On 12/20/2011 10:35 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:45:31 +0530
> From: Nitika <ntandon(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting Outreach
> To: Wikimedia India Community list
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <9F8E609E-22F3-4D3F-B070-837D45A9CD11(a)wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
....
> Create a repository for all presentations as well as handouts, FAQs pages, etc. (prepared in English to begin with, but later translated to Indic languages). These presentations must be in distinct module so that there could be a standard basic introduction section, editing basics and then separate sections for specific sub-topics such as NPOV, referencing, WP:MOS, etc. These could be accessed at will by any community member and used / edited / adapted at will by them. I realise there might be some duplication because a lot of this exists in various places - but it will be useful to have them all together in one place.
I think it would be great for all of this to live on the existing
outreach wiki, https://outreach.wikimedia.org (example:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf ). That might be a useful
place to get cross-pollination from other people who are already working
on Wikimedia outreach.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
On 12/20/2011 10:35 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:24:41 +0530
> From: Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] ONE simple step to double or triple visits
> to Indic Wikipedias
> To: Wikimedia India Community list
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <CAF2QyrA+2114egy3fxH5oEx6f7RU2nbQw45Y3Xjyvg5MrvMg9g(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi,
>
> Today, I went to download WordPress and it told me it is also available in
> Tamil. Very neatly done as it somehow detected that I am from Tamilnadu.
>
> See the screenshot at: http://ravidreams.com/ta-wordpress.png
>
> A similar announcement in English Wiki projects is sure to double or triple
> traffic to Indic Wiki projects.
>
> We have been requesting this feature for years.
>
> Curious when it will be implemented.
>
> Ravi
Ravi (or others who know): is
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3665 an adequate summary
of your request? Or perhaps there's another bug I missed when I was
searching Bugzilla -- you're not just looking to localise the interface
for people coming to our wikis, you want to alert them to the existence
of wikis in their language(s).
I think other people in this thread have mentioned some other facets and
possibilities around language selection and detection, so maybe you
could add your relevant thoughts/suggestions to the relevant bugs in
Bugzilla, so the MediaWiki developers have access to them when
considering this issue. Thanks.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
hi,
>From another list -
Code4Lib is having their 2012 conference in Feb. in Seattle. Might be
something of interest if you're into tech-ness and how open source
communities can work together. Here is how they describe their organization:
" code4lib isn't entirely about code or libraries. It is a volunteer-driven
collective of hackers, designers, architects, curators, catalogers, artists
and instigators from around the world, who largely work for and with
libraries, archives and museums on technology "stuff." It started in the
fall of 2003 as a mailing
list<http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mailing-lists/code4lib/>when a group
of library programmers decided to create an overarching
community agnostic towards any particular language or technology."
I'm unable to attend due to other obligations, but, it might be something
others have interest in. Would be a great opportunity to "combine our
powers" or see where we can work together.
http://code4lib.org/
Is there any such grouping in India? Exploring their website, they are
geared towards GLAM as well. Wondering that if we're going to do GLAM stuff
in India we might benefit from interacting with such a group in India as
well.
warm regards,
Pradeep Mohandas
--
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Hi all,
Pardon for a long mail, just unavoidable.
We have seen the WebFonts roll out[0] last night to most Indic wikis except
Malayalam and Tamil. We in Tamil Community felt WebFonts extension is just
not ready for us. We would like to share on why we in Tamil community didnt
chose webfonts and also what could work better in future for Indic
communities during technology adoption.
1. *Unavailability of "Quality Free fonts"* :-
During the development, our request for not setting the default font as a
lower quality font was rejected citing "it will defeat the purpose of
extension".[1] The available fonts had issues and deploying the extension
with those low quality fonts to everyone would not only defeat the purpose
of extension, but also gives Tamil Wikipedia a bad image when people just
cant read the fonts even though they had better fonts in system. (Just like
how i18n team says people who see boxes will just simply close the window,
we say giving these poor fonts will also lead to same thing and not help
the cause, instead will also hurt those who have better fonts.).
