[Wikipedia-l] Status of work and implementation on Serbian extension to MediaWiki

Tue Apr 26 03:21:46 UTC 2005

Last Friday Zhengzhu said to me that community at sr: should decide
very fast (in one week) about implementation of his work on new
Serbian interface which implements all standards of Serbian language.
As it is too fast for voting on sr.wikipedia and as almost every
Saturday at 20h (8pm) CET people from sr: have online meetings at
#wikipedia-sr channel (Freenode network), I announced that we should
talk about implementation of Zhengzhu's work there. Also, I saw that
Angela is online and I called her to join us.

At 20h CET there were 8 sr: contributors, Zhengzhu and Angela at the
channel. (I'll list sr: contributor down.) Before 20h one more user
was online, but he had problems with Internet connection because of
rain in France, one more didn't come because he was running at
Belgrade Marathon. One more contributor came during the talk with
Zhengzhu. After talk with Zhengzhu two more contributors came and
participate in decision making. I asked other 3 more very active
contributors about their opinion after that talk and I can guess
(according to his writing at vilage pump) opinion for the last very
active contributor. All of that will be explained in the rest of the
message.

We were talking about one hour and half with Zhengzhu and some parts
of his work became more clear  to us. Another hour was passed until we
articulated questions for voting and made decisions.

We had two questions: (a) To implement or not Cyrillic-Latin
conversion at sr: and how to implement; and (b) to implement or not
Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion at sr: and when.

a) According do possible solutions, we articulated for oppinions for
the first question:

1. Not to implement Cyrillic-Latin conversion.

2. To have mixed Cyrillic and Latin wiki source. This solution is
implemented on Chinese Wikipedia, but it is very strange for Serbian
speakers: only bibliography and foreign names can be mixed in one
text.

3. To have read-write Cyrillic and read-only Latin pages.

4. To have read-write for both Cyrillics and Latin. This oppinion had
one note: If it is not possible to implement, we should use oppinion 3
as temporary solution, until complete 4 is possible. This solution
also means that I can continue to talk with Zhengzhu about
implementation.

Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):

bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 4
djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 4
domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 3
dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 4
Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 4
kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 3
Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2
millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 4
Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 4
Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 4
VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 4

Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said:
[[sr:User:Ninam]], 3
[[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 4 (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came)
[[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 4 (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)

Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think:
[[sr:User:Golija]], probably 4, maybe 3 (he was urged for introduction
of Latin alphabet on the vilage pump at sr:)
[[sr:User:Влада]], maybe 1, maybe 3 (he doesn't like Latin, as I think)
[[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know

This is the list of all very active users. Actualy, I think that
contributors User:Domatrios, User:ВКокијелов and User:Ivan are not
"very active" according to March statistics, but they are active part
of community at sr:.

Results are:

A) According to voting on IRC: 
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 2 votes
- oppinion 4 - 8 votes

B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 3 votes
- oppinion 4 - 10 votes

C) According to some possible votes:
- oppinion 1 - between 0 and 1 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - between 3 and 5 votes
- oppinion 4 - between 10 and 11 votes

As oppinion 4 has clear majority, at least 10:6 against all other
oppinions, community decided to introduce read-write Cyrillic-Latin
conversion.

b) The second question was: to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian
conversion. Some people had some reserves not to implementation, but
to the time of implementation. So, they introduced two suboppinions
inside of oppinion for implementation. Oppinions was:

1.a - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion now.

1.b - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion after the
implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.

2. - Not to implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion.

Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):

bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 1.a
djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 1.a
domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 2
Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 1.a
kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 1.b
Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2
millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 1.a
Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 1.a
Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 1.a
VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 1.b

Before we articulated question, User:Dzivdzan left the room. As she
said that she is for implementation before she left, but, also, she
had some reserves to that implementation, her voice is assumed as 1.b
(dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 1.b)

Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said:
[[sr:User:Ninam]], 1.a
[[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 1.a (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came)
[[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 1.a (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)

Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think:
[[sr:User:Golija]], I don't know
[[sr:User:Влада]], I don't know
[[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know

Results are:

A) According to voting on IRC: 
- oppinion 1.a - 6 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 -  2 votes

B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1.a - 9 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 - 2 votes

As oppinion 1.a has absolute majority, at least 6:5 against all other
oppinions, we will continue with implementation of Ekavian-Iyekavian
conversion together with implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.

IRC logs can be found at:

The first three parts in Serbian: (1)
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0:%D0%98%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5/2005_04_23_1
(2)
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0:%D0%98%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5/2005_04_23_2
and (3) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0:%D0%98%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5/2005_04_23_3

The fourth part is in English, after we called Angela to see results:
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0:%D0%98%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%9A%D0%B5/2005_04_23_4

Next steps

Today Zhengzhu and me were talking about implementation. He said that
it is not so easy to implement our solution (because it has some
differences with Chinese implementation) and that we should wait until
June. Also, Zhengzhu and me agreed that I (and probably
sr:User:Kaster) can continue with implementation of Serbian interface
in MediaWiki. At least for the first time, Zhengzhu will check our
code before it's implementation into CVS tree.

(And spell checker on Gmail doesn't work now :) )