MediaWiki &Wikimedia robchurch on 06 Apr 2007 04:41 pm
Language louts
There’s a hell of a lot of bureaucratic babbling going on on foundation-l at the moment with regards to the flaming hoops contributors are having to jump through to have a project started in their language.
I can’t begin to detail what these are, because I haven’t got time to read all the stupid little pages and criteria and so forth, but from what I can gather, it’s not a process which has been improved by the creation of the Languages Committee.
Of course, I have my own opinion on it; and my opinion is that it should be really trivial to have an existing project set up in your language. As an example, let’s track the progress of some users wishing to set up the “XYZ Wikipedia”, where XYZ is a placeholder for language.
A few speakers of XYZ get together on the Wikimedia Incubator and start creating a few content pages. These aren’t perfect, but show a willingness to contribute to the project.
The users request the creation of the new language on a page on Meta. Assuming they demonstrate sufficient interest so as to have the project edited on a regular enough basis that it doesn’t die out, and that vandalism doesn’t become a major problem, the request is accepted.
There are a few pages which are essential to new Wikimedia wikis. As a bare minimum, I would suggest the group needs to prepare a translation of the Wikimedia copyright policies, and some page describing the five pillars of Wikimedia projects. The group is also free to continue creating articles on the Incubator.
Once the essential pages have been translated, a bug is opened and the system administrators are asked to create the new wiki. A list of pages to be imported is provided. This will typically not take very long.
One of the original requesters is elected as the first administrator and bureaucrat; this is important for the project to be able to establish its own infrastructure without having to call on stewards for assistance.
That’s it.
Some users are advocating the position that new language versions of project should not be accepted until we have an internationalisation file for that language in MediaWiki; this is a position I reject, as I really don’t see why it’s a big deal. The project can translate the user interface via the MediaWiki namespace, and we can slurp the translations from there into a new messages file.
I should point out here that the “call to arms” for translators I made on foundation-l was asking for people to help maintain translations independently, and there was certainly no intention to imply that I endorsed the above position. Getting new projects going as quickly as possible is essential if we’re to avoid losing eager contributors.
Just to summarise, then, the procedure I would endorse is:
- Create some initial content to show interest and good faith
- Translate two or three “essential policies”
- Ask for the actual creation of the wiki
- Elect initial administrator/bureaucrat
on 06 Apr 2007 at 7:21 pm 1.David Gerard said …
Did you say so on the list as yet?
on 06 Apr 2007 at 10:00 pm 2.robchurch said …
Did I say what?
on 08 Apr 2007 at 6:02 pm 3.David Gerard said …
That you think it should be really easy. Particularly as a developer, i.e. one of those the language committee want to shove the work off onto. Pretty much this whole message
on 08 Apr 2007 at 8:57 pm 4.robchurch said …
I would, but I don’t want to start off another argument, and foundation-l is the easiest place in the world to do that, it seems to me, what with all those passionate Europeans and laid-back Americans having a cultural clash, and the Australians chuckling and cracking open the Fosters…
I’m also not in any position to help out by creating any of the new wikis; I’m not a shell user, and as far as I recall, it requires a root.