The value of Marathi

A new film by one of the most prominent actors was blocked to have its premiere. The movie starring Amitabh Bachchan met fierce opposition because his wife had the audacity to promote Hindi over the Marathi language. A politcian took this the wrong way and threatened to prevent any screening of a movie starring a member of the Bachchan family in the state of Maharashtra of which Mumbai is the capital.

Mr Bachchan apologised and indicated that no malice was intended. The movie may now have its premiere after all.

For me this news is relevant because it demonstrates quite vividly how much people care for their own language, their own culture. Language is the reason why East Pakistan is now Bangladesh. People who argue that just a few languages suffice for the Wikipedia project, are people who invariably speak a language that is not under threat. They are people who love to tell other people what to do.
Thanks,
GerardM

No time for localisation

One recurring activity of mine is to inform Wikipedia communities how the localisation of their language is progressing. For many languages there is a steady trickle of work done on Betawiki for others there is nothing to show. The chances of getting any localisation done when not even the "most often used messages" are at 50% are slim.

When I visited the Xitsonga Wikipedia, I got the message that the localisation would have to wait.. But when you then notice that an Introduction and a Tutorial have been translated, I do not mind to wait a bit more, I am sure that Xitsonga has the right potential :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

Diacritics

Durova is restoring some Arab caligraphy. It is part of her ongoing effort of restoring diverse and interesting material. What I admire in her effort is the amount of effort invested in restoring material about all kinds of subjects from all kinds of places.

The effort to restore this caligraphy came to a standstill because it is not yet clear what diacritic is to be found on the top line. We have asked a few people, one person insisted that several diacritics were to be changed and another was not sure what needs to be there..

Maybe you can provide Durova with the right information..
Thanks,
      GerardM

500

This is the 500th entry on this blog. It started on April ninth 2005, things progressed since then. At the time I wished for more people becoming part of the Wiktionary crowd at this time I think the Wiktionary aproach is obsolete and I consider OmegaWiki a more healthy approach.

The subjects that I have been written about have changed over time, I am still involved in the Farsi language; I now have a book that will help me learn to read Farsi, I am now looking for a typing tutor for the Persian keyboard layout. Sign languages are more on my mind as well, I am really looking forward to the process of getting the American Sign Language its Wikipedia.

When I read the many issues that I raised, I find that many are still there. People still fight over what languages we are to recognise and adopt. There are still projects that use a code that should not be theirs to use. Babel information is still this stupid template driven thing that is locked within the confines of individual wikis.

Many things have come a long way, the development of OmegaWiki is now reaching mark II. The Wikiprofessional is actually there and even better, it is useful. The localisation of MediaWiki is now considered to be relevant, there are now over 300 languages supported in Betawiki.

It took me three years to write these 500 blog entries. Things will be different in three years time. I hope to be able to converse in Farsi, I expect that Commons will have multi language support. We will still be struggling to keep MediaWiki localised and I am sure there will be enough good and bad to write about.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Chrome and security

I read a blog on the security of Chrome, and it was stated that Chrome was build in isolation and consequently that a lot of vulnerabilities have to be seen as a consequence. I beg to differ for two reasons;

• Chrome is using Webkit for its rendering and Chrome uses a lot of the Firefox code
• Chrome explicitly has a different architecture in order to allow for improved security

There are two types of vulnerabilities, typically people only talk about those vulnerabilities that have to do with hackers, phishing and the likes. More people have to deal with their software being vulnerable to crashes or slowdowns. This is where Chrome makes an important difference. With Chrome it is one session that takes the hit, the sessions behind other tabs are to continue unhindered. These vulnerabilities are part and parcel of what security is also about.

When a new browser becomes available as beta software, it is not necessarily complete, it may still have issues. It is nice when security issues are identified, this will help the quality of the product improve. But the general trust of the blog is narrow minded, it misses the point of Chrome.
Thanks,
       GerardM

The most useful Wikimedia project

When you ask people what project is the most useful to them, you expect to hear "Wikipedia". Often it is not the English language variation of the project, but Wikipedia is what you typically hear. I asked a relative of mine what her favourite was, and to my amazement it was Wikiquote. Finding good quotes is of importance to her and Wikiquote fulfils this role.

Some people are of the opinion that Wikiquote is not so useful, that it is to be closed because many of the quotes are at best available under fair use and not under a viral license. The proposal can be found here..

