> Have found a few more bugs in testing (other than the ones mentioned in the
> original mail)
>
> 1) Nepali -
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33039
> 2) Sanskrit, Hindi and Nepali -
>
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33038
> 3) Odiya -
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33034
> 4) Sanskrit, Hindi -
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33040
>
> And they keep coming. At this rate me and srikanth should be paid per bug
> by the WMF. I am yet to touch Assamese, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or
> Firefox 4.x, 6.x and IE 6.0, 8.0 and have only began Chrome testing. I am
> totally wiped for the day and quitting testing. Will try to cover the other
> cases tomorrow.
>
> Two thoughts at the end of a long day:
> i) To i18n team: Instead of launching a such a buggy code, that too as a
> compulsory and default option for all users, why not listen to feedback and
> do proper testing?. Testing is always better than firefighting. Its never
> too late, roll back this "soft launch", form language teams, test this for
> a few weeks thoroughly and then do project by project launches.
>
> ii)To Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Oriya, Marathi, Assamese and
> Bengali folks on this list. Spread the word and test, test, test. File bug
> reports. This needs thorough testing in all OSes/browsers/connections by
> people who know the language. Learn from this experience and dont accept
> any untested products. Mayur has reported in one of the bugs that hi wiki
> users are reporting strange issues and has suggested making webfonts
> optional [1] A few weeks back i tried to warn the communities not to accept
> webfonts without proper testing. [2] What i feared has come to pass.
> Probably should have posted in all village pumps.
>
> ==Links==
> [1]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33024
> [2]
>
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
>
parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Also forgot to tell you. My college uses ONLY systems with Windows XP
>> and Internet Explorer 6. Most students are from a Tamil background,
>> and they read Tamil websites, Wikipedia very often.
>>
>> On 12/13/11, Srikanth Lakshmanan <
srik.lak@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable.
>> >
>> > We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis
>> except
>> > Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is
>> just
>> > not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community
>> didnt
>> > chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic
>> > communities during technology adoption.
>> >
>> > 1. *Unavailability of "Quality Free fonts"* :-
>> > During the development, our request for not setting the default font as
>> > a
>> > lower quality font was rejected citing "it will defeat the purpose of
>> > extension".[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the
>> > extension
>> > with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the
>> purpose
>> > of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people
>> > just
>> > cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just
>> like
>> > how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the
>> window,
>> > we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help
>> > the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.).
>> >
>> > 2. *Quality of User Experience* :-
>> > We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are
>> > ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just
>> > like
>> > how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF
>> > cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user
>> > experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by
>> > community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it
>> > changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of
>> > users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base.
>> >
>> > *What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment*
>> >
>> > We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and
>> > reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not
>> > taking
>> > WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can
>> > deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just
>> need
>> > it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki
>> > initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was
>> made).
>> > We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could
>> > have done better for a smoother launch.
>> >
>> > 1. *Font Testing* :-
>> > The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of
>> > language give feedback to make any software better supported for the
>> > language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those
>> > languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was
>> > a
>> > concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in
>> > Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst
>> > readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word
>> > to
>> > test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4
>> characters /
>> > 1 word? For Tamil,we did a test in little more comprehensive way(We
>> > would
>> > not say its complete)[4]. This should have been a *must* to see
>> rendering /
>> > font issues with chosen default font especially since the fonts are
>> > being
>> > set default to every single user to the site. Sadly community was
>> involved
>> > the least, a note was posted in Village pumps and we dont think
>> > community
>> > involved itself in any testing and poor quality was eventually pushed
>> > without proper testing.
>> >
>> > 2. *Real world testing* :-
>> > Though cross browser testing was done, there was a severe lack of real
>> > world testing and as a result we are seeing a host of issues being
>> > discovered post launch. Average PC in India might have 1 GB RAM, Firefox
>> 3
>> > / 4, worse IE 5.5 / IE6 on 100 Kbps semi-broadband connection. We cannot
>> > tell them move to latest or ignore them. More care should have been
>> > taken
>> > especially since the webfonts is bound to set a default font.
