[Wikimediaindia-l] Webfonts deployment on Indic Wikiprojects

Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.ghoda at gmail.com
Wed Dec 14 10:29:51 UTC 2011 

I used to get broken text for Hindi/Devanagari and Tamil, and boxes
for other scripts. Now I see no difference in the text on my phone.

On 12/13/11, Pradeep Mohandas <pradeep.mohandas at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi,
>
> Curious: Is anybody testing this for mobile web? Shiju's report last
> week suggested an increase in traffic via mobile web, I think.
> I have started trying to read ml.wiki on my cell pointing my phone
> browser at ml.m.wikipedia.org and all I get are boxes right now.  I'm
> using Opera Mini browser on a Nokia E63.
> Pradeep
> Handheld
>
> On 14/12/2011, Bala Jeyaraman <sodabottle at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 at 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 at 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimediaindia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Pradeep Mohandas
> How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>


-- 
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore

More information about the Wikimediaindia-l mailing list