[Foundation-l] Localisation of MediaWiki

[Aphaia]

> On Jan 15, 2008 6:55 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I hope you will appreciate that this policy only aims to improve the
> > localisation in all languages for us all. If anything the policy and the
> > hard work at BetaWiki have shown to have a good effect. Things have already
> > improved quite substantially over the last few months.

As I said before, I have been granted sysopship on two Japanese projects.
And generally Japanese are eager to localize messages.
I am talking here as an individual, as a normal editor, not Transcom
Chair nor former Board Election Comittee Chair but I am strongly
convinced all my colleagues both past and present may witness how I
put my energy for multilingualism and getting the global community
involved into Wikimedia movement through activities in their own
langauges.
And as a sysop, unless I am very occupied, I've been tried to respond
localization requests from the community who granted me the access.

As such I daresay, if there is unlocalized message in Japanese
setting, it reflects no one interested in that, no one feels the needs
to localize it, no one think it hinders his activities in his own
language. And I repeat here Japanese are not so much good in English.
The localization get people involved into Wikimedia project? Simply
no, I say from my experience. In the past Wikimedia elections since
2004, I was getting involved into boardwiki related messages
localization from the beginning, and sure all messages were localized
but it can be hardly said to get jawiki people involved into
Foundation matters. In my case, it could be a factor but rather the
emergence of *not yet localized* Japanese Wikiquote may have affect my
involvement greatly, so I don't agree demanding full localization is
the absolute requirement for project progression.

Let us summarize: it is no factual argument the reason required
localization is a must for a project. Rather I agree with Cormac.
There would be better to no difference between first project and
later. The community knows what their language community needs in
their linguistic circumstance. Far better than you, Gerald.


-- 
KIZU Naoko
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD