<i>I have a feeling<br>
that we'll all be doing this for a long time, so we might as well try<br>
to like each other. :-)</i><br><br>Amen to that Erik :-). Me and Srikanth, very much want webfonts to improve, be expanded to mobile and make for an excellent UX . Thats the reason we are persisting in testing even though at times it feels we are butting our heads against a wall.<br>
<br><i>It remains to<br>
be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods<br>
and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging<br>
experimentation with both.</i><br><br>For Tamil, we think we have evolved a suitable balance to achieve this (apart from Siebrand's dark launch idea). A gradual - less active to more active wikiproject launch. (explained in the original mail). We adopted this after our first Narayam launch had to be rolled back due to bugs. It was a bit time consuming and took longer, but was iterative and extremely satisfactory <br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Erik Moeller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:erik@wikimedia.org">erik@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Bala Jeyaraman <<a href="mailto:sodabottle@gmail.com">sodabottle@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> So stating the truth is being unconstructive?. You could have rolled this<br>
> out in phases or as a "dark launch" as you are contemplating now, done more<br>
> testing and saved us all this bitterness and trouble. Instead you decided to<br>
> go live on a massive scale without adequate testing in live environment<br>
> being accessed by millions of people everyday.<br>
<br>
</div>Although, the largest of the Indic language Wikipedias gets about<br>
1/900th the traffic of English Wikipedia in traffic. [1] I think it's<br>
appropriate to be a bit more experimental at that scale. It remains to<br>
be seen whether we can get sufficient testing done via opt-in methods<br>
and dark launches, although I'm certainly strongly encouraging<br>
experimentation with both.<br>
<br>
Your comparison with top web properties is flawed alongside another<br>
dimension: no other top web property has to solve the kinds of<br>
problems we're trying to solve here with a staff of three<br>
internationalization developers, one product manager and no QA team<br>
(!). Although we're larger now than a year ago and the year before,<br>
and we're still adding engineers and support resources, we have lots<br>
of big problems to solve in parallel. We don't have the luxury of<br>
being able to do just one thing extremely well, much as we might want<br>
to.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, what makes Wikimedia unique is precisely the fact<br>
that we're all working together to continually improve and fix things.<br>
In the best case scenario, that's a happy partnership. And as you well<br>
know, folks like Santhosh, Siebrand, Gerard, Niklas and Amir have made<br>
tremendous contributions as volunteers, well before being on staff. So<br>
we should strive for being collegial and forgiving. I have a feeling<br>
that we'll all be doing this for a long time, so we might as well try<br>
to like each other. :-)<br>
<br>
I applaud the i18n team for being bold and pushing things forward,<br>
while also reflecting on the process at this opportune time. I'm also<br>
grateful to you, to Srikanth and others for being both supportive and<br>
critical voices along the process, and getting very involved to fix<br>
things. Improving language support is a huge, daunting undertaking.<br>
WMF is only one player in this and it'll require continued, joint<br>
effort from all fronts.<br>
<br>
All best,<br>
Erik<br>
<br>
[1] <a href="http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_India/ReportCardIndia.htm" target="_blank">http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_India/ReportCardIndia.htm</a><br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
Erik Möller<br>
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation<br>
<br>
Support Free Knowledge: <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate" target="_blank">http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate</a><br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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