Usability - Infoboxes at Wikia

A friend of mine had me look again at how MediaWiki editing is done at Wikia.

While editing, it shows a little grey text "Infobox Film". When you press it you get a pop up screen relevant to info boxes. Info boxes are typically at the very start of an article. They are intimidating and they hide what people want to do.

The Wikia approach hides the clutter and when you select the infobox, the data and the code are nicely separated. The relevant content is nicely separated from the code.

If you do not like this more WYSWYG way of editing, you can even select to use the old "Code" screen. This can be selected from the taskbar.

There is still enough work left for the Stanton project...The article includes several references; I think you will agree that they need a similar treatment.

Thanks,
GerardM

Chicken or egg

At Betawiki we use CLDR data for the language names in all all our languages. Many languages are supported in the CLDR but some are not. Picard is one language that is not supported in the CLDR yet. Not only are the locales for the language missing, the language is currently not known and consequently the translation for Picard in many languages are not available to us. In OmegaWiki we have a small list of names for Picard.

I have requested edit rights for the CLDR so that I can add values like pcd, Picard and the Dutch "Picardisch". I am grateful that I am given the opportunity to contribute.

I have now been asked if I can add values for the locales for Picard. Locales because Picard is spoken in Belgium and France. The person who asked localisation permission at Betawiki is obviously a much better person to ask to do this. It would be great when we stimulate the people from our community to contribute to the CLDR as it is one of the corner stones for the presence of a language on the Internet.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Template:Restored-original version

The great thing about digitally restoring files, is that it is a non-destructive and repeatable process. You start with a digital file, you save it, you work your magic and you end up with the best that you can do. So best practices for restoration have it that you safe the original file. This file is unlikely to be used anywhere and a new template has been created to signal the relevance of an original file.

On the English language Wikipedia, images that are not used are deleted or moved to Commons. This is not always possible for images that are restored. Some images are public domain in the USA but not elsewhere and consequently cannot be uploaded to Commons.

A great example of an original file is this poster for Rome. It is great because it is quite clear that this is how this poster was made available by the Library of Congress. And it allows anyone who thinks he can do better to improve on the existing restoration, a featured picture..

Another reason for keeping the original file is that it prevents a lot of grief. Many people assume that because a file is available under a free license, that they can change the file because it needs an "improvement". Such an "improvement" can be result in a cropped version or a change in the colour balance. While it is technically correct that you can change a file in this way, it is often very controversial. It is very much in the Wiki spirit that you allow for people to make up there own mind what is best.
Thanks,
GerardM

A tale of two cities

There are two photographers that I know. One let us call him David and the other let us call him Mardetanha. Both have a camera, both use Internet and both make important contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation. David lives in the USA and Mardetanha in Iran. There are many differences, broad band vs dial up, great pictures of all USA landmarks versus not that much. An income that allows for some travelling versus not very much at all.

Mardetanha has some 5 Gb of digital images that he wants to upload. This would take forever on his connection Given the cost, he prefers to wait until a CD is filled with some 10 Gb and send it to someone in the USA to upload it for him

David has a fine reputation as a photographer, Mardetanha has to work much harder for other people to be even aware that his work exists. Wikipedia needs his work; more illustrations will provide better information about Iran. Not only for people in Iran but for people in the whole world.
Thanks,
GerardM

Brion speaks at Fosdem

Brion will be speaking at FOSDEM in the "Collaboration" track. This is a VERY good reason to come to Brussels as well and enjoy great beer, great company and great conversations about everything and MediaWiki. I know that Siebrand intends to be there. Several other have expressed their intention to be come. It is likely that we will demonstrate the ExtensionTesting environment...

So check your agenda, and see you in Brussels :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Kabuverdianu

Waldir, one of the Betawiki volunteers has Cape Verdian Creole, or Kabuverdianu as his mother tongue. Kabuverdianu is a language, its ISO-639-3 code is kea. Waldir is one of the active localisers for Portuguese. His Babel information did not specify a mother tongue, his Portuguese profile provided this information so his information was completed.

I asked Waldir to add the Babel information on Betawiki and he had an initial problem with this. The Cape Verdian creole is not a homogeneous language; Cape Verde are 10 islands, and the language differs from island to island. The modern times brings radio, television and internet and as a consequence the differences are disappearing. There is also a movement to standardise the language. As Waldir is from one of the smaller islands, he is not comfortable writing the standard orthography.

