[Foundation-l] Google Wave and Wikimedia projects

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
When you want to consider Wave in combination with Wikipedia, there are a
few "easy" answers to this. The first is that Wave is massively easier to
use. When you combine the existing Wave technology with MediaWiki, you will
improve usability for MediaWiki. When you bring MediaWiki content to Wave,
you integrate knowledge into Wave..

The fact that Wikipedia currently is as dominantly as it is, is only true
for some languages certainly not all languages. When you look at African
languages, Wikipedia is a no show.  Wave already has some integration with
mobiles. When we start to think in terms of bringing Wikipedia to the
languages where there are many people and where we are weak, we must do much
better even with our current software platform.

Wave as it is will work as an overlay. It currently supports a few languages
and we support over 300. So when we were to adopt Wave we would face a
challenge. This is however a challenge we are getting better at because of
translatewiki.net.

When you want to focus on the people who do not get the Wikipedia message,
usability is with internationalisation and localisation something we are
starting to address. Wave could be, if it indeed fits our needs as I
suspect, be a shot in the arm on usability.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2009/5/31 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>

> How does Google Wave help the WMF achieve its goals?
> Wikipedia has already become a dominant information source for the 1.5
> billion people with Internet access thanks to Google.
>
> We need to focus on getting Wikipedia to the 5.2 billion people who can't
> access it.
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Probably, some of you already saw that Google made something for which
> > > I think that it will be the new form of the mainstream Internet
> > > perception. You may read Slashdot article [1], a good description at
> > > the blog "Google Operating System" [2] (not officially connected with
> > > Google) and, of course, you may see the official site with more than
> > > one hour of presentation [3].
> > >
> > > I expected such kind of tool (a client connected with others via P2P
> > > XML-based protocol; with servers for identification). However, I
> > > didn't expect that i will come so soon, that it will be done by one
> > > large corporation and that it will be done at the right way: open
> > > protocol, free software referent implementation.
> > >
> > > At the official site they said that it will start to work during this
> > > year. As one large corporation is behind the project, as well as free
> > > and open source community is able to participate, I have no doubts
> > > that it will be implemented all over the Internet (and not just
> > > Internet) very quickly. Probably, in two years the basic component of
> > > one modern operating system will not be a Web browser, but a Wave
> > > client. Probably, Web will become a storage system, while all of the
> > > interaction will be done via Waves.
> > >
> > > This development of Internet is very strongly related to the Wikimedia
> > projects:
> > > * I want to be able to edit Wikipedia through the Wave client.
> > > * I want to add my own notes to articles, history of articles etc.
> > > * I want to have collection of my knowledge at one place, including
> > > Wikipedia articles and my notes.
> > > * I want to be able to make a program which would analyze articles on
> > > Wikipedia and to give program and/or analysis to my friends.
> > > * I want many more things to be browsable or editable or whatever from
> > > a Wave client...
> > >
> > > All of those my (but, in one year, not just my) wishes may be
> > > fulfilled just through work on MediaWiki and Pywikipediabot. So, I am
> > > calling all of you who are willing to think about it or who are at the
> > > position to think about it -- to start with thinking :)
> > >
> > > [1] -
> >
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/1912226/Googles-Wave-Blurs-Chat-Email-Collaboration-Software
> > > [2] - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-wave.html
> > > [3] - http://wave.google.com/
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> > Very cool. Not sure if I buy into the "this is the future of the
> > internet," but very very cool indeed.
> >
> > -Chad
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>