative would be to add support by installing fonts locally on Android; this would be even better because all Indic languages websites become readable.
Thanks,
GerardM

Addressing women properly

2011-12-18T22:24:00.001+01:00

All the requests to deploy "Gender Namespaces" on all relevant wikis aka bug 28052 have been done. "Looks done to me" was the closing comment for this bug by Rob Lanphier.

It is good news because we now have gender support for those languages that asked for it. The question is if all languages that could benefit from a grammatical correct approach to women are now supported.

Answers to such questions are still very much a hit or miss affair. Our hope is that members of the language support teams answer this question for their language.
Thanks,
GerardM

Indian grandmother

2011-12-17T09:12:00.000+01:00

When you #google for "Indian grandmother", the first image you get is the one you see to the right. It is also a lovely answer to the question "what is in it for me" after it has been suggested that people contribute to Wikipedia.

This answer is actually used for real and can be read on the India mailing list. I am sure this Indian grandmother is happy with her Indian grandson.
Thanks,
GerardM

Testing the #MediaWiki visual editor ... with #Russian

2011-12-14T22:40:00.000+01:00

When you follow MediaWiki development, you will be eager to test the visual editor. A very alpha version of the software is available for testing and, at this time it allows you to enter a text in the Latin script.

That is to say; Amir found a way to enter text in Russian. He uses the Mozilla transliterator. He types Latin characters and Firefox transliterates it into Cyrillic. For Amir the transliterator is a must have feature.

Without it i couldn't write an email to my sisters, comment on Russian blogs or write in the Russian Wikipedia. (You can quote me)

I am happy to quote him and share with you how he sneakily tests the visual editor in Russian anyway. As you can see many more languages are supported in this way.

Yes, your bug reports are eagerly awaited ...
Thanks,
GerardM

WebFonts update

2011-12-14T22:00:00.002+01:00

The initial deployment of #MediaWiki WebFonts has resulted in a large number of reports of large and small issues. Many of them have been fixed they are bug 33025, 33034, 32775, 33096, 33024, 33040 and 33039. Others have to do with the fonts themselves. During a thorough analysis; the reported issues were recreated in the various browsers and were discussed among the members of the Wikimedia Localisation team. A lot of hard work has followed to fix, review and deploy as a team.

The results have been deployed to the live Wikimedia wikis. A full report was posted to the I18n mailing list. A special word of thanks goes to Bala Yeyaraman and Srikanth L who have been awesome in testing and reporting bugs for several Indic languages.

Please continue testing and give us your feedback.

Thanks,

GerardM

Traffic from #mobile devices for the languages of #India

2011-12-12T16:48:00.000+01:00

Increasingly people find their #Wikipedia on the mobile phone. The surprise is, that traffic from mobile devices for the Indic languages is doing spectacularly well. A year ago such traffic did hardly exist and now the yearly growth rate for Hindi for instance is 10804%.

Given that most mobile phones do not support the scripts used by the languages of India, the question is very much what devices they are. It will be equally interesting to learn what difference the implementation of WebFonts later today will make for other mobile devices.

These statistics for mobile traffic from India are updated every day; it will be interesting to learn not only what languages will benefit but also what devices are capable of supporting Unicode content with web fonts. When I am to buy a mobile phone, the ability of supporting my mother tongue would feature prominently as a must have item.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikimedia #mobile has language support

2011-12-10T12:31:00.001+01:00

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and for the localisers at translatewiki.net, it is very much in seeing their work used in action. Brion send an e-mail happily announcing the first export from translatewiki.

Niklas has landed the first commit of localization data from TranslateWiki.net into the repository. The app now picks up the language in Android's locale and shows localized menus in most of the UI.
It _should_ also default to the selected language for content on first launch.
There are a couple bugs yet:
* Changing locales while the app is running doesn't take effect
* Chinese locales don't work
We also have localizations for a number of languages that aren't necessarily in a default Android device's set of languages, such as Hebrew and various Indic languages. These *should* work on Android devices that have been customized with locales for those languages, but we'd appreciate testing!
-- brion

We will be very interested to learn if there are Android devices with customised locales for the Indic languages.

Thanks,
GerardM

#MediaWiki release 1.18 is out

2011-11-29T10:02:00.001+01:00

The new MediaWiki stable release has been announced and, the list of new features is impressive. When you have your own MediaWiki installation, you definitely want to consider upgrading.

There are several innovations that are quite relevant:

jQuery is included as standard and, it is used
several new languages have been added
several extensions are now included as part of the distribution
the qqx messages trigger a screen that helps identify specific messages

add &uselang=qqx at the end of the URL

An "in your face" message is often hard to identify. Adding &uselang=qqx to the URL will provide you with the information you need to identify the message at translatewiki.net for localisation or local modification. For the localisers this is a very significant tool.

Given that extensions are included in the new release, it will be a good idea to have three extensions included in the next release for Wikis that do not have English for its user interface. They are:

In this way a language will always be up to date with the latest localisations, it will be supported with input methods and fonts that make the Wiki accessible to as wide a group of people as we can make it. What would be really awesome is when new and improved keyboard methods and fonts can be distributed in a similar way as the messages...

Thanks,

GerardM

A #translation sprint and an intro to #MediaWiki hacking

2011-11-26T11:59:00.001+01:00

The verdict on the records is out; the day is not done yet. The biggest thing was when a Panjabi woman was thrilled to be able to just type Panjabi in the Symbiosis computer lab.

This was a revelation shared by other people in the room for other languages. Supporting many Indic languages is available for many operating systems. Never mind how cool it is to support you with Narayam and WebFonts, it is much better to have support local on your local device. This not only provides you with the support you deserve in Wikipedia but also in all the applications you might run. You know what, installing this is not that hard.

At this time 40+ new people created a profile at translatewiki.net, many people have experienced that it is not that hard to support Free Software by helping themselves make the software available in their own language.

The second part of the day, the technical part was too short but many people got a clue what MediaWiki and its infrastructure is about. For us to be in Pune has been a privilege and, it is really cool to see the functionality we are so passionate about being used in earnest.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Translation sprint in Pune is one for the whole world

2011-11-25T17:03:00.001+01:00

The #Wikimedia #Localisation team is in Pune #India. Tomorrow we have a translation sprint at the University and our intention is to seriously beat some records. The record for the most translations in an hour, the record for the most translations in a day, the record for the most contributions of translators in a day; they are all up for grabs and we intent to break them.

We expect some 50 people at the university. They are going to translate and they are all going to start together. Our team is available to explain, support, authorise. But when we can do it for the people in Pune, we can also do it for the people of India who want to help us. When we are at it, we can do it for people from where-ever.

When we are done at the university, we will be flying home. Happy to see our family again but we are not the only ones who support the translatewiki.net community. It will be interesting to see how we cope, how well the server copes and how hard it will be to break the record now and in the future.