Many of the arguments are a bit stale and as always, it is other people telling the people who do the work what to do. I am sure that when the WMF has a valid reason to kill off this project they would do so....

I hate these recurring eruptions of destructiveness.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Chrome

Google produced a new browser called "Chrome". Many words have been written about it, there is a strip explaining the technology behind it, many people have given it a test drive. I did. I think it is great.

What I like best about Chrome is its speed. The word Niue exists in many languages and this expression is one of the worst performers on OmegaWiki. With Chrome it is significantly faster. With processing done locally, Chrome makes a big difference.

The other thing that I like about Chrome is the fact that it is Open Source. Google explicitly invited the "other" browsers to borrow and steal from what Chrome has to offer. In the same way, Google happily indicates that Webkit and Firefox are part of Chrome's pedigree.

I love Firefox, it has features and extensions that are must have for me; spell checking is one such. With Chrome being the first iteration of a beta product, I think I can look forward to extensions with confidence. It is great that the browsers world is becoming even more an eco system where new developments are shared and where the scene can evolve and mature with multiple players having temporary advantages. It is the user that will benefits most.

Thanks,

GerardM

On the monthly Betawiki info

Yesterday, Siebrand send out the third Betawiki e-mail newsletter. As always his evaluation of the state of play at Betawiki was concise. The newsletter was send out to 830 people who have a confirmed e-mail account and who did not opt out.

The newsletter is important, the blogging and posting about localisation is important. Why we do it is best explained by the "sea of red" that can be seen in the group statistics. Localisation is vital for the success of all the projects in a language. Localisation is hard work, hard work that is done by a few good men for the benefit of all. We need many more good men and women to help our projects do better.

At the end of the month, we always reflect on the new statistics in time. This time it does not look too good. Most numbers have gone down. I have been told that it has to do with a lot of messages that have been "FUZZIED". When you compare the numbers included in the newsbrief, comparing 12 July with 30 August, you will find that in that time frame, the numbers have gone up.

We want to show good results, for this to happen we need active participants for the many languages that we support. Some languages like Arabic, Czech and Farsi always seem to do really well where it counts. Many other languages do not even have the 500 most basic messages localised and no activity to expect change.

What more can we do to improve our MediaWiki localisation ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Video on the BBC website - an update

In a previous blog I mentioned that video on the BBC-news website did not work for me. I received as an answer that it "worked for me"..

I am happy to inform you that I no longer need other browsers to watch these videos. I am really pleased that I can inform you that it now works for me too.
Thanks,
GerardM

A proud moment

I received an e-mail about my publication on Genome Biology. The message is that the article that I am one of the authors off is being well read. Some 13.919 people have read it from the Genome Biology website and it is now rated as "highly accessed" relative to age.  This number does not include any of the readers who came to the article through Pubmed Central or other archive sites.

This article is of interest to the Wiki world for several reasons; there are a few other authors to this article that have a certain reputation in this world but more importantly, I want you to have a look at the semantic support that is provided by Wikiprofessional to the English language Wikipedia. Consider for instance the article Malaria, when you look at it with the "Concept Web Linker" a wealth of information is provided to the article.

Currently only English is supported. Support for Spanish and Portuguese is being developed and, we would love to include more languages. We are making a shortlist of languages Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Arabic are already on there ... for personal reasons I would love to see Farsi included..
Thanks,
      GerardM

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you

Truisms like this are taken as being true. However such assumtions are sometimes proved to be wrong. Words do hurt is what I read on the BBC news website.

This provides a really powerfull argument why we should not allow for all the baiting, the insults that are sadly part of many of the discussions on Wikipedia. The argument why unfettered abuse should be allowed is either freedom of speech or that nobody is really hurt. The last argument is patently untrue and with this new research it should even more clear. Freedom of speech does not mean that you are free to hurt others. Freedom is limited by the extend where your freedom meets the freedom of others.

Obviously there is a need to express unpopular points of view, what is at stake is particularly the manner in which an opinion is expressed.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Learning to use a computer

A friend who I love dearly, got a new computer. She got her computer because she needs computing skills for a job. Given that she is completely new to computers, training is included. I have looked at the training material and it is like many others that I have seen before. You first learn basis skills like using the mouse, the key board and to start and stop the computer.

The classic method of teaching people to point and click, drag and drop is to use a game like Solitaire. It is not the first time that I found this to be a complete disaster. You cannot assume that people play cards, even know cards. It takes more effort to teach the game then the skill it is supposed to teach...

