On 4/8/06, Mankuthimma <mankuthimma(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I am being forced to take recourse to this list,
as a final option.
I am trying to bring out some technical and other issues w.r.t.
Kannada Wikipedia, and I have opened up a discussion in this regard in
the Kannada Support page.
I don't know if you have ever thought about this. But, the points on what
you are fighting, i.e, technical support issues is not at all concerned to
the Wikipedia. And those technical points merits discussions elsewhere
(
kannada.sourceforge.net, for eg.)
I believe it is concerned, because Wikipedia has a document that deals
with Unicode/Kannada Support.
I have said this innumerable times, but I will repeat it again:
(1) Mozilla Firefox has issues with Indic fonts on Linux. This was
not mentioned in the document. (I added a workaround yesterday.) The
doc had some instructions -- to be fair -- but when you followed them,
you would still see garbled text. The doc did not say anything about
that. In fact it did not even say "Look, you may face issues with
Firefox even after following these instructions". (Does this mean
nobody knows about this bug, or does nobody care? I don't know.)
Here are two screenshots from my out-of-the-box Xandros, for sampige
and kedage fonts:
http://www.ndeepak.info/tmp/kedage.png
http://www.ndeepak.info/tmp/sampige.png
This has happened to me on Ubuntu as well.
http://www.ndeepak.info/.ljdeepix/wikipedia_linux.jpg
And I am not alone. I have colleagues with similar issues.
(2) When I tried to bring it up, I have received severe hostility, all
along, in return (including the latest "Sampada" entry by HPN).
I believe Firefox is an important browser to be supported. There is a
statistical bias here: Linux users tend to be more interested in
free/open source software, and if we can make the encyclopedia
accessible to them, we can expect a good deal of publicity and
contributions. Unfortunately, currently a majority of them (who use
Firefox) cannot see the content, and the doc suggested no
alternatives.
Also note that this is only a minute fraction of the problem.
Linux/Unix has maybe around 8% desktop market share (? -- I am making
this up), the rest is Windows and Mac. Of all the Windows, only XP
has good support for the present Kannada Wikipedia. 98/Me don't
support it at all, 2000 has partial support (when I installed built-in
Indic font support on Windows 2000 and visited Kannada Wikipedia, the
text looked garbled -- if I missed something, please let me know). I
don't know anything about Mac support status, let us hope we have no
issues there.
So at this moment, only Windows XP users are problem-free. All the
rest, or shall we say a majority of them, have issues. Liberally, I
would say only about 30-40% of all visitors to Wikipedia can see the
content correctly and contribute.
There, now we have the picture. We are creating a lot of content, and
2-3 out of 5 guys cannot even see it, let alone contribute. Is it not
high time that we became aware of this, and tried to fix where we can?
Let us ignore 98/Me as they are getting antiquated, but can we not do
something about Firefox and Linux, at least?
This is why I have been obstinate about it, and trying all that I can
to see that the doc is helpful. I will also submit a bug report to
Firefox developer community soon.
When I pointed
out the issue in the user-talk page of this user, I
have not received a helpful reply.
What I observe is that the issue is simply "bloated ego", maybe on both the
sides.
I would rather suggest you people bury the hatchet and contribute in terms
of articles, community building etc.
Ego is what has put in POV text in place of NPOV text. Ego is what
has accused me of "vandalising" and banned me, and protected that
page. Ego is what has refused requests for mediation, or compromise
offers. Ego is what has created a new Sampada entry, just as it did
in Pariveshana before. :) I am tempted to go to Wikipedia Arbitration
Committee, but I won't. This is not a war-zone, and I'm not gaining
anything by winning it. I don't want to polarize a community and
weaken it -- I don't want to be the villain. It is unfortunate that a
text that is so blatantly biased and vindictive has stayed that way,
even 2 days after it was made so, and what was meant to be a
discussion page has been fettered and chained by one person, and
justice is a long-drawn battle.
So yes, I will spare HPN of future Sampada/Pariveshana entries, and
tension to the rest of the community. I will look into the Firefox
matters myself; I have already edited the Support document for the
time being. If you can, please look at the other points I have raised
in the Support:Talk page, and carry the dialogue forward. Or you are
free to delete it all.
No mediation is ever going to work, if you people
remain intransigent. It's
better you put both the content (Anyway the content put/restored by the
other person is NOT his own, but links to the Wikipedia guidelines again.)
Nope. It also works if one person chooses to leave. You are free to
call me an escapist, defeatist, rabble-rouser, "stupid geek", or
anything else, in whatever blog you deem good. I have brooked
hostilities for more than a week now, and I have tried all that I
could. I am leaving with no regrets: I *can* work for the cause of
Kannada in many other ways.
Good luck,
Regards,
Deepak