So help us today, localise for your own language and break every record we have in our book.
Thanks,
GerardM

The #Tifinagh script for #Berber languages can be typed

2011-11-24T09:44:00.000+01:00

In the #Wikimedia #Incubator, the Tifinagh script is used for one of the Berber languages. It is the original script for these languages and it is there to be used. Using it is hard when your computer does not support it.

The Narayam extension does allow the use of input methods on top of an international keyboard. When the Tifinagh script is to be supported, it helps when an organisation is putting its weight behind a particular input method. For the Tifinagh script it is the Royal Institute for the Amazight culture; they defined a keyboard, they provide a manual on how to use it and we are happy to support this keyboard in Narayam.

The Royal Institute produced many beautiful fonts; it would be nice when we find that we can use these as well and truly promote the use of the Amazight culture worldwide.
Thanks,
GerardM

Hackasaurus or let's edit #HTML

2011-11-23T13:19:00.001+01:00

Wikisyntax; it has people wake up screaming at night. Developers hate to touch the MediaWiki parser. Rumour has it there is maybe only one maybe two who have a fighting chance to work on it.

When Hackasaurus was introduced to me, it provided me with a tool to see how a page with multiple languages shows what expected HTML looks like: showing a language tag for content that is different from its surrounding content.

<p lang="nl"> and finally </p>

The fun thing of this tool is that you can change things easily. It is meant to be easy as it is intended to teach kids HTML. We specified the language in the "p" tag. It is very much a visual editor and even adults love it. Some people say; you can do with HTML-5 everything that wikisyntax allows you to do. As wiki syntax was meant to hide the HTML, it would be nice to consider if we have not come full circle and drop the Wikisyntax and just use the later version of HTML.
Thanks,
Gerard

Narayam will look like this

2011-11-23T05:27:00.001+01:00

The #India hackathon produced excellent results; one of the highlights was the online keyboard for Narayam. It will need some modifications but it at least allows you to SEE where these bleeding keys are on an International keyboard.

The day after the hackathon we tried to install the patch only to find that some files were sadly lacking. The good news is that after a few e-mails there is not only a screenshot but the missing files are now available to us as well. A big thank you to Abhijeet Pathak for his contribution and his kind support.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Agile is about getting functionality out

2011-11-21T14:14:00.001+01:00

Many software development projects fail to get functionality in a timely manner. Often all functionality is released all together and it has to function to the n^th degree. Usually it doesn't and usually the users of the new functionality grumble and object. The Wikimedia Localisation team does not produce everything in one go. What it does is produce functionality that is described in a story

Alolita wants to edit to localise the translatewiki.net user interface in Hindi and uses the Narayam functionality to mimic a Devanagari keyboard. She is not able to type blind and she uses a mock-up of the keyboard to find the keys she needs to press

In Agile this is called an "user story" and for us it is part of the Narayam "epic story". This story is analysed, it is divided in tasks, they are given points and every fortnight it is decided what stories to implement in the next sprint. Those stories can be quite rough around the edges consider; a story that takes as a premise that the user can type Hindi blindly is already in production.

The point of the stories is that they describe precise functionality and this is what is realised in a limited time frame. These stories are selected at the beginning of a sprint and consequently not only does new functionality get frequently realised and implemented, priorities for what the language team is to do are also constantly re-assessed.

Our hope is that our users; the Wiki communities will find us responsive. Our aim is to make the gap between the user-experience in English and any other language as small as we can make it.
Thanks,
GerardM

The #Wikipedia challenge for an AppStore

2011-11-20T12:36:00.001+01:00

When an application has been developed, tested and ready, it gets into an AppStore. Except that a developer develops and when he is done it still needs to be localised.

As Wikipedia exists in over 270 languages, you can imagine that the localisation for any application is a continuous process at translatewiki.net. The challenge for all the AppStores; support this continuous stream of new localisations.

Even existing users of a Wikipedia application may be in need for new and improved localisations. Really how are these stores going to cope ??
Thanks,
GerardM

Typing made easier for six languages

2011-11-20T10:05:00.001+01:00

The #MediaWiki Narayam extension provides keyboard mapping. This means that when you have an International keyboard the keystrokes will be mapped to what it would be on a keyboard with another layout. This is a great help when you can type blind.

The Mumbai Hackathon has provided us with new keyboard methods for Urdu, Panjabi, Gujarati, Bodo, German and Marathi. All these keyboard methods are available now for testing in translatewiki.net.

Photo Victor Vigras

These keyboard methods are a step towards making it as easy to use MediaWiki in these languages as it is to use MediaWiki in English. This challenge is one for the Localisation team. The challenge to enhance the usability for English is outside its remit; this is what all the other developers are working on but keeping up with their good work will keep the team occupied.
Thanks,
GerardM

Hackathon #India day one

2011-11-19T14:40:00.001+01:00

With a large group like this, with so much talent a lot can be done in one day. When the achievements of the days were presented it was quite a lot.

Kiwix has been localised in four languages
The new Lohit fonts were loaded on translatewiki.net and tested
new bugs for the Lohit font were discovered and bugs were reported
an SMS gateway for sending Wikipedia articles was tested
an input method was created for Marathi
the Android app for MediaWiki is now supported at translatewiki.net

Thanks,

GerardM

Getting the knack of Narayam

2011-11-19T06:20:00.001+01:00

Narayam provides input methods to several languages of India. This is seen with keen interest by many Wikimedia communities. Their need for an input method is no less profound then for their language.

At the India hackathon people expressed interest to create an input method for Marathi or Panjabi. At the WikiConference India there was interest to create an input method for the Angika language.

When technical people and language people get together, they can do awesome stuff. The language people know what it should look like while the technical people can make it happen. Doing this in an organised way however is the difference between a hack and a solution.

To create solutions we have our language support teams; once hacks are tried and tested, when it meets with all the initial requirements hacks can become a solution when they are passed on to downstream applications. When a Marathi keyboard method has been defined, why not have it also in a Linux distribution or defined in the applicable ISO standard.

Yes, it is great to start with hacks but our languages are not only used in MediaWiki for Wikipedia.
Thanks,
GerardM

WebFonts are ready for your comments

2011-11-18T15:01:00.001+01:00

At the WikiConference #India, one of the main topics is support for the languages of India. The government of India acknowledges in its best practices that not everybody speaks English. MediaWiki may not be used by the Indian government, but it certainly aspires to bring these best practices in reality. In summary, we aim to make Wikipedia and all its sister projects as easy to edit in for instance Malayalam or Orya as English.

One of the stumbling blocks for us is that many of the computers sold did not come with support for the Indic fonts or with the keyboard mappings for Indic languages. The "Localisation team" worked hard to overcome these two very basic issues. For many languages the Narayam extension is now live and allows people to type. The next phase is providing WebFonts. Web fonts are fonts send to your computer with the data for the articles.

Providing web fonts can only happen by us when fonts are available for a language and when these fonts are freely licensed. Luckily the fonts used by the Linux operating system are freely licensed and we are happy to provide these as well as other fonts to you.