We have agreed that it is best when the Babel information is in Kabuverdianu, so Waldir did localise the Babel extension. Betawiki now supports kea, it falls back to Portuguese and it will wait patiently for the moment when people want to start localising in earnest.

One thing I am really grateful for is that Waldir will provide information needed to support Kabuverdianu with locale data. This information is essential for a language to function on the Internet.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A nice quote

Awadewit is a fine Wikipedian and lady. Her specialty is literature, she has been active on articles about writers like Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, among others. She told some professors that much of her writing was on Wikipedia. They were astounded because Wikipedia does not have that good a reputation. The reason why she writes for Wikipedia dawned on them. when they learned how many people read these articles.. Austen, Shelley...


This same argument is valid for restored images, they typically become featured pictures. Look for instance at the traffic number for this Vietnamtunnel.jpg. It is obvious when it featured :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Positivism

In a way, it is a running gag. Wikipedia is doomed. There are always some ten reasons why Wikipedia will crash, burn, disappear. There is the latest scandal, there are the article numbers that no longer grow exponentially, there is the fundraiser with its banner, Jimmy's plea, the number of new editors...

Many gags have a kernel of truth, it is what makes them funny. They are funny because the doom sayers apparently do not consider all the positive things as the counterweight that they are..

• The Stanton project will have a major effect on the usability
• This will design ways for more people to contribute to Wikipedia
• There have been issues with the arbitration committee but if democracy works, new people are aware of the pitfalls of the past and may make a difference
• There is the WikiCup 2009, a challenge played and won by skill of editing
• competitors have offered to teach the fine points of their skills
• The expectation of exponential growth is not realistic. Continued exponential growth has all the sand kernels on the beach editing Wikipedia ...
  
• The fundraiser was a great success, our aim was achieved
  
• the banners looked much better then last year
• the fundraiser was much better organised this year
• the public showed its appreciation for the work done in the past and gave us the room to do more in the future
  
• Jimmy's personal plea made the point why Wikipedia deserves support splendidly
• The Wikimedia Foundation is much better organised and as a consequence much better able to ensure the sustainability of Wikipedia

There are other things that I feel make a difference

• MediaWiki is adopted by more and more organisations
• The quality of the localisation of a small group of languages is such that MediaWiki is used as the default language by external projects
• Thanks to the community at Betawiki, localisation is happening for many languages
• Without localisation we are not able to share the sum of all knowledge to every single human.
• A small group of people restore images digitally and are willing and able to teach their skills
• A wide variety of images are restored, photos, prints, drawings
• Material from many cultures, epochs and languages are chosen to prevent bias

All these positive things make their own contribution to why Wikipedia is not doomed. It is not even Wikipedia what it is all about, Wikipedia is about sharing and collaboration. In 2009 the United States of America will welcome a new president. He made the material on his website available under the CC-by license. Even when Wikipedia is finally doomed, I would already consider changes like this as part of its legacy.

Do deaf schizophrenic people hear voices ??

So I asked the people on the SignWriting mailing list. I was told by someone who has interpreted for schizophrenic deaf people, that some do hear voices and others SEE voices..
Thanks,
GerardM

Writing in an extinct language

When new texts are written in an extinct language, it is highly academic if what is written is correct, useful and understandable. Often there are several ways of writing a language because languages evolve over time and the orthography change with it. It may even be that the script changed as well. Given that there are no living people who use the language for their daily communications, there is no final word on what is right or wrong.

There are several Wikipedias in truly extinct languages and I am not impressed with what I have seen so far. I recently learned about a dispute in the "Anglo Saxon" Wikipedia where people are fighting about the use of specific characters. When you read about this, you learn that the language used a different script anyway. it is also about the validity of a book on the subject from the 1970's.

With a transliteration to another script, with the use of extended Latin script, I wonder if people who read the texts of the Anglo Saxon Wikipedia actually learn something that helps them understand old original texts.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Supporting languages in Betawiki itself

The people who localise for their language at Betawiki, all have an ability to understand English. In many ways, the first person to start the process of localisation is a pioneer. The objective is often simply to meet the requirement for a new project. For new languages, when 50% of the "most used messages" are done, the user interface becomes available in the Incubator and all other WMF projects.

For some languages the localisation has become a continuous process; the usability for these languages becomes as good as it gets. When more and more work is done, a need arises for other activities. Proof reading, the use of consistent terminology require other skills, different skills. English is for these people not as much a requirement as it is for the people who do the primary localisation work and Betawiki needs to provide great support for the other languages.

