Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
What I need to read for begin?
The problem is that even once localised, we have a confusing and complex interface program and markup language to teach them!
The markup language is as complex as TeX?
It's not simply a matter of getting all the labels right -
Where can I find a reference of these labels?
the user interface is a pretty sharp learning curve to the uninitiated or the technologically inexperienced.
Language localisation is a necessary precondition, but it's not the magic bulled.
Finally, where can I find a How-to for this (not localisation, but the other issue)?
Regards. Antonio.
Hoi,
Not an easy answer. In piedmonetese we first made a small sequence of explanations about how to structure text and add images. It helps if you step out of geek terms and use the terminology coming from the handcraft of your culture (something about decoration of objects and related tools), so people get the message quick. At that point you can have people write plain text and add images, while admins volunteer to study the markup more in depth and start to produce small user guides. It takes patience and care for people's reactions.
You might want to try different solutions, to find out what is best, yet making frequent changes has a confusing effect, so probably you should invest some time in the incubator, to discuss things with users. You can start explanation pages and discuss them directly at incubator stage and if you aren't aware that your explanations are stable you should probably stay there a bit, until you reach a basic asset. Take the incubator for what it is: an opportunity.
An elaborate (although not complete) explanation of the wiki-markup is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Getting_started
You'll want to prune it a bit to make it usable for people having a first meeting with the IT.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Antonio Galindo Castro Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 8:51 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that
when
the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as
in
amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
What I need to read for begin?
The problem is that even once localised, we have a confusing and complex interface program and markup language to teach them!
The markup language is as complex as TeX?
It's not simply a matter of getting all the labels right -
Where can I find a reference of these labels?
the user interface is a pretty sharp learning curve to the uninitiated or the technologically inexperienced.
Language localisation is a necessary precondition, but it's not the magic bulled.
Finally, where can I find a How-to for this (not localisation, but the other issue)?
Regards. Antonio.
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 19/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hoi,
Not an easy answer. In piedmonetese we first made a small sequence of
...
Also: begin every round of planning things (texts, structure etc.) with re-orientation on who your readers and authors are (or will be). ---
On 19/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hoi,
Not an easy answer. In piedmonetese we first made a small sequence of explanations about how to structure text and add images. It helps if you step out of geek terms and use the terminology coming from the handcraft of your culture (something about decoration of objects and related tools), so people get the message quick. At that point you can have people write plain text and add images, while admins volunteer to study the markup more in depth and start to produce small user guides. It takes patience and care for people's reactions.
Mediawiki markup is - by the standards of markup languages - really quite simple; [[-]] for links, ''-'' for emphasis. Everything else you can label "advanced stuff" and not worry about to start with! Check the keyboard does have those characters, mind you... but once you figure out how to get the idea across, the very basics of the language are simple.
(Perhaps a good second stage is headers == and [[Image:...]]; a third stage might be fancier formatting, :: and *. After that you're into stuff which is beyond simple "markup", you're dealing with templates...)
It might be worth seeing if there are any "really really basic guides on using HTML" that you can find - that's the most likely markup language to have simple guides written for it, and you may be able to adapt the remarks in there.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org