The #Malayalam#Wikipedia success story continues

At #Wikimania in Gdansk, the news of a CD with some of the best content of the Malayalam Wikipedia was well received. It was not only an important exercise that taught valuable lessons, it was also distributed to 7.000 schools by the government of Kerala.

At Wikimania the developer of the software and Siebrand had a look at the code; together they discussed the optimisation and the internationalisation and localisation of the software. It would be the first software for translatewiki.net where the original software is not written for the English language..

In a new development it shows again the importance of open source and open content. As the CD project is both, its content has been included in a DVD with many Free Software tools and applications. This DVD is sent to 60.000 teachers in Kerala.

If you are interested, there is an online version of the CD and the ISO image can also be downloaded.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Wels #catfish are HUGE

In the #Oostvaardersplassen there are too many adult carp. The carp can be predated on by the Eurasian otter, the white tailed eagle and the wels catfish. The wels catfish can be found in the canals surrounding the Oostvaardersplassen and they represent the easiest way of improving the aquatic ecological pyramid. The problem is that it is not possible for carp to leave and for welsh catfish to get into this nature reserve.

I found a great Youtube movie showing adult welsh catfish; with a length that can be over two meters, they are fear inspiring fish... Enjoy !!
Thanks,
      GerardM

The emperor has no clothes

When I returned from #Wikimania, I received several requests for friendship. Orkut, Facebook, Plaxo .... no requests for friendship from any WMF projects. As social software goes, Facebook is the top dog, the king, the emperor of social media.

When Wikipedia started, it was truly among the first and the best social software. There was a common goal and, using talk pages, IRC and mailing lists there was a social cohesion that became technically outdated with the advent of social media. Wikimedia is still the top dog, the king, the emperor of open content.

The problem I have with Facebook is simple; there is no reason to trust it, there is nothing there of interest. The people I befriend are people I know in another setting; the Wiki world. I would love to acknowledge my friendship to them there, improve such a relationship in sharing our interest in projects and having group discussions, announcements.

I hope that the Wikimedia Foundation will bring such functionality to Wikipedia; it will bring back much of the social cohesion we had in the early days and, it will show that the emperor has no clothes.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Google #translate use at #Wikimania

At the dorm where I slept, a nice Polish lady manned the reception. She was nice and she spoke Polish. The Wikimanians did not. So communication was hard until.. until one had the great idea to use translate for communication.

It eased a lot of nerves most importantly of the lady who now could get most of her message out. She wanted to communicate and we wanted to understand, translate provided the interface.
Thanks,
       GerardM

French National Library seeks us out

The French Wikimedia chapter has gained a partner in the French National Library; in a happy announcement they inform us that some 1400 digitised and OCR'ed books found their way in Wikisource.

One of the many authors

The books are by many authors of many eras. There is a wonderful challenge for people who love their language to check out the success of the OCR, there will be the original text of many major works. There will be many ways in which we can make all these works our own while respecting the importance of the original work.

This wonderful news was published on a specialised mailing list. It is however such important news that I am happy to repeat it. I would love for there to be a blog where such news can be posted. In the mean time I am happy to provide this blog as a platform (either with texts written by me but preferably by having a guest blogger.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Back home after #Wikimania

I am at home from Gdansk. I loved Wikimania. I have been utterly selfish; I have not blogged for a number of days.

Wikimania season started with the arrival of the wonderful pfctdayelise at my home. It was hot and we did sensible things like swimming and touring a bit. Now that I need comfort food, I am eating the TimTams she brought for me.

The trip to Gdansk was by car with two wonderful Wikimedians. The road to Gdansk brought us many interesting observations, I missed most of those on the way back as I was mostly producing zzzzzzzz.

I am so happy that the talks, panels were recorded; I could just go and talk to people and I can watch the talks at my leisure. I am bold enough to send e-mails when I have questions and it is timely enough when I blog about them because there has been little blogging about Wikimania this time.

So I am home, tired, on comfort food. Thinking happily of all the people that I met and spoke with. Being sad that I did not find the time to speak at length with many old friends. There is always skype, e-mail, IRC and there is Haifa next year.
Thanks,
      GerardM

About butter tea, yaks, #Commons pictures and the #Tropenmuseum

This months Tropenmuseum object of the month is a picture of a churn and a slab of tea. The milk of a yak together with some salt and tea are churned to make butter tea. As I was spoiled with the translation of the text that goes with this month's object of the month, I had a look for some additional information and  pictures of this interesting animal.

Sadly Commons let me down; I did not find pictures like the one of a caravan of yaks, or a yak being milked. There is no picture of a yak showing its distinctive tail or a picture of a shitting yak (looks like how a dog does it).