2. *Quality of User Experience* :-
We are a smaller wiki, we have a smaller reader base, but still we are
ranked 7th most visited website in Tamil according to alexa[2]. Just like
how no-nonsense / no-mediocrity is tolerated in any code that enters WMF
cluster, any change which will affect the site's look and feel, user
experience will have to be of highest standards and must be accepted by
community. WebFonts were just not ready to enter Wikipedia, since it
changes the UX for all the readers to help a potentially lower number of
users who dont have Tamil fonts than the current existing reader base.
*What we feel was wrong in WebFonts deployment*
We have also been seeing the wikis where they have been rolled out and
reporting issues. We ourselves are reporting issues inspite of not taking
WebFonts, with the hope software just gets better and some day we can
deploy them. Dont get us wrong, we are not against technology, we just need
it in better form and are not in any urgency. (After all we at Ta wiki
initiated an RFC and asked Webfonts even before the announcement was made).
We would also like to mention some points which we feel i18n team could
have done better for a smoother launch.
1. *Font Testing* :-
The point of language support team is that the people who are aware of
language give feedback to make any software better supported for the
language. We are not sure if Font-Testing was ever done at all for those
languages where the WebFonts were deployed. The hinting issue which was a
concern and made us raise against deployment in Tamil is also present in
Hindi,Sanskrit,Telugu(atleast till we saw) and gave the same worst
readability. The i18n team did font assessment[3], testing only 1 word to
test the font. Can any font be tested with just rendering of 4 characters /
1 word? For Tamil,we did a test in little more comprehensive way(We would
not say its complete)[4]. This should have been a *must* to see rendering /
font issues with chosen default font especially since the fonts are being
set default to every single user to the site. Sadly community was involved
the least, a note was posted in Village pumps and we dont think community
involved itself in any testing and poor quality was eventually pushed
without proper testing.
2. *Real world testing* :-
Though cross browser testing was done, there was a severe lack of real
world testing and as a result we are seeing a host of issues being
discovered post launch. Average PC in India might have 1 GB RAM, Firefox 3
/ 4, worse IE 5.5 / IE6 on 100 Kbps semi-broadband connection. We cannot
tell them move to latest or ignore them. More care should have been taken
especially since the webfonts is bound to set a default font.
With only a few hours of testing serious issues have been found - in IE 8
where webfonts might be rolled back [5], IE 7.0 (where webfonts dont work)
[6] , ubuntu + Firefox (fixed now) [7] and Win+Firefox 5.0, [8]. We are
still testing for other browsers and usecases and dont know how many issues
we will discover. In short - This code is not ready to go live, especially
when it is being made default compulsorily for everyone. There are serious
performance issues for typical Indian internet connections as well.[9]
3. *Communication and Community Engagement* :-
Most of the above things could have solved earlier if there was more
communication and community engagement. We asked for more information,
engagement on this very list. There was no reply to the mail on increasing
community engagement for i18n projects[10]. Most communities know WebFonts
is coming on Dec 12, didnt know what was coming, any further details.
Worse, Even Indic Consultant was not having clear information. Why this
lack of transparency? Community is more than willing to help, if only they
are informed. Even though we did not take up WebFonts, we have spent time
to help making it better.
And the end users in the wikis dont know where to report and follow up
issues. (Not everyone is aware of and familiar with the Bugzilla process).
The request we raised to have a visible bug reporting link has not been
acted upon [11]. There might be a lot of issues going unreported, because
people dont know whom to report to. When a change of this scale is being
done, Community admins must be advised to run Sitenotice campaigns to
inform the users about the change with some solid newbie oriented
documentation. Infact this must be done for RFC itself, so as to make an
informed decision. We did the same for RFC in Tamil[12].