A good example of a well supported language is Persian. The language has had consistent support for quite some time. It is of a quality where MediaWiki is usable for use in education or where native hosting in Persian can be offered. Betawiki allows its users to change the interface to right to left support, a gadget still missing for Commons.

To support the people who are not comfortable with English, the Betawiki user interface itself has to be localised. When the most basic localisation is completed, proof reading and improved terminology are activities that become increasingly important. The Persian effort demonstrates how good it can get..
Thanks,
GerardM

Portuguese

The BBC informed me that the lusophone countries have started a process to adopt new spelling rules. These spelling rules are especially welcomed by countries like Angola who struggle to raise literacy in their country; one orthography would make things easier. At the same time, some Portuguese politicians see it as a capitulation to Brazilian interests...

What I am interested in is what effet it will have on projects like Wiktionary and Wikipedia. The orthography has been adopted by some and not by others. It is intended that the whole of the Lusophony will adopt this orthography.. So what will it be for the Wiki projects ??
Thanks,
      GerardM

On the yearly and monthly Betawiki information

Betawiki has had a great year. To learn how great a year, it is best to read what Siebrand had to say in his update. It gives you all the hard information that you need. Recommended reading! There is however always more to say..

A lot of extra work has gone in 30 languages because of the Betawiki end of year prize. The prize is going to be divided by 35 people who made a claim. For Czech, Spanish, Finnish, and Chinese multiple people claimed their cut, five people have asked us to donate on their behalf to the Wikimedia Foundation.

I am especially happy that Amharic, Khmer, Tagalog, Telugu and Punjabi benefited from our end of year push. Many of the languages that benefited most were already doing really well, Arabic, Chinese, German and Russian for instance. For other languages like Czech, Estonian, Finnish and Sicilian it helps to complete their localisation.

Some people indicated that it was next to impossible for them to contribute because of the severed Internet cables in the Mediterranean. This may mean that we might have done better..

The project did what we hoped it would; we received a lot of attention, a lot of work was done in a small period of time. The one thing we do not know yet is if more people will find their way to Betawiki in 2009.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Prosit Neu Jahr

The great news about fund-raisers is that they come to an end. For me the goal of six million was reached in the first morning of the year.. I woke up and, it was done. At the same time the WMF office was still in 2008. So arguably the result is very much a 2008 event..

It is quite clear that Jimmy's appeal made all the difference. Well actually, given the numbers, it is impossible to ignore the importance of his personal appeal. Jimmy is important to our visibility and it has again been proven what vital role he plays in getting our message out.

I am sure we will continue to support Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a rich resource and it deserves our continued support. A more beautiful gift of reaching our fund appeal at the start of the new year we could not have.. I wish us all the best 2009 we can have...
Thanks,
     GerardM

The 1.13 and 1.12 localisations are updated in SVN

With the large amount of localisation work done at Betawiki over the last few days, we want to share as widely as possible. The most important beneficiaries are all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. Every day the localisations are committed to SVN. Whenever Brion updates the WMF projects, the latest localisations become available to all Wikipedias, all Wiktionaries, all Wikibooks, all Wikinews, all Wikiquotes, all Wikiquotes, all Wikisources, all Wikiversities and all the other WMF wikis.

We are really happy with our end of year activity, it is not only the people who localise who walk the extra mile, it is also the MediaWiki developers at Betawiki who improve the texts of many messages, who create text that supports the localisers and who implement, check and improve on the internationalisation of MediaWiki and its extensions.

The "other" MediaWiki users, often use one of the stable versions. For these people and organisations Betawiki maintains a list of the messages for the 1.12 and 1.13 stable versions. Today Siebrand exported these messages to SVN; consequently you can update from SVN. Alternatively you can go to Betawiki and export the messages for one language at a time.

Betawiki is about languages and English is key because all the MediaWiki software is developed in English. Many people improve MediaWiki for their language and many more people can make a difference..

You can make that difference :)
Thanks,
     GerardM

Betawiki tools

When you localise Betawiki and you localise a language like Arabic or Hebrew, you want a user interface that goes from right to left. To do this and other things, there are gadgets available in the user preferences.

There are two ways of doing this; you can opt to change the direction globally or you can choose to have a button override it on an edit page. These two options have been there for quite some time, they have been essential for us to support right to left oriented languages.

Nikerabbit added a new gadget the other day; they allow us to change the text area font style. There are three three styles: monospaced, sans and serif. In a previous blog post I mentioned that Firefox was broken for the Lingala wikipedi. This is actually not the case; the problem is that monospaced fonts have been selected for Firefox and this is what makes Firefox, Safari and Opera break.

