[Foundation-l] Comparison of new user welcome efforts across projects

Sun Feb 4 09:05:40 UTC 2007

Brianna Laugher schreef:
> On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Brianna Laugher schreef:
>>     
>>> On 04/02/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> When a good consistent localisation for all our projects is given
>>>> priority, we would make the incubator the wiki where all the effort of
>>>> localisation is concentrated. This will provide a focus for localisation
>>>> and the updated messages can be distributed from there to all the wikis
>>>> for all the projects. It will also ensure that all languages are part of
>>>> the MediaWiki releases, making MediaWiki even more relevant than it is
>>>> at the moment.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> You are talking about the interface, correct? I think RB is right that
>>> welcome templates need to be a community effort rather than something
>>> that can be automatically propogated. The message needs to be tweaked
>>> from wiki to wiki, because they are at different stages of
>>> development. A relatively small wiki doesn't usually have an
>>> administrators' noticeboard and six varieties of village pump. And a
>>> Wikipedia welcome will of course be significantly different to a
>>> Wikinotpedia welcome.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Brianna
>>>       
>> Hoi,
>> You can only address these issues when you communicate in the first
>> place. With a language not supported in the first place, the people will
>> be isolated from your attempts at informing them as a result.
>>     
>
> What do you mean by this, "a language not supported"? I am only
> concerned with existing Wikimedia projects.
>
> or is your point that I only wrote my email in English? I don't
> apologise for that...
>
> I am not really clear about what your point is or was. Is it a
> criticism of me? Or the current Wikimedia community? or something
> else?
>
> regards,
> Brianna
Hoi,
It is fine that you write in English, no need to apologise. I am also 
happy with what you aim to do. It is therefore something else.

There are several languages among them Marathi that are not supported 
while there are projects in Marathi. The Marathi Wikipedia for instance 
has 7566 articles according to the information on Meta. These languages 
are not properly supported in MediaWiki because when a new project is 
created, there is no place where the localisation is maintained. All 
this maintenance is done in a haphazard way and you have to be aware off 
and able to use the tools of the developers to do something about it.

Nikerabbit hosts a project called "BetaWiki" and this is where a lot of 
localisation work was done for many languages. Special software was 
written to manage this, it has been made a MediaWiki extension. We are 
waiting for Brion to give it priority and accept it. Gangleri was the 
man who did a lot of the work on the BetaWiki and he was absolutely 
invaluable, while he was active he was one of the most relevant people 
in the Wikimedia Foundation for the work that he did. At this moment in 
time, we want to move the functionality of the "BetaWiki" and include 
this in the Incubator. The policy of the language committee for new 
languages is that without content in the Incubator there will be no new 
project. This means that when people change the messages for a new 
language they will immediately benefit; instant gratification.

The importance of this is that all messages can be maintained in the 
Incubator and all projects will benefit when messages are maintained 
there. The messages that are specific to one specific wiki will still be 
maintained locally. These are very much the messages that you are 
talking about. However, you cannot inform at this moment in time the 
Marathi speaking people because no project supports Marathi except the 
Marathi projects and each Marathi project has to maintain the messages 
again and again. This is a major issue when starting up new projects. It 
is a painful issue because it can be resolved. It is painful because 
localisation effectively has no priority.

Thanks,
    GerardM