*Proposal for Future i18n / any special deployments to Indic wikiprojects*:-
The WebFonts deployment is a classic example of making deployment without
enough community engagement. Can this done in any of English / German /
Russian wikipedia which have a strong community? The fact that Tamil /
Malayalam resisted was because the community had concerns over the
solution. Till an hour before deployment yesterday, we did not know if Ta
wiki projects will get webfonts despite our objections. We had been
pursuing Siebrand and Gerard across forums - facebook, twitter, meta talk
pages, village pumps, gmail chat etc looking for answers. But till the
deployment happened, we had no clue what we would be getting. This method
of deploying in silence *must* stop ASAP. Any deployment to any Indic wiki
must go through the community (language support teams) informed of the
change with Indic Consultant kept in loop. We suggest Shiju Alex to work on
a policy and put it in place regarding this. If there is problem
identifying community members to help, we are sure Shiju will help
connecting.
Irrespective of that happening Tamil Wiki Projects will follow this process.
1. Test any deployment on translatewiki
2. File Bugs and verify in translatewiki till it reaches acceptable level.
3. Language support team member will make a RFC page explaining the merits
/ demerits of the technology in simple terms with use of screenshots /
external links
4. Reverify / Ask for deployment in largely-inactive Wikiprojects like
WikiQuote / WikiBooks *post community concensus*
5. Test again / File Bugs
6. Reverify / Ask for deployment Wikiprojects next in line in terms of
activity ( Wiktionary / Wikinews/ Wikisource)
7. Test again / File Bugs
8. Only after ironing out all issues, any deployment will be allowed in
Tamil Wikipedia.
We had burnt our fingers during Narayam deployment already once and
community was so resistive of Narayam itself and was asking to go back to
older javascript solution. After that we followed the above process for
bringing back Narayam on all Tamil Wikiprojects.
We suggest the other communities adopt something similar. We sincerely hope
that the community engagement is improved, not just before deployment, even
from start of development.
[0] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/going-live-december-12-2011/
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/30506
[2] http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/World/Tamil
[3] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/WebFonts_assessment
[4] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Sodabottle/test1
[5] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32775
[6] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33024
[7] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33025
[8] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33018
[9] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/33027
[10]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005153.…
[11] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32942
[12] http://tawp.in/r/2r1f
--
Regards
Bala Jeyaraman & Srikanth.L
Dear All,
Yesterday, 8 December 2011, the application was submitted (attached the
receipt copy) by Mr Biswarup Ganguly, they mentioned as 'Late Receipt'. The
application contained;
1. The cover letter.
2. Print out registration certificate.
3. en copy of the certificate.
3. Main page of Wikimedia Foundation site.
4. Main page of en. wikipedia
5. Main page of bn. wikipedia.
6. Main page of hi. wikipedia
7. Main page of Wikimedia Chapter.
It is known that the will call a meeting for finalizing the contract at
late December, 2011.
With regards.
--
With Warm Regards,
*Jayanta Nath*
Calcutta,West Bengal
My name is Prabhakar Sarma Neog, from Assamese Wikipedia.
The members of Indic wikis have been helping, and inspiring the Assamese
Wikipedia. It was almost dying two years ago, and would have been closed,
if it were not for Shiju Alex and other wikimedians.
We have just opened a mailing list for Assamese Wikipedia, thanks to Shiju,
Naveen, CheritanThiru Abraham and others. We already have a facebook group
but now want to gradually shift major discussions To the new list.
Recently there are talks in Assam wiki about arranging wiki awareness
sessions, workshops etc. to attract and groom more editors and to inspire
the existing ones.. Since we don't have experience, we'll look for other
wikipedians to guide us.
Thank you again for your inspiration,
-Prabhakar
This might be of interest to those of you in Bangalore.
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam
________
http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anja Kovacs
Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 5:19 PM
Subject: Event on online free speech on Wednesday
To: Gautam John
Free Speech Online in India under Attack? A Panel Discussion
When Minister of Communications and IT Kapil Sibal suggested
pre-censorship for a range of popular online platforms and social
networking sites, this suggestion was soon met by a barrage of
criticism, which soon forced him to back down. Yet Sibal’s suggestion
is not the only threat to free speech on the Internet in India today:
legislation such as the Intermediary Due Diligence Rules and Cyber
Café Rules (also jointly known as the IT Rules) issued in April 2011
is equally dangerous for free speech online.