Monospaced fonts do not support characters like "ɔ́" properly, but the sans and serif fonts work as they should in most modern browsers.. Internet Explorer is broken because it does show the wrong characters, Chrome is broken because it does not show a character.

Thanks,

GerardM

The Betawiki end of year prize

Last year Siebrand formulated REALLY ambitious objectives. At the time his motivation was that it should not be too easy. Now at the end of the year, we need twelve more languages to finish the "most used messages" for instance. Siebrand calculated that it takes some 8000 localisations for exactly the right language to reach all the objectives.

With only a few days left in the year, we want to end the year with a bang. To make this happen, we have made EUR 1000,- available to be shared among the people who do more than 500 localisations in the finishing part of the year.

Today in the second day of the End of Year and we are happy with the results so far; many new contributors, many contributors coming back to help a hand and we have never seen so many localisations in a day. We have had people comment that it is no longer possible to do 500 localisations for languages like German or Dutch. We have people comment on the quality of messages... It is like a week happening in a day :)

The biggest winner of this end of year prize? All us users of MediaWiki because all the localisations will be shared by us all. Please, be a winner with us and help the localisation for your language to be as good as it can be.
Thanks,
GerardM

Srećan Božić

Today is Chrismas eve, for some countries Christmas has already started. I want to wish you all a happy Christmas from my blog. Many people on the SignWriting mailing list exchange their best seasons wishes by e-mail. The one I liked best this year was by Stefan Wöhrmann..

Happy Holidays,
GerardM

A plugin for aditional support

I have added the "Linker button" to my blog. It allows you to discover more about some of the concepts that are used on my blog. In the screen shot you see information about publications for the concept "handwriting".

The terminology used is based on what can be found in Wikiprofessional.org. This contains a really rich resource for biomedical terminology. It includes information like publications and authors from Pubmed (for the security conscious among you, Pubmed is seen here through the "Conceptweblinker").

The cool thing for me is that Wikiprofessional in its wiki part is based on the OmegaWiki mark I technology. We are currently working hard on making the data mining engine mindful of new concepts that are entered in the Wiki. When we have this working, I can make sure that all the concepts in my blog are known to the engine and in this way my blog becomes easier to understand for those whose English is not as good as mine.

The current terminology is quite extended. From the Conceptweblinker and from Wikimore.org you can experience what can already be done for the English language Wikipedia. Given the terminology, it works best for those articles that are in the bio-medical domain.

When you are interested in having this feature enabled on your website or blog, just put this code snippet in the right place..

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://conceptweblinker.wikiprofessional.org/wikibutton.js"></script>

There is even a plugin for Firefox only at the moment...
Thanks,
GerardM

SignWriting and hand writing

When I write about SignWriting, I write about the script, how it can be used for any sign language and about the request for a Wikipedia in American Sign Language. The SignWriting mailing list has been focusing mostly on the development of the new implementation of the script and how it affects the software.

Lately there were more threads about how SignWriting is used in education and several posts were about handwriting. When you look at the many examples that were posted, you find that like any script there is room for a lot of individuality. There is a maturation process; people taking short cuts as they progress in ability. I am sure that the handwriting of deaf doctors is as hard to decipher as the handwriting of a hearing doctor :)

Here is an example done by Sandy Fleming and is in British Sign Language.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Why bother

Today when I came to Commons I found this:

Somebody bothered to warn me that an image was about to be deleted. What is the point if the image that is to be deleted will be deleted within a day? The assumption that the image is about VISTA is also wrong. The image involved is about Google Chrome, software that is Open Source.

The image demonstrates that Chrome does not support the Khmer Wikipedia well and, it was uploaded for people from Google to have a look at. I think a screen shot like that can be considered in our interest. Anyway, next time do not bother to warn me because there is no room to react. This is the image that was deleted. I am convinced that nobody will tell me that it is a "copyright violation" let alone that someone will tell me to remove it.

Thanks,
     GerardM

RNA Biology

The magazine RNA biology announced that they are requiring researchers publishing research on families of RNA molecules in the journal to write a Wikipedia article summarising their findings. The notion is that the paper in the magazine is original research and the Wikipedia article that will also be peer reviewed, will be a summary.

There are several problems:

• Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia with different subjects linked by hyperlinks. It is not a collection of summaries of scientific articles. This means that information that is relevant in one research paper is likely to find a home in many Wikipedia articles. This makes a traditional peer review, where the review takes place before publication, problematic if not impossible.
  