At this time we are testing the use of WebFonts at translatewiki.net and we intent to bring WebFonts in production for all Wikimedia projects in Indic languages on December 12. We will start off with WebFonts for the Indian languages and other languages will follow at a later date. In the run-up to production day, we need you to assess the fonts for us. the questions we have are:

do these fonts represent the script as defined in the latest Unicode specification
are the characters readable
are you comfortable with the user interface that allows you to configure WebFonts
is the default we have chosen for your language the best freely licensed font available

Given that our aim is to bring information to everyone, you will appreciate that our prime objective is to enable more readers and help more people to find their way to our projects. We are quite happy to use any font that meets with our technical requirements when it is freely licensed.

To help you assess the options available to your language, there should be a page called WebFonts that contains a copy of the India article in your language.

Thanks,

GerardM

#Intrernationalisation - #India Government best practices

2011-11-17T08:43:00.001+01:00

I was pointed to a PDF about "best practices for e-government applications for India". It is a wonderful document. Many of its messages are completely applicable for MediaWiki and supporting the languages for all our Wiki projects.

A few choice quotes:

It’s a simple question to ask when you build applications: Who is the user?
Most of us don’t speak English
Applications that are simple, seamless and complete for every user in India

When Wikipedia is to achieve its purpose, we can paraphrase another great line:

It is our objective now to demonstrate everything stated above available to all Indians regardless of their knowledge of English. It will be native to users’ experience and expectations.

The underlying infrastructure is ready and the implementation can be done. The outcome is cost-effective delivery of useful services to all people using the internet.

Thanks,
GerardM

Gender distinction for the #Portuguese language

2011-11-15T13:02:00.001+01:00

Making a differencebased on gender is not the #Wikipedia thing. In selected situationsit is however a #MediaWiki thing. Gender and particularly linguisticgender distinguishes how a man or a woman is addressed or referredto. For several languages the “User” name space will be nameddifferently depending on the gender set in the user preferences.

When our messages support gender, it becomes possible to address people using natural language. This improves readability and consequently it makes MediaWiki a more friendly environment.

For the Portuguese language this hasbeen implemented recently. Changing a name space is different fromprogrammatic changes; it requires someone who can configure theservers. This means that Portuguese did support gender before it isjust that one of the more visual aspects of the user interfacesupports gender.

Supporting gender is aniterative process. Many MediaWiki messages pre-date gender supportand at translatewiki.net we get a steady stream of requests tosupport gender in specific messages on our “Support” page. Withso many Portuguese speaking ladies becoming aware of our gendersupport, they must find occasions where messages could address themeven better.

We welcome any ladyfrom any language (as well as any gentlemen) to help us improve theMediaWiki experience and point out more messages that can do with a bit of genderification.

Thanks,

GerardM

#MediaWiki code review leads to refactoring

2011-11-14T09:37:00.001+01:00

Once software is written, it needs review. When you get a great review, it may include both specific instructions and general suggestions. Krinkle did a wonderful job reviewing the current iteration of the WebFonts extension and his instructions and suggestions equally apply to other applications we are working on.

This realisation that instructions and suggestions are equally relevant in other code is powerful; it also indicates that the existing code is written in a consistent way. For the Localisation Team it is not that surprising as it does its part in the development and the maintenance of coding standards particularly for internationalisation and localisation.

Given that all Wikimedia developers are reviewing each others code and given that every one has its strenghts and weaknesses, quality is achieved by reviewing widely. For many Wikimedia developers reviewing code of other developers is a reminder that they grew into their role because of the people who mentored them and reviewed their code.
Thanks,
GerardM

#CLDR, the name of languages in Serbian is in lower case

2011-11-13T15:05:00.001+01:00

At #Translatewiki.net we prefer to use information from the CLDR. Sometimes we get a query why a specific message that uses CLDR information is incorrect.

Is there any parser that converts the words between it to lowercase? Value of $1 variable in this message, in Serbian, should be lowercase. So, Translation statistics for Serbian would be Статистика превода за Српски, which won't be gramatically correct since language names in Serbian are written lowercase.

We use the names of languages from the CLDR and we encourage our localisers, our languages support teams to look at the content of the CLDR because we do use it in our MediaWiki software.

When the data as provided by the CLDR is problematic, we can hack it. The fact is that we really really do not like to do that.
Thanks,
GerardM

Holy cow, mobile devices morph #Wikipedia

2011-11-13T12:35:00.001+01:00

Communicating that Wikipedia will change is the surest way to get into a fight. As far as I am concerned, Wikipedia has to change and one of the best reasons why Wikipedia has to change is because people are using different devices to access a MediaWiki site.

Yes, Wikipedia will have to change drastically but how will it change? One of the early signals is in what happens in the mobile development. Brandon gave a "brown bag" meeting in the office. It has been recorded and really, if you do not want to be surprised, look at the recording, chew on it and look again.

It has things on recent changes, interwiki links, allow for editing or not. The behaviour on devices is discussed and really I recommend you watching it. Watch it again and rethink all the things that are taken as the Wikipedia gospel. It is good that things are reconsidered, revisited and reimplemented.

Mobile is where we grow, what we need to be support more and more in the future.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikimedia highlights for October

2011-11-11T08:43:00.001+01:00

Many people are eager to know how the Wikimedia Foundation is doing. Every month there is a long publication in English with everything you want and do not want to know. It can be translated, but it is considered too much of a burden on our translator community. In order to get the main message out anyway, there are highlights that are available for translation at Meta.

Once a translation is ready, the highlights can be referred to on the local village pumps of the projects for a language.

The latest Wikimedia highlights, the one for October, are looking for translators. When you make a request for translation, the translator should easily be guided to what needs doing. Two improvements to the original request have been implemented;

When you click on the article link, you will see the text in the language you prefer
When you click on the translate link, you will be shown the text fragments for your language

Meta is a multi-lingual project and it can be expected that people have set their user preferences to their mother tongue. When they do, we can provide them with translations when we have them.
Thanks,
GerardM

The page views for #Wikipedia in #India

2011-11-10T20:17:00.001+01:00

With a new server collecting the page views data, anomalies are of interest. Do they represent reality or do they indicate something that is wrong. The page view statistics for the Indic languages show anomalies; check the growth for Marathi and Malayalam; not only do they outpace the Hindi Wikipedia, when you extrapolate the numbers for November, compared to the already impressive numbers for October it appears to be too good to be true.

We do expect the Indic languages to do well. The size of the traffic compared to the number of people who speak these languages is really small. When these numbers prove to be correct, it will be really interesting to learn what triggered this.
Thanks,
GerardM

NB the traffic numbers for English are not restricted to India.

Thank you Domas ! - #Wikipedia stats are here again

2011-11-10T11:42:00.001+01:00

As our projects mature, the amount of data they generate grows. The infrastructure needed to manipulate data grows as a consequence. The result is that hardware solutions provided by some of our finest reach the end of the line. Domas has provided us with hardware where the raw data of our traffic was stored. A whole infra structure of statistics depended on it.

This included the official Wikimedia statistics. This is where the need for a Wikimedia data solution became all too obvious. In moments of very heavy traffic, the old server could not cope and finally it just run out of steam. With the new solution, we will have more consistent data and we have more of a growth path. Obvious because the WMF is now in control of the whole chain.