I really like that the course provides a typing tutor. Typing is an essential skill for computing. Typing with ten fingers really helps. The course provided is for the "International" keyboard, I am now looking for a typing tutor for the Farsi keyboard.
Thanks,
     GerardM

An anonymous coward asks for a Wikipedia to be closed

On Meta, an anonymous coward started a proposal for the deletion of a Wikipedia. I was asked for my opinion. I hate it when people think they start something controversial like the closure of a Wikipedia anonymously. In my opinion such a person deserves to be banned globally for at least a week or alternatively find a special place in hell.

There have been many such requests and I will not take them seriously. These cowards are not man enough to argue their case. Consequently I feel that we should close them on principle. I am really happy that Spacebirdy is a person who thinks like me in these terms. I am really happy with her closing this proposal.

Now if someone wants to close a project like the "Tarantino" Wikipedia, there may be all kinds of good reasons for it. I do not mind this discussion but these requests are highly political and it is extremely painful when such a request is made for your language. Anonimity is just not acceptable.
Thanks,
GerardM

The sound of a tit

I love tits, I love their sounds in spring, I love it when they fly endlessly to and from my house bringing grubs to their young. For me, spring starts when I hear my tits calling.

When you record their call, you can propose them as a featured sound candidate because it is "encyclopaedic". A lot of research has been done on the calling of tits, and tits sound differently in the city then in the country site. There are dialects, so just a call of a tit may be alluring but it is just that.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is the secretary general of the NATO. He is encyclopaedic and sure enough, he has his Wikipedia article in nineteen Wikipedias. His article is most often written in the Latin script, but there is also Яп де Хоп Схефер, იაპ დე ჰოოპ სხეფერი, ヤープ・デ・ホープ・スヘッフェル, Хооп Схеффер, Яап деХооп Схеффер, Яап де, Яап де Ҳуп Схефер, Хооп Схеффер Яап де and 亚普·德霍普·斯海费.

When I hear how people pronounce his name, it often does not sound like anything his mother would recognise him by. Mr de Hoop Scheffer was born and raised in the Netherlands and consequently his name should be pronounced in the Dutch way. This is relevant encyclopaedic information. There are services that help newscasters pronounce the news by making recordings like this available.

According to some, it is not encyclopaedic at all.  " It's just one person talking & then done." or "For the same reason that voiced articles are not featurable." I can say "It is just a tit sounding off" or "It is just another recording of the four seasons by Vivaldi by a minor artist", why would these be more encyclopaedic ? The case for a good recording of the pronunciation of the name of a famous person or place is easy to make; it is the difference between being understood or not.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Bias in stock photography

I learned that Getty Images and Flickr have joined in an exclusive partnership. Both organisations represent some of the biggest resources of images of the world. Getty Images sells them to people and organisations that need illustrations. Flickr is a website where you can share your images with the rest of the world. As photographers retain their copyright, this partnership is to allow Getty to sell images of Flickr on behalf of the Flickr participants.

What is most notable, is the reason for this collaboration. Getty's stock has a bias towards what is photographed by typically Western photographers. As a result there is a bias towards Western subjects and more importantly, a lack of material that illustrates far flung places and events.

This same bias both Wikipedia and Commons suffer from. Given that Commons' user interface is in English, many people who are not able to communicate in English find it a hostile environment and consequently many Wikipedias in languages other then en.wikipedia do not contribute to Commons as a result. This in term leads to a bias in Commons as the material that is represented in the languages and cultures of those projects is missing; it is at best uploaded locally.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Captcha with a twist

In the Wikimedia Foundation we use captchas. They are a tool against spam bots and vandals. They do their job and they can be annoying as hell when you do not get it right the first time. As they serve an important purpose I am happy that we use them anyway.

The BBC news webiste reported on a captcha scheme that is different. The idea is so compelling, that I want to seriously argue for the adoption of this scheme in the WMF
.

The idea is that people recognise words that have been scanned but cannot be recognised by optical character recognition software. As we have projects in so many languages, we can provide an even better service, our people can do this same work for other languages then English. I am sure when our Wikipedias become part of such an effort, it would help the digitisation effort for many languages..