• The proposed Wikipedia article is a summary of a scientific paper. Scientific papers do not provide a neutral point of view and they should not be neutral. For Wikipedia NPOV is essential and people get banned for pushing their point of view.
• The subject matter is so specialised that a typical Wikipedia admin will not be able to judge it. This allows for a lot of misunderstandings and conflict.
• Writing a scientific article and writing a Wikipedia article requires different skills. Wikipedia serves the general public and its articles should reflect this. A different vocabulary, a different style of writing is required.

I think there is a need for more discussion before this actually starts happening.
Thanks,
GerardM

NB the article that proposes this is a paid for article in Nature, there is also a press release about this.

Illiteracy

I just read one of those "little" news items that lifted my heart.. The president of Bolivia announced that Bolivia is the third country in Latin America that is free of illiteracy. With support from Cuba and Venezuela, a massive educational effort has helped more than 800,000 Bolivians to learn to read and write. Most people were taught to read and write Spanish but many people learned their mother tongue Aymara or Quechua.

Research has shown again and again that education is one of the best investments for a country. I expect that this will prove to be true for Bolivia as well.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Modern technology

In the SignWriting world, it was this week very much about modern technology and the availability of it. The first thing was about video clips. Valerie found that it is possible to record video with a big compression rate.. She is inquiring the mailing list if this is useful. The other thing that met with a lot of interest is the favicon. So far the SignWriting websites did not have one and a discussion has started about what it should look like and how to implement such a newfangled oddity.

Adam Frost wrote that he has implemented a favicon on his website. I must say his blog is really interesting; I have added a subscription to my Google Reader. What makes it interesting is the mix of signing using a blog and writing in English. Adam uses video to capture his signing and he writes in English. He posts both together so I can appreciate what he is on about... and so can you. Have a look at his blog..
Thanks,
GerardM

Google Chrome fail

This is the Khmer Wikipedia on my system in Chrome.

This is also the km.wikipedia on my system with Firefox.

Google has some more work to do to get it right.
Thanks,
GerardM

Importing Tagalog messages

We are really happy at Betawiki with the steady growth of the Tagalog messages. AnakngAraw is really working hard. Because of the speed of his work, we had the impression that he was copying messages from the Tagalog Wikipedia. When you do this manually, it is a lot of work and, the Betawiki developers have the tools, the skills to do this much more efficiently.

Most important at Betawiki is the time of our localisers. We really want them to be as efficient as we can make them. By copying in these messages from the Tagalog Wikipedia, AnakngAraw is now free to spend his time on something else, for instance localising the messages of the many extensions we use.

One question I am left with, are there other projects that spend a lot of time localising that we are unaware of at Betawiki ? We would love to be more complete for any language...
Thanks,
GerardM

The girl effect

Last year at the Holland Open I met Erik Duval. Today I reconnected with him and I spend a considerable time reading his blog. There were several videos that I liked. This one I really liked. It is simple, the idea is powerful and it will work up to a point.


Thanks,
     GerardM

Why do African languages fail on Wikipedia

In one word: usability.

• UNICEF has done usability testing; 100% of their test subjects were unable to create a new article. This study was video taped and is available to the WMF for its Stanton project.
• The localisation for most African languages is not good and they hurt as a consequence
• MediaWiki does not show characters needed for African languages properly in most modern browsers
  

When you look at my user page in edit mode, you will see the word "Mbɔ́tɛ!". It is likely that you will see the character and the accent next to each other. My user page is likely to look good. When you use this with the latest version of Safari, it looks good. Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer show my user page properly but it goes wrong in the edit mode. Firefox does fail the least; it shows you the character and the accent next to each other. Chrome does not show you the characters while Internet Explorer shows you different characters.

It may be that by changing the CSS for the MediaWiki edit screen a solution can be found. That would be awesome. In the mean time the best result is achieved for African languages by using the latest Safari browser,
Thanks,
      GerardM

Supporting Lingala in MediaWiki

Lingala is a language spoken by 200.000 native speakers and 7 million people speak it as a second language according to Ethnologue. It has its own Wikipedia, with a little over a thousand articles. The Lingala language makes use of other characters of the Latin script like the ɔ́. The accent has to be right on top in order to display well. In order to make it so, the CSS on the Lingala Wikipedia has been changed and a specific set of fonts have been ordered and identified.

The problem is that other MediaWiki installations do not provide this change. Consequently Lingala people are unlikely to support their language in Betawiki and, they are unlikely to upload their images to Commons.

