[Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The software has been tested but not all extensions are considered ready for
WMF production. I am establishing contacts with, among others, people at
UNICEF to make sure that we identify the outstanding issues carefully and
fix them efficiently. Given that the CreatePage extension requires changes
to the skin, it may make sense to consider using a superset of monobook (I
do not know how feasible this is).

Given that the software is already being localised at Betawiki, we do not
need to restrict ourselves to English. I understand that UNICEF uses some of
their software in Swahili :) I would love to consider Swahili for this ...
Kennisnet is interested in this functionality, that would make Dutch an
option. It needs to be clear that it is not only Wikipedia projects that
will benefit.

The benefits from a more useable interface have little to do with a "simple"
approach. Newbies are not able to contribute. Our need for more contributors
and content is most dire in our smallest projects. Personally I am not that
interested in using "simple" as a test environment. From my perspective, it
should be there for all the projects that want it. Obviously, when this
extension is localised first, it will be more effective.

When we are to test this in a Wikimedia Wiki, we need to get involvement
from Brion. It would help a lot when the WMF actively takes part in this
collaboration and make usability a priority.
Thanks,
      GerardM


2008/12/1 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>

> GerardM - what steps need to be taken to begin testing and adapting the
> UNICEF usability extensions? Where would be a good project to begin -
> perhaps the Simple English Wikipedia, if that community is amenable? That
> its in English might make development easier, and a more usable interface
> might fit with the philosophy of the Simple wiki.
>
> Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful
> Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong. Serbian
> Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles
> than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes
> sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more
> useful
> than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm
> curious to know what data changed your mind.
>
> Moreschi - What you advocate is basically cultural imperialism, which is a
> recipe for conflict and disruption - not education. Making knowledge
> available to as many people as possible is the goal; if those people don't
> speak English, they should not be excluded. As others have noted, it is
> much
> easier and much more in line with our goal to find contributors who can
> build suitable references in all languages. To your point that these
> references are likely to have poor quality anyway - I'm not sure that makes
> sense logically. A small community does not necessarily equal poor quality
> content; I imagine that the size of the community correlates with the
> volume
> of content, and while there are less people to police quality issues there
> is less content to police.
>
> Nathan
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