Finally a word of thanks to Domas. As a result of his generous gift we have a lot of statistical data starting at a time where statistics did not have the priority it has today.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Kashmiri uses #Devanagari too

2011-11-09T12:38:00.001+01:00

We are familiar with the fact that a language can use different characters that are part of a script. Just have a look at the Vietnamese Wikipedia for instance; most of its diacritics really look weird and, it is what you get when you insist on using a script that does not really consider a tonal language.

The Devanagari script is used for many languages and the assumption that all these languages use exactly the same characters is wrong. Kashmiri uses characters not used for for instance Hindi. The result is that a font that does not include the additional characters does not suffice, the keyboard method will not be the same.

We often do not have enough knowledge to support the languages that have a Wikipedia. There are also languages waiting in the Incubator needing proper support. We want to support all languages well and, we want to support a language well from the start. Join the "language support team" for your language and help us ensure that we can support your language properly.
Thanks,
GerardM

The #Wikia translation jam

2011-11-08T06:40:00.001+01:00

Wikia has projects in more then 100 languages and they have many people working on the localisation of their software at translatewiki.net. In order to make this possible, it is vitally important that the developer write code that is both translatable and well documented.

To make this point to their developers, the developers at the Polish office were all invited to join in a "translation jam". This resulted in 253 translations in just an hour. The comments by the developers were really interesting:

"Wow, the interface is nice!"
"This is fast..."
"Oh, so that's the qqq documentation?"
"We should give people links to trac in docs."

Translations, documentation and awareness of the internationalisation process; this is indeed the kind of activity that makes Wikia more effective and responsive.
Thanks,
GerardM

Improved #usability means more work gets done at #translatewiki.net

2011-11-07T17:37:00.001+01:00

One item on the "to do" list of Niklas was making it easier to become a translator at translatewiki.net. We have had a procedure to follow for a long time. It is intended to ensure that people know at least some English. Knowing English is important because all the software we localise at twn start off in English.

The procedure is now more rational, easier to understand and, a newbie still needs to understand some English. The usability improvements do serve its purpose; more people are admitted as a localiser for their language. These new people are certainly as enthusiastic as people new to translatewiki have always been. As more people are becoming active all the projects that we support benefit.

As always, there is more work that needs doing. Please consider spending some of your time localising freely licensed software at translatewiki.net.
Thanks,
GerardM

Freely licensed fonts are ugly, now what!

2011-11-07T10:57:00.000+01:00

The #MediaWiki WebFonts extension exists to enable people to read their language. The #Tamil fonts that were initially selected do not deserve the "beauty" prize. Many in the Tamil community are calling for better looking fonts.

The issue is that at the Wikimedia Foundation, we can only use freely licensed fonts. Consequently we are really happy that people are reaching out to the government of Tamil Nadu to make their fonts available under a free license.

At the same time people working hard to get more existing fonts ready under a free license; they are completing the fonts, they are reaching out to the developers of fonts. They are working hard to make the use of Tamil on any digital devices a reality.

In many ways, Wikipedia is a "down stream" user of the technology developed for a language, a script. As there are so many languages we can stimulate developments for instance in our "language support teams". The best results will be when technology, fonts are available under a free license. It will help us support your language and it will help any and all other applications that care to provide the internationalisation and localisation needed to make use of it.
Thanks,
GerardM

#WCN11 - Wiki loves Monuments

2011-11-06T20:40:00.002+01:00

At the WCN11 it was time for the jury to announce the winners of the Dutch Wiki loves Monuments challenge. This was the second time Wiki loves monuments hit the Netherlands and this time there were even more pictures taken.

Many pictures just showed the object, some were of technical excellence but the most remarkable included something extra, something special as well. These were the ones that impressed the jury most. The jury report in Dutch.

a picture with many details; the talking neighbours, the goat going into the pen, the laundry, the beautiful light ... the number one picture by Harm Joris ten Napel

Thanks,
GerardM

Celebrating Eid al-Adha in the #Netherlands

2011-11-06T18:20:00.000+01:00

When politics has its way, this year will be the last year when Muslims are allowed to celebrate Eid al-Adha in the traditional way. Traditionally a sheep is butchered, its meat is shared with the poor. According to a one issue political party, the "party of the animals" butchering animals in the halal way should not be allowed.

The law that effectively prevents the eating of meat by both Muslims and Jews still needs to go through the Dutch senate. My fear is that this law that may be well intentioned, will effectively have quite nasty results. At present animals are slaughtered in slaughter houses. With this law in place I am convinced that many animals will be butchered wherever because people will celebrate their festivals and they want to celebrate it in the traditional way.
Thanks,
GerardM

PS Ied mubarak

Old #Hebrew shown as it should

2011-11-06T17:47:00.000+01:00

When #Wikisource is to host old sources, it helps when the resulting digital text looks old. Particularly when the way a language is written changed over time, using a different font helps.

In Hebrew, signs may be added to a text that indicate how a text is to be chanted. Such signs are not well supported in most operating systems. Amir has added a default font created by the Culmus Project for texts in old Hebrew (language code hbo).

Testing the waters in this way, a next addition for old Hebrew may be a font that will do justice to manuscripts like the Dead Sea scrolls. It means that our digital text will resemble closely what the manuscript looks like. Having all the characters show properly and in the old style will add respect to the original text.

Once a transcribed text shows visibly the same, it will give added validity to the use of our digital text for comparative research. A project transcribing the Dead Sea scrolls is the kind of project that will make Wikisource shine.
Thanks,
GerardM

#WCN11 - Uploading files to #Wikimedia #Commons

2011-11-06T14:04:00.004+01:00

A hard nut is being cracked; selecting multiple files that are to be uploaded to Commons. There is a call out for testing this new functionality

Not only multiple file upload but other things have changed in the upload process. Read what needs testing, give it a go and see how you like it..

Please do create a profile but also change the language of the user interface to your language..
Thanks,
GerardM

#WCN11 - Attribution is what a #GLAM needs, what #Wikipedia can provide

2011-11-06T13:28:00.000+01:00

In Wikipedia we add areference to the facts mentioned in an article. This is best practicein many Wikipedias. The argument for adding references is asapplicable for pictures. Our pictures are freely licensed andconsequently they are open to abuse by people who “improve” onthe original. It is allowed. Many pictures improve as an illustrationand this becomes clear only when you compare it with the original.

The original is not onCommons. Many original pictures are kept in museums and archives.Wikipedia will improve not only its references but also its relationswith GLAMs when access to the original picture is made easy. Torealise this we need to remove all the unnecessary layers between the picture asit is used on a Wiki and the GLAM.

Using images fromCommons is something we know how to do well. What we need to do isadd enough of the meta-data to provide more information and a link tothe original at the GLAM website.

It will make us friendsand it will help us clean up our act; we can include the licenseinformation. This will get us closer to what the intention ofthe creative commons license is.

