[Foundation-l] Upcoming default UI change of Wikipedia in nine languages

[Naoko Komura]

Hello!

As a part of global roll-out of the new user interface to Wikipedia and 
Wikimedia Projects[1][2], the user experience team is working with 
translators and the user experience ambassadors to prepare for rolling 
out the new default user interface to nine languages of Wikipedia, 
Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, 
and Dutch. [3] 

As Cary mentioned in his email on June 2nd, translators and ambassadors 
are making great progress in translating and spreading the news via 
appropriate channel.[4]  Argentina Chapter released the press release 
today. [5]

Volunteers of graphic work have been contributing amazing work in 
localizing the new logo.[6]  The new logo for the nine languages will be 
also released at the same time of the user interface updates.

Thanks to the effort of everyone involved, we are confident that we can 
conduct the deployment later this week. 

The scheduled time and the date is:

5:30am UTC, Thursday, June 10

This is a targeted schedule and the deployment can take up two to three 
hours, so you won't see the change until a few hours later.  Software 
release to high-traffic site like Wikipedia(s) require cautions and 
technical operations folks will monitor the site performance closely.  
So there is always a possibility that releases may be re-scheduled at 
the last minute.  But so far the schedule looks attainable.  We will 
keep you posted if the schedule is adjusted later in the week. 

Cheers,

Naoko Komura
Head of User Experience Programs, Wikimedia Foundation

[1] 
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/
[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/a-new-look-for-wikipedia/
[3] 
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/new-wikipedia-interface-to-nine-more-languages/
[4] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases/Default_Switch
[5] http://wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Prensa/Wikipedia_renueva_su_apariencia
[6] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/2.0

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