[Wikimediaindia-l] Lower user and edit count of some Indian wikis

[Hari Prasad Nadig]

On Wed, 2008-01-16 at 15:07 +0530, Pradeep Makineni wrote:
> One of the big technical barrier is inputting the Indic text, I think
> many users still does not know that there are indic input editors
> which can transliterate english text into their mother tongue.  Even
> if they knew that, some won't like to copy-paste from these editors
> into the browser to edit wiki pages. They have to switch between the
> editors many times in-order to edit a single page. 

true.

> 
> Users of some of the Indian language wikis have over come this issue
> by incorporating custom javascripts, which can transliterate english
> text while typing into their mother tongue, into the mediawiki
> namespace and attached that script to the wiki edit box, and text
> boxes where ever necessary.  It will surely help the editors of indian
> language wikipedias if there indic input support for all the indian
> language wikis. 

Yes, the added script has been effective in bringing new users. But
several regular contributors who use IMEs available with the Operating
System find it nagging at times to switch it off every time while
editing. There are also several disadvantages. 

> 
> Padma is one of the open source project which can transliterate many
> Indian Languages. Incorporating transliteration into the mediawiki
> itself would greatly improve the usability of the indian language
> wikis. 

We should note that not everyone fancies transliteration and several
keyboard layouts (mapping) are in use for each language. For instance,
for Kannada alone, people use Baraha (transliteration like), KGP layout,
Inscript and the layout that was in use in typewriters. 

   - h.p.