<div>Happy to note that more communities started thinking about this issue. I remember raising this issue way back in 2009 or early 2010. But there were not much takers then.<br> </div><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
Happy to announce that Short URLs are now available in every page of Tamil<br></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
Wikipedia.<br></blockquote><br>Need to do some UI testing. For example, see <a href="http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%87%E0%AE%B2%E0%AE%99%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%88">this article</a>. We (Malayalam wikimedians) found several use cases like this when we customized pretty url for Malayalam<br>
<br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">It would be great if this can be supported by Wikimedia itself. <br></blockquote><br>That
is a good suggestion Srikath. This type of solution is required in all
non-latin wikis. In fact it is required even for some Latin wiki
articles including English. For example, see this article from German
wiki. <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84" target="_blank">http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84</a> <br><br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
I understand Malayalam wikipedia has a redirect mechanism based on the<br></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">
english interwiki title for sometime now.<br></blockquote><div><br>That is a wrong assumption. It is not just copy paste of English URL. If we were doing like that, what will happen to these type of articles. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica</a>. It is again out with some ugly characters. <br>
</div>
<br>Even though Malayalam community was aware about the solution that Srikath provided, there
are several reason for not going for it. Santhosh has already pointed
out some of the major reasons. So not elaborating it more. But we have solution for the problem Srikanth mentioned right from late 2006. <br>
<br><br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">ts just a template, but the problem is one needs to run a bot for all
existing articles to add the template with a fancy name.But ml wiki is
primarily using english names, transliterated text to form pretty urls.
Just as i type, Santhosh replied. More on another reply.<br></blockquote><br>In fact redirect pages are very much required for each wiki article. We never know what all keywords people will use to search for wiki articles. All the possible keywords should be made redirects. <br>
<br>Think about people who come to wiki only for reading. They have so many obstacles to reach a particular wiki article. if we are able to understand this, we will be able to develop different solutions for them. That is why we developed many solutions including pretty url.<br>
<br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote">[4] <a href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%AB%E0%B4%B2%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%82:Prettyurl" target="_blank">http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%AB%E0%B4%B2%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%82:Prettyurl</a> -- Its funny, prettyurl template extension url isnt pretty :P</div>
</blockquote>
<br clear="all">The reason is, it contains localized namespace. But you have solution there also: <a href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Prettyurl" target="_blank">http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Prettyurl</a><br>
<br><blockquote style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"> If am going to pretty URL solution (which has its advantages on
readable URLs) I would need to run a bot and do a lot of work for 29000+
articles. :)<br></blockquote><br>In fact if you are not creating the redirect page <b>India</b> for the article <a href="http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%87%E0%AE%A8%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%AF%E0%AE%BE">இந்தியா</a> in Tamil wiki, then that is very bad from reader's perspective. Yesterday I was introducing Tamil wiki to one of my tamil friend. The first word he typed in search box was <b>India</b>. We can't expect people to know typing in Tamil when they come there only for reading. Same case applies to all articles across various Indian language wikis.<br>
<br>But create only those redirect pages that make sense.<br><br>Shiju<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:39 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:srik.lak@gmail.com">srik.lak@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Hi Santhosh,<div><br></div><div>Thanks for the reply. Yes, I know it doesnt help people identify the text. This was chosen for people to conveniently share on twitter. As Subhashish pointed out, people are anyway using <a href="http://bit.ly" target="_blank">bit.ly</a> etc and we are getting into an era where people click URLs based on the comment preceeding it and not on the URL itself(Atleast in twitter). Other reason i opted this is because, its quicker to release. If am going to pretty URL solution (which has its advantages on readable URLs) I would need to run a bot and do a lot of work for 29000+ articles. :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Yes, SEO on a seperate thread please. Am replying :) </div><div><div class="im"><br clear="all">Regards<br>Srikanth.L<br><a href="http://srik.me" target="_blank">http://srik.me</a><br>
<br><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 23:31, Santhosh Thottingal <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:santhosh.thottingal@gmail.com" target="_blank">santhosh.thottingal@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi,<br>
URL shortners will not improve the search hits.<br>
The above solution allows one to share the non latin wiki url using<br>
English alphabets and Arabic numerals. Personally I would prefer a URL<br>
I can remember and it should help me to identify to where it is<br>
pointing without clicking on it.<br>
<a href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango" target="_blank">http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango</a> clearly tells me that it is a<br>
Malayalam wiki page about Mango<br>
<a href="http://tawp.in/r/262" target="_blank">http://tawp.in/r/262</a> does not give that information to me. But that is<br>
just a personal comment.<br>
<br>
Srikanth mentioned a valid issue related to search engine optimization<br>
with Indian wikis. I dont get any result for this query:<br>
"Malayalam + Mango " to take me to Mango article in Malayalam wiki.<br>
Because there is no way a search engine can index the word Mango in<br>
english to the Malayalam wiki page of Mango. Having Mango in URL does<br>
not help search engines.<br>
I know some SEO tricks used by Malayalam news portals to address this.<br>
They use Meta tag efficiently and put english and malayalam keywords<br>
associated with the article. For eg: a news article about<br>
Mullapperiyar Dam will contain a meta tag with keywords<br>
"മുല്ലപ്പെരിയാര് ഡാം, mullapperiyar dam, "<br>
Some of the news portals even integrated this trick their news<br>
publishing workflow with custom plugins to CMS systems(like Drupal).<br>
<br>
If we want to get people searching in English to our wiki articles, we<br>
can think about a Meta tag solution - some extension that injects<br>
keywords to meta tag.<br>
<br>
Don't we need to point show <a href="http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi" target="_blank">ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi</a> if one search<br>
for Kochi? atleast within first 10 results?<br>
<br>
(Sorry if I hijacked the thread, we may start another thread if we<br>
want to discuss this further)<br>
<br>
Thanks<br>
<font color="#888888">Santhosh<br>
</font><div><div></div><div><br>
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