In a discussion on Betawiki, browsers have been tested for this problem.

• Dell WinXP Explorer: squares instead of open e/o (with or with no accents).
• Dell WinXP Firefox 2.0.0.14: open o/e well; accents well.
• Mac 10.2.8 Safari 1.0.3: open o/e well; accents not.
• Mac 10.2.8 Firefox 2.0.9: open o/e well; accents not.
• Mac 10.2.8 Explorer 5.2: open o/e as "?"; accents not.
• Mac 10.4.11 Safari 3.1.1: open o/e well; accents not.
• Mac 10.4.11 Firefox 2.0.0: open o/e well; accents not.

As I understand it, it is a matter for people to use a modern browser. If this is all there is to this, there are two parts to upgrading to a modern browser. How do we get this message out and, how do people get their upgrade?
Thanks,
GerardM

**Update**
It is not only browser related, the ɔ́ shows properly while I am editing this blog entry, but it does not in final form..

Installing a new font

It is not often that I find I cannot see the characters in a text. Today I installed a font for the script that is used for all the Yi languages.

This font is provided by SIL, it is available under the Open Font License. I came to install it because there is a Wikipedia in the Sichuan Yi language, its main page indicates in English that it is now at the Incubator. It is one of the languages that is not yet supported in Betawiki.. It will need a person to request it to make it so.

The list of Wikipedias proves to be incorrect because several Wikipedias have been closed. This is not reflected on the list.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Some Betawiki updates

Betawiki now has its own favicon...

Siebrand did send out the latest Betawiki news letter. In it he asks us to give each other the finishing touch of one of the message groups. Many languages are just a few messages away from a completed "most often used messages"...

Brion blogged that there were security releases for MediaWiki. The good news is that these releases do include the latest localisations .. The sad news is that for a 1.12 update you will have to wait for a release that will be there any time soon. One alternative is to upgrade to 1.13.3..
Thanks,
       GerardM

Digg drugs

I found this article on Digg, as you can see it is highly rated and, it seems to have its origin on en.wikipedia.

 

When you actually go to the article, the image is on Commons. It is the type of picture that paints a thousand words. Even better, it is in SVG, and there is a  Toolserver tool that helps you to translate the text in your languages. This was easier said then done because the word "Dependence" has fewer characters then "Afhankelijkheid". 

I installed Inkscape because the tools that I have on my computer did not work well for me. What I learned is that this is because of the orientation of the characters. With another orientation, the Toolserver tool would have had no problem. 

When you look at the labels in the text, you may agree with me that what is needed is mainly the translation in another language, something that should be possible from a dictionary resource like Wiktionary or OmegaWiki. OmegaWiki does have the ability to be queried. This opens up the possibility to show all the words in the language selected in the user preferences or the language of the page when the translations are available.
Thanks,
        GerardM

A Wikipedia main page with a twist

This is the main page of the Wikipedia in Luganda.

This initiative has been replicated on several Wikipedias. It makes it easy to create a new page.

This iniative tries to inform the people who come to this page what articles are considered essential. The lists are in English and it is therefore that I hope that all the red links remain red. While on one level I applaud the initiative, I cringe when I look at this list.. Where are the subjects that are essential in a Luganda setting ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Betawiki update

Every month I post an update on the Wikipedias. It informs about the percentage of messages that are localised for that specific language. Normally I copy the text of the previous month and update the numbers. This month I have an improved message.

There are two changes; the {{CONTENTLANGUAGE}} is used to make the message language independent and the link to Betawiki is to the Special:LanguageStats page. This is probably more inviting to lend a hand and help with the localisation.

Thanks,
GerardM

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The W3C has published its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. These recommendations have been worked on to make the Internet more accessible for people with disabilities and for older people and it aims to increase the usability of websites across a variety of mobile devices.

This improved standard addresses the barriers to accessing the Web experienced by people with visual, auditory, physical, cognitive and neurological disabilities, and by older Web users with accessibility needs. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make content:

• Perceivable (for instance by addressing text alternatives for images, captions for audio, adaptability of presentation, and color contrast);
• Operable (by addressing keyboard access, color contrast, timing of input, seizure avoidance, and navigability);
• Understandable (by addressing readability, predictability, and input assistance); and
• Robust (for instance by addressing compatibility with assistive technologies).