Thanks,

GerardM

#WCN11 - #MediaWiki gadgets

2011-11-06T12:57:00.001+01:00

At the #Wikimedia Conference 2011, one of the best bits of news was in the presentation of Roan and Timo. They have been working on the rejuvenation of our JavaScript support, this brought us a lot of improvements in the past and now they have their sites firmly on the MediaWiki gadgets.

In summary, the syntax to support gadgets is worse then wikisyntax on steroids, the same gadget may exist in a gazillion manifestations on any of the 800 Wikis, internationalisation is a joke, gadgets as they are are awful. Awful because its infrastructure sucks not because of a lack of hard work by a community of people fulfilling a need.

Consequenrly the syntax has to be cleaned up, gadgets are to be shared among the many wikis, it should be able to use all the JavaScript improvements and as gadgets are to be shared, internationalisation is necessary in order for it to work well on all those Wikis.

The best news; Roan and Timo are already testing gadgets with many of the improvements in place. The gadgets are able to use MediaWiki messages and Siebrand and Roan are talking about implementing gender and plural support for JavaScript.
Thanks,
GerardM

#WCN11 #Tropenmuseum knows the stories of expeditions

2011-11-06T06:58:00.001+01:00

As colonial powersextended their reach, they send expeditions to those parts of theworld where they might find an “el dorado”. Many of theseexpeditions had a dual purpose and expanding the knowledge of theworld was one. When you were lucky, you lived to tell the tale. Youarrived home heavy with notes, artefacts both human, animal, plant and inanimate. These artefacts were analysed and when done, theyended up in depots of museums. Museums like the Tropenmuseum.

The Dutchanthropological museums all got “their” part of these expeditionsand now is the time when thanks to digitisation all the notes andartefacts can come together. Just bringing them together is already alot of fun but it is only by telling the story to the public that itgains in relevance.

The Tropenmuseum isreally happy with many of the results of their donations ofIndonesian materials; it is the Indonesian Wikipedia where theirmaterial is used most. A project about expeditions may become asrelevant as they are when the first systematic references occur in awritten language.

Digitising thedocuments, the photos and combining them in Wikipedia articles isworthwhile in itself however this is not telling the stories of theexpeditions and the stories of the collections. Telling the storiesis what will make all the material come alive.

The pictures go intoCommons, the subjects in Wikipedia, the sources in Wikisource. Can wehave a Wikistories to tell the story and have a framework for all thecontent of the expeditions ?

Thanks,

GerardM

Learning the gender of Dutch words

2011-11-03T15:27:00.000+01:00

It is hard to learn the gender of all the nouns of the Dutch language. There are so many nouns. There are three genders; masculine, feminine and neutral but practically masculine and feminine are mostly the same.

People who are not originally Dutch can be recognised because they always get "de and het" wrong. A really simple program could make reading a Wikipedia article a training exercise. All it has to do is to remove the words "de" and "het" and make it a toggle for the reader.

The objective; having more readers for the Dutch Wikipedia AND giving them an additional reason to do so. Many people are learning to write Dutch and they are often subject matter experts in areas where this Wikipedia is weak.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Chrome #security is a bit too much

2011-11-01T21:52:00.000+01:00

The logo for the Hindi #Wikipedia is used as an illustration on a previous post. Illustrations like this can be saved from the "page view info" that is available by right clicking a web page.

Chrome apparently does not like the Hindi Wikipedia; it does not only prevent me from accessing the page view info, the information is incorrect as well.

I did use Chrome before today. I am quite happy for Chrome to provide me with a security warning; I hate it when it prevents me to do my job.

Particularly nasty is the warning:

The site uses SSL, but Google Chrome has detected either high-risk insecure content on the page or problems with the site’s certificate. Don’t enter sensitive information on this page. Invalid certificate or other serious https issues could indicate that someone is attempting to tamper with your connection to the site.

Such warnings should be taken seriously and reported but I am quite happy to use Firefox in stead.
Thanks,
GerardM

A #Wikipedia article in #Hindi about the Hindi language

2011-11-01T19:40:00.000+01:00

To illustrate how WebFonts will work for Hindi Wiki projects, I looked for an article on the Hindi Wikipedia about the Hindi language. Apparently there is no such article; at least there is no interwiki link to the Hindi Wikipedia.

It really amazed me.

As the objective is to have a sizeable article, I copied the article in Hindi about India to the test page on the Hindi portal at translatewiki.net. A similar exercise is needed for all the official languages of India.

We are very much interested in learning how using WebFonts is received by the communities of the associated Wiki projects. Having a sizeable article allows people to test reading and editing in their language with the latest version of the WebFonts software.
Thanks,
GerardM

We know David Shankbone

2011-10-30T21:55:00.000+01:00

#Commons is where photographers like David post many original pictures. David is based in New York where the "occupy Wallstreet" movement has its origin.

Good had a nice thing to say about David. This was mentioned on the mailing lists and many people pointed to other places where some good news is really welcome.

It is good news. I do know David and I am happy to be just another place where you can learn how photographers like David make a difference.
Thanks,
GerardM

A new #Wikipedia for #Africa

2011-10-30T20:11:00.000+01:00

A new Wikipedia in the Northern Sotho language has been created. Northern Sotho is spoken in South Africa and, the South African chapter has shown its interest in the creation of this new project.

The project has just been created, the content is still to be transferred from the Incubator. A mail has been send to have the traffic for this new project included in the statistics. Everything is new and we wish this project well.

With the current focus on the Northern Sotho language, it will be cool when people volunteer to be its language support team. Many open source projects including MediaWiki will be able to support this language properly when we know for sure that the CLDR information for Northern Sotho is correct and complete.

Given the interest of the South-African chapter, it will be so cool when they are motivated to ensure that the languages of South Africa are all well documented in the standards.
Thanks,
GerardM

A #Font as a luxury

2011-10-29T10:19:00.000+02:00

#Halloween will be celebrated soon; even in my part of the world there are pumpkins, grizzly costumes and other Halloween paraphernalia to be had.

Google celebrates the occasion with four webfonts. They are nice, fun and they demonstrate nicely how you can change the look and feel of a website by selecting another font.

Being spoiled for choice to celebrate Halloween on the Internet is good fun. I can imagine that Wikipedia main pages will join in such fun once the WebFonts extension is live on all the WMF projects.
Thanks,
GerardM

#HTML5 and language support

2011-10-27T09:03:00.002+02:00

The technology behind the Internet #matures; and consequently HTML 5 is becoming ever more established. HTML 5 is an open standard and the W3C is the organisation where HTML 5 is defined..

Amir went to a conference, HTML5FEST in Ramat-Gan, he met people from Google, Mozilla, the W3C. Going to a conference is where you can learn about how language support can be achieved in the future.