Anyway here is the Tropenmuseum object of the month.

Churn and Tea Slab

These two objects, a churn and a slab of tea, come from Tibet. They are used for making butter tea. This is done by churning tea, butter and salt in an elongated barrel like this. The butter is made from yak’s milk. Yaks are the long-haired mountain cattle of the Himalayas. Inhabitants of the Himalayas buy these slabs of tea in the lowland Chinese provinces. They break pieces off the slab and dilute these in boiling water. This mixture goes into the churn.

Yak butter tea is a rather greasy broth which is both nutritious and good for the digestion. And nice and hot. Often the tea is drunk with tsampa, a Tibetan staple made from roasted barley. Tsampa is mixed with butter tea and kneaded into a paste before being eaten

The Tropenmuseum is keen to hear from travellers who have tasted this butter tea in the Himalayas.

Thanks,

     GerardM

The all new, spic and span #translatewiki.net main page

When you visit translatewiki.net for a first time, you will be welcomed with a new shiny main page. When you are lucky, you will be welcomed in your own language.

For an environment like translatewiki.net it is important to entice newcomers to feel welcome, and challenged by the mission of the project. There are many applications that rely on the translatewiki community to localise its user interface. Thanks to our community we are grateful that we can present ourselves already in many languages.

When your language is not among them, we hope you feel challenged to help us by localising this page and the applications mentioned in your language.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Advertise the heroes of Open Content, Free Software

The Serbian #Wikimedia chapter had reached a deal to show people relevant to the good cause on billboards in Serbia. These posters are put on when a contract for a specific time for a commercial posting has ended.

It is nice to see our good friends Jimmy and Richard together promoting the good cause.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation

When you get a mail like this, receiving it from wiki@wikimedia.org, you do not necessarily want to reply. It is a spam attack, it may get you viagra or whatever..
Thanks,
     GerardM

Trusted identities on the Internet .. #NSTIC

On a White house blog the NSTIC or National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is announced. As I understand it, it is to help people manage their identities on the Internet. This first draft of NSTIC was developed in collaboration with key government agencies, business leaders and privacy advocates.

The need to manage your identities starts with being able to manage your password and being the owner of data about you. For me this means that I am the one who decides what information is given to whom.

Even though the need is obvious, I do not want to make Google, Facebook or any business leader the host of my data. At that I prefer for instance the Wikimedia Foundation.

The WMF hosts many international communities, it has policies that aim to protect its users. In many discussions there is talk of a Wiki movement, this is the time to quickly take the initiative and provide a socially acceptable service to manage our identities.
Thanks,
     GerardM

17 June has come and gone

I knew that Naoko was going to leave us, it said so in an announcement by Erik Moeller. I thought it would be the end of this month as this would be when the last projects were to be converted and share the benefits of the usability initiative.

Naoko left on the 17th. I admired her for her work and involvement as a project manager. I am sad that she left, and I am sorry that I missed the moment.
Thanks,
      GerardM

143 languages are getting ready for the #Usability upgrade

There is a #Wikipedia in over 270 languages and of these 143 have some messages of the Usability Initiative software localised. This came to light when Shiju Alex asked why Tamil was not in the list. The answer is that it is rather depressing when it shows the many many languages that still have made no preparations at all.

There are some 378 messages to translate and, they will be "in your face"; they are likely to replace many of the current  "most used" messages. The software of the Usability Initiative will be rolled out to all projects.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Chapter meeting of #Wikimedia Nederland

Given the size of the Netherlands and the many people interested / involved in Wikimedia projects, it is no wonder we have three member meetings each year. Going to such meeting means meeting friends, talking shop and learning what is going on.

This meeting we had a presentation in addition to the numbers of and the feedback on chapter activities. RonaldB gave a presentation of statistics that indicate problems ahead for Wikipedia. The issue he highlighted was that we do not retain our editors. Particular new editors leave us in droves. As Erik Zachte was also present, a nice discussion evolved comparing methodology and interpretation.

One observation was that in our beginning social software did not exist and, the Wiki community very much filled a social need.

Quite special was the presence of Blueknight and Bibi. Blueknight's mother tongue is the Dutch Sign Language and he brought an interpretor in order to follow the meeting. This was fun; it meant that only one person could talk at a time, we had to pronounce well and every now and then we were asked to speak not that fast. The effect was that the meeting went really smoothly.

The most relevant parts of the meeting was the problem with key people becoming a show stopper and, the wish to make the chapter more professional. This is necessary because it allows us to follow up on the many requests from Dutch society for our cooperation.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#BBC this should not be on your news website

Sure it is sad. But it is not news. People of all ages die as the result of a traffic accident. It would be news if the Queen or Lady Gaga were to expire in this way. That would be news for the same reason that the demise of Lady Diana in a traffic accident was news.

