The LanguageConverter is a poorly-understood part of mediawiki among mediawiki engineers.
Is there any chance that we could organize a set of presentations or talks by the various communities who use it, in order to lay the ground work for an informed discussion of its future and/or replacement?
In particular, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedias_in_Multi-writing_System lists 30-40 different wikis who either are using LanguageConverter functionality or who would like to use it. I have a reasonable grasp on the linguistic background of (generously speaking) 4 of them. How can we better understand the issues and communities involved?
Perhaps something could be arranged at Wikimania this year? Do we know if a decent cross-section of variant-using wiki users will be present? --scott
C. Scott Ananian, 03/04/2014 19:02:
Is there any chance that we could organize a set of presentations or talks by the various communities who use it, in order to lay the ground work for an informed discussion of its future and/or replacement?
How do you expect this to be possible, if there are 40 of them? We have this thing called wikis which is used to gather colossal amounts of information (like this) in small steps. ;-) Have you tried reading other resources, like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia, bugzilla, mailing lists? If you're interested in a topic, you can expand existing wiki pages about it and point out the gaps in knowledge, then ask others to help. Experiences like "Tell us about your Wikipedia" show that it's possible to make people write down CommunityLore that's normally overlooked, if one shows interest and a purpose. What's your interest? What's the purpose? What the gain for users to tell you about this? I've been pleasantly surprised and curious about your curiosity on the topic, I'd like to know sooner rather than later. :)
Nemo
I cannot be at wikimana. I would sincerely want to understand the language converter. An attempt to understand it by reading the code some three years ago failed. So, if you do something like that during wikimania, I suggest to have the session recorded or written down.
Purodha
"C. Scott Ananian" cananian@wikimedia.org writes:
The LanguageConverter is a poorly-understood part of mediawiki among mediawiki engineers.
Is there any chance that we could organize a set of presentations or talks by the various communities who use it, in order to lay the ground work for an informed discussion of its future and/or replacement?
In particular, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedias_in_Multi-writing_System lists 30-40 different wikis who either are using LanguageConverter functionality or who would like to use it. I have a reasonable grasp on the linguistic background of (generously speaking) 4 of them. How can we better understand the issues and communities involved?
Perhaps something could be arranged at Wikimania this year? Do we know if a decent cross-section of variant-using wiki users will be present?
mediawiki-i18n@lists.wikimedia.org