For Amir it is clear that improvements to the HTML 5 specifications can do with some tweaking. Going to a conference, learning how things are done and how to get suggestions in can be more effective then writing code for a month, maybe more.
Thanks,
GerardM

Just another day

2011-10-26T19:17:00.000+02:00

As I will be going to India, I have to have a visa. It can be a one day affair,

I forgot my mobile
It was a public holiday in India.. I have to come back another time
I decided to visit a friend in hospital, yesterday he was released
Leaving a good conversation made me come late for my training

Ah well, I will have to go another day.. the sun was shining, the train was on time, I visited an organisation known to be interested and involved in Wikipedia., I have a question to ask my teacher... It is not all bad, no day is.
Thanks,
GerardM

The original script of the #Philippines was not #Latin

2011-10-26T18:42:00.001+02:00

At #translatewiki.net we have portal pages for the languages our community indicates they know. For some languages all we have is Babel information, others are used to provide a starting off place for every localisation and translation we do at translatewiki.

When people are new to us, we welcome them and particularly when their language is not yet supported by the Babel extension, we ask people to localise it as a matter of urgency. At the same time attention is given to that particular portal.

The Ilokano language is one of the bigger languages on the Philippines and when you check its Wikipedia, you will find a reference to the Babayin script. This script known as Tagalog or Tglg by the ISO-15924, was used in the past not only by Ilokana but also by Tagalog. .. obviously.

The problem with this script is that it is not yet fully ratified by Unicode and consequently it is not possible to use it at all in MediaWiki. MediaWiki insists on their being a Unicode compliant font. As the technical aspects of the Unicode specification have not been ratified, creating a font is a speculative affair. Theoretically at least. Some of the gurus at Unicode can develop a font based on the existing specification and amend and append the font when need be when the script definition has some unforeseen changes.

Many of the hundreds of languages supported at translatewiki.net can do with a lot more tender loving care. When a script was used for a language, it makes sense to have the orginal transliterations in that script. This proves the authenticity of the transcription effort. A follow up transcription to the modern script makes it readable. However, transcription gets you the original orthography and that is a good thing too.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Language options looking for an iteration II

2011-10-24T20:55:00.001+02:00

When you expect a user to understand a language, you can be wrong. Everyone has no experience for most of the languages we have Wikipedias in.

Niklas experimented using data from the browser to suggest an appropriate interface. Obviously more needs to be done but as it is such an obvious improvement to our usability. The experiment was happily received with not too many words :)
Thanks,
GerardM

#Language options looking for an iteration

2011-10-23T18:27:00.002+02:00

At #translatewiki.net we live at the #MediaWiki edge.. Living at the edge brings you surprises. It brings us for instance a language drop down thingie with weird options. Dutch, British English, English and American English.

Typically my user interface is set to English so I changed it to Dutch to see if it would pick up the fact that there is Belgian Dutch, formal Dutch and Dutch. It did not; it only translated these "language options" into Dutch and it did not sort them properly.

I then checked the options for English only to find that it did not pick up on Canadian English as being a valid option. American English is not even an option.

This fun event will be mentioned at the "stand up" meeting of the Localisation team. It will be interesting how the "product owner" will evaluate this new functionality and if and how our team will deal with it. Whatever the result, I do not expect that too many words will be used.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Mobile traffic is what makes #Wikipedia grow

2011-10-23T12:07:00.001+02:00

It is great when a plan comes together; improved mobile access was made part or our strategy. Traffic from mobile devices has grown briskly for quite some time and the statistics for Wikipedia show this clearly. Total traffic based on our current methods of collecting data show an overall growth of eight percent.

When you compare the traffic for the English Wikipedia, without mobile traffic it would have decreased by five percent on a year on year basis. With mobile traffic its reduction is only one percent.

When you compare these two screens, it shows that the overall growth in traffic is an additional three percent because of mobile traffic.

Mobile traffic in the bigger languages is doing really well with a 109% growth on a year on year basis. English is the biggest language and its growth of 80% suggests that other languages have at least the same potential and therefore deserve proper attention.

One challenge with mobile devices will be in making sure that the "other" languages will benefit from this mobile growth. To accomplish this, we may have to tweak functionality we aim to deliver like WebFonts. Input methods are different anyway so there is plenty of work left that will ensure that you can do MediaWiki in any language on any device with equal ease.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Commons, how about adding some #usability

2011-10-23T11:09:00.000+02:00

Working for the #Wikimedia Foundation, I am expected to use Commons for the pictures I use when I blog. To be honest, when I have a new picture I do not mind to upload it and use it. When I am looking for a picture of a "horse" for instance, Google provides me with a useable interface. It gives me pictures, I can select one and get more info, I can click on it to get even more info and do what is needed to get a picture in a usable format.

PS recognise the first picture ?

Now compare this with the interface I get at Commons..

What I am doing is looking for a picture of a horse. All the intellectual activity that produced this text is wasting my time. I want pictures. Pictures of a horse. When I scroll down, I get some pictures..

I am still plagued with too much text, too much white space and pictures that are too small. To make it worse, many of the pictures with horses on them will not be presented because they are hiding in categories.

I am looking for a picture of a horse. I need to be presented with all the pictures I can choose from. I do not want white space, text, categories or anything. My need is to efficiently find the picture that fits my current need.

At this moment Commons is a database with 11,420,809 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. Yes, it is wonderful that anyone can contribute but please, we are now at a state where there is so much that it is certainly as relevant to have 11,420,809 freely usable media files which everyone can use.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Fundraising is a growth path for a #Wikimedia chapter

2011-10-22T12:47:00.000+02:00

The Dutch chapter is meeting. First line of business, providing some clarity about the existing fundraising situation. The current situation materialised because the American authorities require the Foundation to ensure a consistent world-wide practice.

As a consequence there are now chapters that have a fundraising agreement and chapters with a grant agreement. Several pains were mentioned; the Foundation was not present in Vienna at a conference on fundraising and, WMF officers are found not to have room to negotiate.

Currently the Dutch chapter has a grant agreement. The question raised is, what does this mean for the chapter and its activities. Fundraising takes a lot of effort and it takes away from the activities these funds are needed for. On the other hand a chapter involved in fund raising will grow its ability to run projects.

The biggest issue raised however is who decides what is strategic in a specific area. The Dutch chapter has been very active in GLAM and Wikimedia loves Monuments. This is not that much in line with the published WMF strategy but the effect has been stellar. The autonomy of a chapter to have local strategies and projects is why we are a Wikimedia movement and not a single organisation.

The question is, how will we ensure that we remain effective and a grass roots movement.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikipedia is seen in other languages

2011-10-22T01:17:00.000+02:00

Slowly but surely, the "other languages" are getting traction. October 2011 is when the top 10 Wikipedias are likely to leave more then 10% of the page views to the other Wikipedias.

The popularity of Wikipedia is growing nicely for many languages; the Chinese Wikipedia for instance grew 289% on a yearly basis. For many languages the growth rate is in the double digits and together they more then offset the lack of growth for the English Wikipedia.