BBC with such "news" you lose your relevance.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#ASCAP undermines its own foundation

ASCAP advertises itself as the "worldwide leader in performance royalties, service and advocacy for songwriters, composers and music publishers". Fine. The basis of performance royalties is copyright. In order to legally extract payment there is a need for a license that insists on this. There is a quid pro quo; you sell a license to me and I pay you money.

To grant a license is the prerogative of a copyright holder. ASCAP is an organisation that is owned and run by "songwriters, composers and music publishers" and as such they have a monopoly by their own admission. Recent publications indicate that ASCAP is raising funds to fight organisations like Creative Commons.

What they seem to forget is that it is the copyright holder that decides what license to give to its work. When this connection is lost, when ASCAP takes the position that music must mean royalties and royalties to be paid to ASCAP, they clearly behave like a monopolist.

The record of organisation like ASCAP is less then stellar. There have been frequent law suits intended to get major amounts of royalties paid to the rights holder.

PS it is odd for a music related website where no music is to be heard.
Thank,
     GerardM

#Wikimedia Foundation wants us to support #Burmese

When you get mail from the "Head of Partnerships and Foundation Relations" introducing someone from the Burmese Wikipedia community seeking support for its language it pays to do some reading on the subject. An obvious place is Wikipedia another is the Burmese Wikipedia itself.

When you read the available information, there are clearly font issues. People use Zawgyi which is currently the most widely used solution for input in Myanmar-language websites. It is however not Unicode compliant and this is what MediaWiki relies on.

There are tools to convert Zawqyi texts to Unicode, there are even tools to convert what you type in Zawgyi to Unicode (5.1). We can suggest that input methods become available in MediaWiki for Burmese but in the end, from a translatewiki.net point of view there is only so much we can do.

Translatewiki.net is about internationalisation and localisation. We are looking for more developer support to do just that. We are looking for Burmese localisers to improve the quality of its localisation. For the technical support of scripts, for improvements of the usability of MediaWiki for scripts and languages we rely on the MediaWiki developers, we rely on the Wikimedia Foundation to give this its priority.
Thanks,
     GerardM

NB Yes, we will talk in Gdansk

#Linux provides input methods for the languages from #India

In the #Ubuntu Software Centre, there is a piece of software called the Indic Onscreen Keyboard. The software provides a virtual keyboard for many of the languages from India; Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Oriya, Sindhi, Tamil and Telugu.

The Ubuntu software provides you with a drop down menu from which you can select one of these languages. Given that the software is Open Source, I would love to see it find its place on all the phones, computers where it makes a difference for the people from India.

Having such input methods may help to provide a level playing field for these languages on the Internet. I cannot really recommend this software as I can not properly test it. I am happy to post a review by a guest blogger though :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

#translatewiki news

As the translatewiki staff work really hard on making translatewiki.net such a success, it is easy for them to forget to communicate what is happening. As one problem gets fixed only to be replaced by the next "opportunity", it is easy to forget how much got done.

Siebrand updated the Project:News and there is a lot that has been done. Finding it listed like this is awe inspiring. New applications, new extensions, new functionality, improved functionality it is all there.
It makes you feel good to belong to such an energetic community. This is what the staff, the 2000 something localisers have achieved.

There are still plenty ambitions;

• we are looking for developers who are willing to help us with outstanding issues for translatewiki
• we are looking for developers who are willing to help us with things potentially relevant for all users of the translate extension
• we would like the localisers that have not been back lately to come back 
• we need new localisers for the many languages that are still struggling with their localisation

When such wishes are granted, there will be more updates that bring you the news from translatewiki that informs you how its community makes a difference for you.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The proof of the pudding

If ever there is a contest where the biggest prize is won by a community, it is the Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition. Consider what it would take to double the number of regular editors, what it would take to have 60% of them to be female? What it would take to challenge any Wikipedia for the quality of the new articles that were written?

I think the Indonesian chapter has proven itself with a carefully organised and flawlessly executed competition. They have set the standard for involving universities in an effective and also cost effective way. Impressive is the scoring methodology; the criteria were published in advance, each jury member scored independently but at the same time the results could be challenged. This competition proves that projects like this can be run anywhere.

On the foundation-l there is again a lot of talk about getting women involved in our projects. This competition makes the Indonesian Wikipedia shine. Consider; the contest was organised by a woman, it was won by a woman but more importantly 60% of the new editors are women!!

I sincerely hope that the innovative approaches taken with the Bebaskan Pengetahuan 2010 competition will find many encores.
Thanks,
      GerardM