In this event, Achal Prabhala, Anja Kovacs and Lawrence Liang will
join moderator Sunil Abraham to discuss in more detail some of the
most direct threats to freedom of expression online that exist in
India today; the larger legal and social context of freedom of
expression and censorship, control and resistance in which they have
to be understood; and the steps that can be taken to ensure that
substantive protections for freedom of expression online will be put
into place.
Join us at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, on
Wednesday 21 December, at 5.30 pm.
Address: No. 194, Second 'C' Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore – 560071
Phone: +91 80 4092 6283
About the speakers:
Achal Prabhala is a researcher and writer from Bangalore who works on
access to knowledge and access to medicine.
Anja Kovacs works with the Internet Democracy Project, which engages
in research and advocacy on the promises and challenges that the
Internet poses for democracy and social justice in the developing
world.
Lawrence Liang is a lawyer and researcher at the Alternative Law
Forum. He works on the intersection of law, technology and culture and
has worked closely with film makes and artists in a number of
anti-censorship campaigns.
About the moderator:
Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and
Society in Bangalore.
This event is jointly organised by the Internet Democracy Project and
the Centre for Internet and Society
Dear All,
A mailing list is created to facilitate the discussions about Assamese wiki
projects.
The URL is https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-as
Kindly subscribe if you are interested in Assamese wiki projects.
Shiju Alex
Dear all,
Just keeping you posted if you haven't seen the IRC log yet. A couple of
women Wikipedians from Australia and Argentina chapters have been planning
a Wikiwomen camp and conference in Argentina sometime in May, 2012. I know
it's far away and probably the official announcement will happen sometime
end of this month but I thought it's wise to keep you posted so that you
can keep your respective Indic language women editors in loop.
Those who might be interested in participating will have to apply for a WMF
participation grant I guess and they might want to join the discussion on
the other list to add Indian inputs. One part of the event (Camp)
encourages women's participation only while the other invites all to
contribute. Please do spread the word and encourage our Wikichix to
participate too :) Drop me a mail if you want to join that mailing list.
Warmly
Noopur
--
Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690
Congrats Yuvaraj Pandian!
-santhosh
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tomasz Finc <tfinc(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:58 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Please Welcome Yuvaraj Pandian & Max Semink
To: wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org, Wikimedia developers
<wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Greetings all,
The Mobile and Special Projects department is pleased to announce the
addition of two new contractors to the team: Yuvaraj Pandian and Max
Seminik.
Yuvaraj Pandian or Yuvi as we gotten to know him was one of our 2011
Google Summer of Code students. During GSoC he worked with Arthur
Richards on porting the Wikipedia 1.0 bot to a PHP extension named
Selection Sifter. This was in important offline project as it allowed
us to better support and extend our offline tool chains. Previous to
this he had been active in the busroutes.in community where users
@logic and @planemad motivated him to come on and help the Wikimedia
community. One of his early Wikimedia project memories includes the
tawiki community discussing the ShortUrl extension. He found the
entire channel so lively and helpful that he applied for GSoC.
Yuvi will be working for us remotely while on a six month sabbatical
from KCG College of Technology, India. He'll be extending the Android
app, enhancing MobileFrontend, and working with our various offline
efforts to further the reach of the projects. You can find him on irc
under the nick 'yuviapanda' .
Max Semink has been an active MediaWiki contributor since 2009. He's
recently been most involved in developing the API Sandbox for
MediaWiki. An extension that allows any user to easily create complex
API queries through a visual interface. When not hacking on MediaWiki,
Max has been busy developing C++ software for embedded systems in the
railroad industry. While train switching has captured the majority of
his recent developer cycles, he's super eager to change direction and
focus his full time efforts on MediaWiki.
Max will be continuing his interest in the API by helping us improve
and extend its use within mobile. He'll be adding a proper API to
MobileFrontend, extending support for GPS, and in general moving the
API forward for our mobile clients. Max will be working for us
remotely and can be found under the nick 'MaxSem' .
It's great to be able to see two active community members be able to
join us full time.
Please join me in (re)-welcoming Yuvi and Max!
--tomasz
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