When the Localisation team will introduce its functionality in production, it is likely to boost the usability for many languages. When the general public starts to perceive this in a positive way, we will get more readers and editors. All these people will be making a difference for their language and culture; they make freely licensed encyclopaedic information in their language on the Internet their own.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Apple is one company, #Android is one industry

2011-10-21T18:38:00.001+02:00

If Apple has been good at one thing, it taking a mediocre product and make it useful even pretty. Each iteration of a product they successfully absorbed has a relatively short life cycle because of Apple's relentless innovation. The premium for an Apple product is extremely high and makes them too expensive for most.

Apple deserves to do well in all its niches. As long as it can maintain its premium value they have nothing to fear from its devoted public. The Apple formula is "we do better" and, it is its eternal challenge.

The smart phone market, the PC market have one competitor for Apple, it is the industry. Apple produces clones where the industry produces variety. There are many types of PC or smart phone. What is as relevant, they are sold in a wide price range.

With Apple fighting legal battles to prevent yet another Android phones to be sold, Apple is effectively behaving like a monopolist. A monopolist that insists on the exclusive sale of its products. A monopolist who does not care about the whole market.

When you compare Microsoft with Apple, they are both monopolists. Microsoft however allowed others to earn their crust. The Microsoft tax on computers prevents the sale of computers at the bottom end of the price range. The Apple premium strangles innovation outside Apple, its patents prevent an industry from developing and finally it keeps affordable smart phones from finding a willing public.
Thanks,
GerardM

#CLDR and #GLIBC - what makes a #standard for locales II

2011-10-21T15:45:00.004+02:00

Both GLIBC and CLDR register similar things. They register for similar but different purposes. One is a standard and the other is a de facto standard.

When people with the right background take an interest in a language like Sourashtra, they can have many objectives. What we are looking for are people who are interested in enabling, supporting and promoting the use of their language.

When a font is needed and they can point us to a freely licensed font, we can support them. When a keyboard is needed specifically for a language or a script, we can support them. When they provide us with the code to transliterate from one script to another, we can support them.

To do this for one application is a lot of work and there are so many applications out there, so much replication is happening. Many of these applications are as useful and relevant as MediaWiki. It is for this reason that all the language support teams are asked to verify and possibly amend and append standards like the CLDR or GLIBC.

With information available in the right places and with fonts, keyboard mappings and transliteration scripts shared widely, in a perfect world there will no need to ask to verify, amend and append. By working together using the same data, there will come a time when there is no longer anything to amend or append, when the data for a language new to Wikipedia will just be there.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Tropenmuseum is not only for the #Netherlands

2011-10-21T14:15:00.002+02:00

Closure is what seems like the future for the Tropenmuseum. A letter informs that the Dutch government intends to stop its subsidy by 2013.

The Tropenmuseum has been one of the first big institutions that cooperated with Wikimedians and this has been documented on this blog. It is not the first time the Dutch government has the Tropenmuseum in its crosshairs.

The problem with the Tropenmuseum is that it is the repository of artefacts where the Dutch are only its custodians. Irreplaceable artefacts where the continued existence and a continued public presence ensures that we can source our history and learn how history is not as we know it.

The Tropenmuseum has been brilliant in its cooperation with us Wikimedians and the collection of imagery they have shared with us has been happily received and is extensively used. There is however so much more we can do with the Tropenmuseum, we plan to do with the Topenmuseum...

GLAM are essential to ensure that the sum of all knowledge we aim to share is encyclopaedic and truthful. The Tropenmuseum has been so important to us. This news is awful and it begs the question how the Dutch government intends to meet its continued obligation as the custodian of the world class heritage that is the Tropenmuseum collection.
Thanks,
GerardM

Why #Almere in the #Somali language

2011-10-20T13:29:00.000+02:00

#Wikipedia has become an obvious source for information. #Google rates our articles high and articles about a subject do serve their need. Almere is my home town and there are some 49 articles about it.

Providing information about Almere is important to all the family, friends and relatives of people who were born outside of the Netherlands and live in Almere. The information provided reassures people. The picture to the right does a lot, it shows water, green grass, a flag a coat of arms a map and even coordinates.

The Somali Wikipedia is not rich in articles. Writing an article about Almere however appeals to the Somali people who live there. The initial article they write is different as it is written from a different perspective; their Almere.

Given that so many either live in an asylum seekers centre, or started off from the AZC, it is an important feature in the article. The article is not encyclopaedic in our traditional sense yet however, including the parts of a place that make that place relevant for a community is very much why we write many of our articles in stead of translating them.

Informing people about the place where they live is great. Equally interesting is having articles in the Dutch language about the place people come from. It is a tiny step of getting to know our "Medelanders". (wordplay on together and Dutch).
Thanks,
GerardM

#Skype is underwhelming

2011-10-19T20:18:00.000+02:00

I use skype. It was recently bought by #Microsoft for $8.5 billion. As such it has a valuation based on the size of its user base and to increase the user base even more, Facebook made Skype the engine for chatting and talking to other people using Facebook.

In the meantime there are patents by both Microsoft and Facebook describing technology that allows for tracking, spying and consequently it is not only governments that spy, track, stalk. Using Skype as a technology that is so obviously used as a platform of spyware, trackware and stalkware.

One of the great things of patents is that they are intended to exclude. With patents claimed by a Microsoft or Facebook other companies do have an incentive not to use such technology. As governments are likely to be the beneficiary of such spyware trackware and stalkware functionality as well, it will be interesting to learn if other companies have to pay for the use of such technology or if governements will strong arm the patent holders to make this technology for free.

Anyway, Skype is underwhelming because why trust it when it is patently clear that it will not provide you with the privacy that the law at least suggests you should be able to expect from the plain old telephone system.
Thanks,
GerardM

The #agile #bugmeister

2011-10-19T19:49:00.000+02:00

The #Wikimedia bugmeister works in an environment where increasingly more development teams adopt agile for their project management. As the function of a bugmeister is not defined in agile, the question was raised during the training for the localisation team what a bugmeister is in an agile environment.

We love our bugmeister and, we want to fit him in. The short answer is that a bugmeister represents aspects of both business analysis and quality control. The long answer has it that software is accepted based on the compliance of a "user story" in the software. For a reported bug to be a bug in the understanding of agile, it does not comply and it results in a user story explaining the breakage. The existence of a bug may also indicate that a "user story" exists where the existing functionality does break. The analysis of such a situation is what a business analyst does. The resulting user stories are presented to the "product owner" for inclusion in a next sprint.

When the previous paragraph sounds like gobbledygook, it is very much because of the specific terminology used by agile. Having specific terminology is a good thing because it forces an agile newbie to consider and reconsider his understanding of what is expected of him or her.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikipedia in the languages of #India is doing fine

2011-10-17T19:49:00.000+02:00

The #statistics for the Indic languages show a healthy growth. A growth of less then 30% per annum makes a language an under performer.

The statistics below indicate a decrease in traffic for the English Wikipedia of 5% per annum. As all these numbers are for world wide traffic, it is not valid to compare English with the Indic languages. It would be nice to know how English is doing in India alone.

This might tell us if English is experiencing a similar growth in India. When it does, it is a vindication for the strategy of focusing on India and by inference on the global south.

