It's time to remember one of those English proverbs I leaned in high school:
"Good things come in threes!"
1. After being enabled on the German language Wikipedia a few weeks ago[1], Flagged
revisions is a hit. Over 255.000 content pages have been reviewed (a third of all content
pages) by almost 3.000 users[2]. The in my humble opinion Wikipedia with the highest
quality content, now ensures that anonymous readers get to read checked versions of
content, reducing chances of innocent bystanders being confronted with all kinds of pranks
and filth. Great stuff.
2. Three days ago a shell user created a large number (15) of new MediaWiki wikis (Thanks
Tim!)[3]. Many of those in languages that did not have a Wikimedia project yet (9). Thanks
to everyone who has taken and is taking the time to make Wikimedia projects even more
omnipresent. Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum
of all knowledge.
3. Last Tuesday, the illustrious "Bug 57" was finally closed[4]. Using multiple
Wikimedia projects has never been this easy before. Yay! for meta projects like Wikimedia
Commons. Now where's that WYSIWYG editor so that the learning curve does not have to
be this steep[5]? I am putting a EUR 1000,00 bounty on the first to get one working
properly and approved by Brion before the end of 2008. Contact me for details if you are
serious about working on this. I am certain there are more people that would chip in for
this[6] - and MediaWiki needs it to stay an interesting wiki engine outside of the WMF
projects.
4. As you may not know (who am I anyway), I am heavily involved in the MediaWiki
localisation project, which tries to make MediaWiki available in as many languages as
possible. In the end of 2007 I formulated four ambitious goals for the project[7]. By the
end of the year, 120 languages should have a minimal localisation (proper localisation for
'read only', back then 48 languages), 90 languages should have a localisation for
at least 90% of all MediaWiki messages (then 50), 50 should have a 90% localisation of
extension messages used by Wikimedia (then 11) and 20 should have a 65% localisation of
all extension messages supposed in the MediaWiki localisation project (then 7)[8]. In
December 2007, I thought all of those goals would be just or well beyond reach. Well,
impossible really. Today the first of the forementioned four goals was reached: 20
languages now have a 65% or more localisation of the 3,700 messages of the extensions
supported by Betawiki. Translators for Esperanto and Vietnamese completed the 20
languages. MediaWiki now has minimal localisation for 112 languages, an excellent
localisation exists for 65 languages, and 16 languages have excellent support for the
extensions that the WMF uses[9,10]. Brilliant if you ask me. And still we need more. There
are Wikimedia projects in over 270 languages (counting Incubator projects) and MediaWiki
supports about 313 languages. The least we should do is offer language communities a user
interface in the language their parents taught them - nothing better to feel at home.
Ouch. I have to learn how to count… And I was not even done yet. Just wanted to share my
happiness :).
Siebrand
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-May/042705.html
[2]
http://toolserver.org/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english
[3]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-May/038008.html
[4]
http://leuksman.com/log/2008/05/28/bug-57-laid-to-rest/
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_curve
[6] The bounty is made available through the 'MediaWiki accessibility project' of
Stichting Open Progress (
http://www.openprogress.org), subsidised by HIVOS
(
http://www.hivos.nl/). Acceptance criteria include a proper 'back and forth'
conversion of 2,000 English language Wikipedia main namespace pages.
[7]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2007-December/000571.html
[8]
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics_in_time
[9]
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics
[10] the relatively low rise in localisation completeness for WMF extension is mainly due
to the large increase in messages for CentralAuth and FlaggedRevs; translators need some
time to catch up.