>> >
>> > With only a few hours of testing serious issues have been found - in IE
>> 8
>> > where webfonts might be rolled back [5], IE 7.0 (where webfonts dont
>> work)
>> > [6] , ubuntu + Firefox (fixed now) [7] and Win+Firefox 5.0, [8]. We
>> > are
>> > still testing for other browsers and usecases and dont know how many
>> issues
>> > we will discover. In short - This code is not ready to go live,
>> especially
>> > when it is being made default compulsorily for everyone. There are
>> serious
>> > performance issues for typical Indian internet connections as well.[9]
>> >
>> > 3. *Communication and Community Engagement* :-
>> > Most of the above things could have solved earlier if there was more
>> > communication and community engagement. We asked for more information,
>> > engagement on this very list. There was no reply to the mail on
>> increasing
>> > community engagement for i18n projects[10]. Most communities know
>> WebFonts
>> > is coming on Dec 12, didnt know what was coming, any further details.
>> > Worse, Even Indic Consultant was not having clear information. Why this
>> > lack of transparency? Community is more than willing to help, if only
>> they
>> > are informed. Even though we did not take up WebFonts, we have spent
>> > time
>> > to help making it better.
>> >
>> > And the end users in the wikis dont know where to report and follow up
>> > issues. (Not everyone is aware of and familiar with the Bugzilla
>> process).
>> > The request we raised to have a visible bug reporting link has not been
>> > acted upon [11]. There might be a lot of issues going unreported,
>> > because
>> > people dont know whom to report to. When a change of this scale is being
>> > done, Community admins must be advised to run Sitenotice campaigns to
>> > inform the users about the change with some solid newbie oriented
>> > documentation. Infact this must be done for RFC itself, so as to make an
>> > informed decision. We did the same for RFC in Tamil[12].
>> >
>> > *Proposal for Future i18n / any special deployments to Indic
>> wikiprojects*:-
>> >
>> > The WebFonts deployment is a classic example of making deployment
>> > without
>> > enough community engagement. Can this done in any of English / German /
>> > Russian wikipedia which have a strong community? The fact that Tamil /
>> > Malayalam resisted was because the community had concerns over the
>> > solution. Till an hour before deployment yesterday, we did not know if
>> > Ta
>> > wiki projects will get webfonts despite our objections. We had been
>> > pursuing Siebrand and Gerard across forums - facebook, twitter, meta
>> > talk
>> > pages, village pumps, gmail chat etc looking for answers. But till the
>> > deployment happened, we had no clue what we would be getting. This
>> > method
>> > of deploying in silence *must* stop ASAP. Any deployment to any Indic
>> wiki
>> > must go through the community (language support teams) informed of the
>> > change with Indic Consultant kept in loop. We suggest Shiju Alex to work
>> on
>> > a policy and put it in place regarding this. If there is problem
>> > identifying community members to help, we are sure Shiju will help
>> > connecting.
>> >
>> > Irrespective of that happening Tamil Wiki Projects will follow this
>> process.
>> >
>> > 1. Test any deployment on translatewiki
>> > 2. File Bugs and verify in translatewiki till it reaches acceptable
>> level.
>> > 3. Language support team member will make a RFC page explaining the
>> merits
>> > / demerits of the technology in simple terms with use of screenshots /
>> > external links
>> > 4. Reverify / Ask for deployment in largely-inactive Wikiprojects like
>> > WikiQuote / WikiBooks *post community concensus*
>> > 5. Test again / File Bugs
>> > 6. Reverify / Ask for deployment Wikiprojects next in line in terms of
>> > activity ( Wiktionary / Wikinews/ Wikisource)
>> > 7. Test again / File Bugs
>> > 8. Only after ironing out all issues, any deployment will be allowed in
>> > Tamil Wikipedia.
>> >
>> > We had burnt our fingers during Narayam deployment already once and
>> > community was so resistive of Narayam itself and was asking to go back
>> > to
>> > older javascript solution. After that we followed the above process for
>> > bringing back Narayam on all Tamil Wikiprojects.
>> >
>> > We suggest the other communities adopt something similar. We sincerely
>> hope
>> > that the community engagement is improved, not just before deployment,
>> even
>> > from start of development.
>> >
>> > [0]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/going-live-december-12-2011/
>> > [1]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/30506
>> > [2]
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/World/Tamil
>> > [3]
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/WebFonts_assessment
>> > [4]
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Sodabottle/test1
>> > [5]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32775
>> > [6]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33024
>> > [7]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33025
>> > [8]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33018
>> > [9]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33027
>> > [10]
>> >
>>
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.html
>> > [11]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32942
>> > [12]
http://tawp.in/r/2r1f
>> >
>> > --
>> > Regards
>> > Bala Jeyaraman & Srikanth.L
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
>>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>>
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>