The publication of this standard comes at a time when the Wikimedia Foundation is preparing its Stanton project team to address usability. Even with $890.000,-- there is only so much that you can do and the research by UNICEF has made it painfully clear how much work needs to be done on MediaWiki usability. Browsing the text of this improved standard, it is clear to me that this standard is written to a large extend for the classic websites that are quite static in nature. The content of wikis are generated by its communities and consequently it will be hard to make it available in all the different ways discussed in these guidelines. I do expect that there is much in there that is relevant.

The Stanton team will start its work in January with assessing what has already been done by others on usability. In the WCAG 2.0 it finds guidelines that help our projects to become accessible for people with disabilities. It is a happy coincidence that these standard have been published before this work actually started.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Singing in a choir

When you sing in a choir, you have text and music. You rehearse and when it is time, you sing publicly in a church or a theatre. In a choir you are expected to wear the same colours in order to look and sing as one.

I read today about a choir that provides a signed translation of what is sung. The choir has a repetoire and, every other year the same music may reappear. The translator is likely to forget the texts and typically has to translate it again. The translator in the article wrote the sign language down. She does not need to remember, she knows what the text is.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Virgin Killer

Enough has been said about the fracas about British censorship. Virgin killer is an album by the Scorpions. It is also a track on this album.


Thanks,
GerardM

Usability - The Wikia tools

Angela mentioned the work Wikia is doing on usability in a thread on Foundation-l. I had a look and, I am impressed. They have a working solution for the problem with templates.


The problem is that many people get frightened off by templates. Compare the screen shot above, a screen shot with a maximum of information on the template used, with the Wikipedia article "Netherlands".

Wikia has at the bottom of each page functionality that allows you to create a new page. This leads to a Special:Createpage. This is a big improvement from the standard MediaWiki method.

The great thing is Angela's invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation to explore the Wikia code to learn if it is useful. I applaud this. But why wait for the WMF usability project to kick in, would it not make sense for all the people and organisations to start collaborating anyway?

There are many aspects of MediaWiki that need work. There are many people and organisations that will benefit from cooperating.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Ryan Whilte

I am experimenting with texts and translations. For no particular reason I landed on an article about Ryan White. His is a story about the suffering from AIDS and the emancipation of people who suffer from AIDS.

Ryan gave a speech before the Presidents commission on the HIV Epidemic. This speech can be found on Wikisource. On the article there is a template warning that it may be nominated for deletion because it does not offer license information..

Ryan was eighteen when he died in 1990. You can still read his speech at Wikisource.
Thanks,
GerardM

The cochlear implant

When you get involved in any way with deaf people, sign languages or in my case SignWriting, at some stage you will come across people arguing that a cochlear implant will make many of the issues go away. In Wikipedia parlance, this is not a neutral point of view.
I want to get my own point of view on this subject and I asked a mailing list for "linguists interested in signed languages" if there are sound files that simulate what such a gadget sounds like. What I want to know is what spoken texts sounds like in a quiet background, in a noisy background and, what music sounds like.

The response that I got was great, I found a website with soundfiles and a website with a program that allows me to make my own soundfiles. The problem that I face is that I do not know how to appreciate the results. The soundfiles demonstrate the difference between different channels. These differences are huge, and it is indicated that native speakers can understand them with fewer channels. My observation is that there are no native speaking natural deaf people. I expect that natural deaf people have to learn to recognise sounds and have to learn to recognise spoken speach.

I have downloaded the program and experimented with it, and found that the paramaters are not in a way that I understand. It is not like selecting the number of channels and therby being comparable with the existing soundfiles. The program needs understanding of how a cochlear implant works and I do not.

Learning about cochlear implants, my current understanding is still very much that they are crutches. The results are hardly comparable with natural hearing. Also not all the implants are equal so it is hard to speak about "the cochlear implant" and generalise. I also learned that the cochlear implant is not for everybody, it is only for people with problems with their cochlea.

I still do not know enough about what I want to learn. I want to know how voice sounds in a noisy environment. I am not able to use the software, so I would LOVE to have soundfiles to illustrate the Wikipedia articles. This would make the arguments for one or the other POV less emotional and more factual.
Thanks,
GerardM

Google Reader

Google Reader has been given a make over. The colours changed a bit, the icons were changed, all the thing that you expect in a make over are there. One thing though I find really interesting is that they included the option to translate the texts.

I am comfortable reading English and German and Dutch obviously, but if I want to I can have all the feeds translated in Dutch. For me this makes only sense for texts that are not in one of those three languages.