The good news is that according to the Recaptcha website, there is already a "plugin" for MediaWiki. So for me it is clear why we should join this great endeavour. It makes filling out captchas useful in more ways then one :) .. PS why not have in the user preferences a place where you can recognise words.. just because you can ??
Thanks,
      GerardM

Numbers, statistics and appreciation

When Tim Starling announced the release of MediaWiki version 1.13.0, he mentioned for the first time our localisation efforts: "59,000 new localised text messages have been added, taking the total to 266,000, spread across 281 languages". This is important because it is indicative of the importance that internationalisation and localisation has for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Having 29% more messages localised relative to what was localised at the 1.12.0 release is an impressive number. However, when you look at the "group statistics", you will see that there is a lot more work that needs to be done. There were 172 new core messages since the previous release, Betawiki actually supports 317 languages so on average each language gained 14,2 messages or 0,73%. Obviously some languages did well and others did not.

Tim's announcement is about the MediaWiki core software. Most MediaWiki installations use several of the more then 800 extensions. With the release of MediaWiki the extensions, the 300 that reside in the WMF subversion have also had their code branched. Several of these extensions are under active development and consequently it is not a given that these will function as designed. It is for this reason that an initiative is formed to provide an environment where extensions can be tested in a "plain vanilla" environment.

The Wikimedia Foundation always uses the "bleeding edge" software and consequently the releases provide an environment that is stable for the core. The localisation is ongoing and we can and do release language packs after the release. The extensions are not guaranteed to work on the new release, so we are getting this environment where we can test this and publish the results.

The whole idea is that MediaWiki is easy to use. We want to remove nasty surprises and, we want to create an environment where extensions are supported for the stable releases.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Keeping up

Even keeping up the localisation of MediaWiki is hard work. This is illustrated best by the languages that have full localisation and maintain their status. In the past ten days some 250 edits were needed just to keep up... These are the changes of the French Wikipedia, the changes of the Norwegian, Dutch, German and Arabic show a similar story.

In a way these are the lucky languages; for many languages it is a dream to get to the stage where all the messages are visible. In the last month a lot has happened for the Spanish and the Romanian language; Spanish is now approaching 100% of the MediaWiki core messages and Romanian has reached this milestone :)

In order to get to the stage of full localisation, the amount of maintenance increases as well. It is considered too much work for a single person to do and more people working on the localisation and proof reading will improve the quality the most.
Thanks,
      GerardM

A project proposed for restoring images

A new project has been proposed for the restoration of images at the English Wikipedia. This is a great idea; the restoration of pictures helps to properly illustrate the many articles that deal with subjects that happened in the past. Many of these illustrations, pictures, maps and manuscripts are becoming available digitally. Many of the originals have crumbled or faded or are stained. It is the aim of this project to find the illustrations that will improve the articles and restore them to a modern glory.

Fulton original - Fulton restored

I love the proposal, but I would prefer to have such a project on Commons. Commons IS the best place to store restored images. Commons IS the place where people from many communities come together. Commons IS the place where we can best stimulate people from other languages, countries and communities to help restore pictures that they can get access to.

So what would it take to really make a multi lingual, multi cultural project on Commons ? Obviously people actively restoring images but also supporting texts in many languages.. This is why I am so interested in the deveopment of the "Translate" extension. This is an example of a long text on Betawiki.. and this is one part translated  into Dutch..

 

Now consider that this is an instructive text and it shows in your language when we have the translation... that is what "Translate" is supposed to do. The consequence is that as a language community becomes bigger, more of these texts are translated and it becomes in a way more autonomous as well.. 

So yes, let us have a Commons project as well and yes, PLEASE Nikerabbit make this a great little extension :)

Thanks,

     GerardM

Sick or not well

After my return from Alexandria i have not been well. Some call it the "curse of the Pharaoh" but it is a fact that my digestion was not performing in its usual way. I also had this nasty cough that did not go away. Now so many weeks later, I was told in no uncertain terms by my family that I should go and consult my doctor.

I went to the doctor, she send me to the hospital for x-rays. I returned and the verdict was that i have a bronchitis. The doctor subscribed me medicines, as my diarrhea had returned, it was to be a strong medicine that should deal with that too. I was told the return of the diarrhea is most likely due to the fact that the bacteria in the gut need time to recover and consequently I was for the moment a little intollerant for lactose and fructose.I am not to drink milk for a week...

With medicine you get a lengthy piece of paper explaining what it is that this medicine does. It is a lengthy list of things that I could be cured off, it includes things like venereal deseases, ear infections... I am now wondering how many things are cured as a result for a subscription for something completely different.
Thanks,
      GerardM