In the last year, the quality of the localisation has improved for several languages and my theory is that this combined with an ever growing number of articles is why the growth is so healthy.

At translatewiki.net we are experimenting with WebFonts and Narayam for several languages. The initial feedback and response on the current functionality is great. The quality of the support we provide is largely due to the communities that are providing us with the necessary feedback.

When you are looking for similar functionality for your language, let us know.
Thanks,
GerardM

Having #Babel level 0 available is best practice

2011-10-17T02:20:00.003+02:00

On many a #Wikipedia, people come along to do some admin work or leave a message. I have the good fortune to invite people to become part of a "language support team" for their language because the "Localisation team" I am part of do not know enough of all the languages we aim to support.

My user page looks practically the same on all the projects where I have a user for my WMF persona. The example above indicates that I do not know Catalan. The message I leave is also the same for all languages, the one I left on the Catalan Wikipedia can be found here. Obviously it is not in Catalan.

We hope to channel the communications between a language community and us through the people who can help us and who are willing to help us. It is simple, proper support for a language requires expertise and together we can provide proper support for all our languages.
Thanks,
GerardM

Another use for a #font

2011-10-16T18:42:00.000+02:00

The Bengali script is not only used for the Bengali language. The Bishnupria Manipuri language is as far as we know written exclusively in this script.

The best way to explain what the Localisation team can do for a language community is to implement known solutions. Adding the support for the Lohit Bengali font for Bishnupria Manipuri is easy and obvious.

We do not know if there is a need for an input method that is specific for Bishnupria Manipuri. For that we need to be advised by people who know the language. When they work together in a language support team, we can build the framework that they can implement solutions for their language on.
Thanks,
GerardM

in #ISO639 bbc stands for Toba #Batak

2011-10-14T18:35:00.001+02:00

Artefacts of many "indigenous" cultures only exist in museums. The cultured people who created them have died or dwindled into non-existence and their descendants often do not know their history, their culture.

When the language still exists... it may be that the script is no longer in use because it is replaced by another. Even when the text is transcribed and then transliterated, the terminology and the associated understanding may be lost.

We have a request for a Wikipedia in Toba Batak. This is only one of the languages that is written or used to be written in the Batak script. The characters of the script have been defined in Unicode and the only font available is freeware and does not feature what you expect of a modern font according to the author.

The author of the existing font, a professor in Hawaii, is happy to work with us to establish a fully functional freely licensed font, a keyboard map and possibly a transcription engine from and to the Latin script.

Many of the objects in the Dutch and other western museums are valued far higher then the cost of the creation of a font for the Batak script. Once a script is available it becomes possible to transcribe all the texts that exists in museums and archives and this in turn will allow us to glimpse of the Batak cultures as they survive in its literature.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Wikimedia #Commons; where is the beef

2011-10-13T18:24:00.002+02:00

Commons is relevant when it is used. Why should anyone care about 11,352,202 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute when they are hardly used? What is the point of all all these media files when its use is restricted to the ivory towers of the Wikimedia Foundation?

In many ways, Commons is restricted by design.Commons hardly works for me because these freely usable media files have to be "educational". As a blogger I do not care, pictures need to be "illustrative". The pictures I use need to be amusing, they need to make a point, preferably in an amusing way.

There are pictures that qualify, but they are hard to find and I doubt that a picture like the one to the right will survive the onslaught of the keepers at the gate.

There are many reasons why our pictures are so hard to find.. The use of plural for categories is technically correct but I am looking for a horse, not for horses. Looking for a word in the text is relevant for Wikipedia but hardly for Commons. Tagging pictures makes sense but we are not into tagging. There is no app for Commons.

The bottom line is, Commons is a service product for use within the Wikimedia Foundation and consequently the multi million freely usable media files are waiting for their prince like sleeping beauty in her tower.

Magnus Manske brought to our attention that Commons is hardly known as a rich resource of freely usable media files. The Commons discussion should be about how to make sure that the images at Commons are widely known and used and not so much about what pictures people may not like to see.
Thanks,
GerardM

The horror story that is making #payments abroad ...

2011-10-13T16:32:00.003+02:00

The #translatewiki.net translation rally ends with the transfer of money. Transferring money is frustrating as often people end up with a pittance because of the costs to transfer money in a worst case (i.e. most expensive) scenario.

The translation rallies should boost the localisation for languages that will benefit the most. Many of these languages are spoken in countries where there is sadly no support by Paypall or where the cost of transferring money is prohibitively expensive.

Paypall does not allow the transfer of money to many countries including Brazil or India. As I have a colleague in India, India is not a real problem anyway. And please, you FIRST have to enable an e-mail account for paypall before can be transfered money to you.

Transferring money by Bank is not easy either. While an IBAN number is absolutely essential, it is probably one of bankings best kept secrets. Learning my own IBAN number was not straightforward at all; why can it not be part of the static information that is part of my internet banking information? It is as if making international payments should be difficult by design. It is as if global contacts are the preserve of companies and criminals only.
Thanks,
GerardM

#Google, #Acehnese is not #Indonesian

2011-10-12T13:02:00.002+02:00

The Acehnese #Wikipedia is recognised by the Google Chrome browser as Indonesian. It even offers to translate it into English.

However, in the html, there is a tag identifying the language as "ace" or Acehnese.

<html lang="ace" dir="ltr" class="client-nojs" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

When you check the bar, there are options, one of them is to report an incorrect language detection. There is a drop down list of languages to select from with an option at the bottom to specify a language that is not in the list.

For Google to provide a translation service is wonderful. There is however a reason why we specify a language. It is because we want everyone to know what language a text is in.

Adding this is best practice for a website but sadly many if not most websites get it wrong. It is intended to allow services like the Google translation service to know what language a text is in. The Localisation team will go a step further for MediaWiki; it will provide services based on the language indicated by this tag. Services like WebFonts, keyboard mappings and appropriate text direction settings.

Identifying a language is relevant, many services rely on it and it is what gives visibility to a language on the Internet.
Thanks,
GerardM

To #Translate on #Wikimedia Meta

2011-10-12T09:00:00.000+02:00

Providing adequate tools at Meta has been a holy grail for the developers of the Translate extension. To get to this stage a page translation mode was developed a long time ago. This has been in use successfully at KDE for the translation of its user documentation.

Having tools to manage texts that need translation is extremely valuable when the message can and does alter. This has always been the case for the Wikimedia Fundraiser and it was more or less managed with templates. The Translate extension brings the kind of functionality that cannot be managed with templates.

Making use of the Translate extension also unifies the skills needed for the translation and localisation of the fund raiser. One other and essential part of the fundraiser is the software that has always been localised at translatewiki.net.

At this time Translate has just been implemented and everybody is granted the privilege to translate. Only some people can enable a page for translation. As a consequence the only page currently available for translation is a test page explaining page translation.

It was important to get the software ready as soon as possible because the annual fundraiser is already quite near. Thanks to Niklas, Siebrand, Roan and Sam it has been realised. Testing at Meta materialised a final bug that will be fixed before Translate will be used in earnest.
Thanks,
GerardM