When a text is translated, particularly when machine translation is used, you are bound to losesome of the understanding of what was actually meant. What I would really love is when I have the option to allow for translation but only for those languages I need it for. This option would make me use this tool, because no translation means that I will not get anything of the text
Thanks,
GerardM

Bundesarchiv; the Berlin wall

The Wikimedia Deutschland Verein and the German Bundesarchiv have agreed that 100.000 images will be made available on Commons under a CC-by-sa license. This is one of the pictures; it shows the wall being build.

I discussed this important donation with Durova, and we swapped stories about what the wall was to us. Durova would LOVE to work her magic on some of the more important pictures, restore them back to the quality that allows them to be featured.

I would love to know if the Bundesarchiv would be in for a request to have some of their images restored to their original glory..
Thanks,
     GerardM

How to support your African language

When you make use of the Internet, you will expect that certain things are taken care off. When I have selected Dutch as a preference, today will be 04-12-2008 and many other things will change as a consequence. Someone has spend some two hours to enter such information and many more hours were spend to verify the correctness and enter it in a standard, the CLDR or the Commons Locale Data Repository.

This standard is incomplete particularly for languages in Africa. The Afrigen project is a project where people are asked to check the locale information for their language and if this data is not there or incomplete, to spend those two hours and fill in the data for your African language.

Have a look at the presentation and then help Africa become part of this Internet age.
Thanks,
GerardM

100 African Language Locales

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: african language)

On the monthly Betawiki information

This month is the first where we can compare the statistical data for a whole year. What has proven itself a great invention are the "most often used" messages. These messages provide the basic support for MediaWiki, they are invaluable when you want to make a Wiki usable. Currently 102 languages support them up from 48 a year ago. The core messages are up from 50 to 64, the extensions used  by the WMF have grown from 11 to 26 and finally all extensions from 7 to 16.

What the numbers do not tell you is the escalating growth of our software. In November alone, the messages for all extensions went up by some 650 messages. It is only because of the continued commitment of the Betawiki community that so many languages are supported this well.

This has been an interesting year, we have had support from HIVOS to promote the localisation from languages in Africa, Asia and South America, Nikerabbit did a Finnish Summer of Code project, Siebrand is becoming more and more of a programmer and MediaWiki is still growing by leaps and bounds, FlaggedRevs and SUL are two of the biggest contributors to messages.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Obama doing good

The president elect for the United States has a website for the transition period. On it, news about the transition process is posted. What I find of interest is that in order to champion a more open, transparent and participatory government, they have adopted a new copyright policy.

One key aspect of this new policy is that the content of change.gov is now available under the CC-by 3.0 license. I applaud this choice. To become effective, it is essential to get the message out. They need people to pick up the message and thereby enable the process of participation. It is clear that a "share alike "requirement would prevent participation.
Thanks,
GerardM

Special:LanguageStats

Betawiki has a new special page; the Special:LanguageStats. It provides current information about the status of the localisation for a language.

The screenshot shows the statistics for Italian, the option to suppress the completely translated message groups has been selected. What you end up with is a marvellous tool that allows you to just select the work that still needs doing.
Thanks,
GerardM

Signs and their corresponding SignWriting symbols

I learned that a set of animated gifs are being created to demonstrate what a SignWriting sign looks like together with a picture of a hand that signs it. Sadly it seems that my blog software does support GIF but not animated GIF.  You can find the animation here ..
Thanks,
      GerardM

JMOL

When you are talking about chemicals, pretty pictures can express much better the complex relations between the various atoms that make up a molecule then a lot of words. JMOL is a set of applications that illustrate chemicals The software is open source, there is an extension for MediaWiki and it is not used in any of the Wikipedias.

The problem was that security issues were found with the software, further developments happened and then nothing. Recently, the subject of JMOL was raised again. The software had stopped working against the "bleeding edge" of MediaWiki, this has now been fixed.

Only one question is left. Now what ?
Thanks,
GerardM

Some OLPC news

The OLPC computer is not your average computer. It has proven itself a game changer; it was this system that ushered in a new category of computers. It is rugged, hard to break and easy to fix. It has the potential to get many people on this side of the digital divide because of its innovative approaches to computer hardware and software.


This is Samuel and me making a photo of each other. The really clever gizmo that is being demonstrated is a piece of plastic that is put in the right hand USB connector.


When you have a good look at this "view finder", you will see that this thing has been printed. Thin layers of plastic are overlaying each other making up this prototype. It is really clever and it makes using an OLPC system much more exciting to use.

The other thing is an Ethernet connector for the OLPC. This is particularly useful for those people who use the OLPC outside of a school environment.
Thanks,
GerardM