Planet Wikimedia

Welcome to the world’s first Wikipedia town

2012-05-16T16:36:33+00:00

Photo of a QRpedia plaque on the Shire Hall, Monmouth, by Monmouthshire County Council, CC-BY-2.0

You’ve probably heard the saying, “In theory, Wikipedia shouldn’t work, but in practice it does.” Three of the things that contribute to make Wikipedia work are topic-specific WikiProjects (“let’s write about a town), Wikimedia chapters (“let’s organize throughout the United Kingdom”), and unique ideas (“let’s use QR codes to share content”). This week these three things successfully came together to create Monmouthpedia, “The World’s First Wikipedia Town” in Monmouth, Wales.

The idea for Monmouthpedia began at a TEDx talk in Bristol when John Cummings, an occasional Wikipedia editor, suggested from the audience that the UK Chapter use QR codes to “do a whole town.” That challenge was handed to Cummings when the Wikimedia UK chapter backed the idea. He then moved to his home town of Monmouth where he assembled an ad hoc group of supporters who wanted to participate, including the local County Council.

The project has taken six months of preparation, including a commitment by the town to install a free, town-wide wi-fi network (the first of its kind in Wales). On 19 May the entire town will be bedecked with banners declaring Monmouth as the first Wikipedia Town in the world.

The Monmouthpedia project uses QRpedia to allow visitors to scan QR codes that link directly to the Wikipedia article in their own language. Because of Monmouth’s efforts to provide free wi-fi and implement QRpedia, the town is likely the only place where a visitor can tour in Hungarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Welsh, or numerous other Wikipedia languages using QR codes.

Much of the success of Monmouthpedia comes from its ability to capture the imagination of the Wikipedia community, which has embraced the town virtually. Wikipedia volunteers have contributed nearly 500 new articles in over 25 languages, as well as videos on topics such as the historic Chartists movement.

The project also has a long list of partners, including 200 businesses, several universities and nearly every school and community group in the area. Wikipedia has partnered with museums and other institutions before, as in Derby, but in Monmouth you will see over 1,000 QR codes on every school, every important building, and hundreds of shops. The County Council itself has a QRpedia code in its reception that takes you to their Wikipedia article.

Lest you think this is a passing interest, the town of Monmouth is in it for the long haul. Many of the QRpedia codes are printed on ceramic plaques that should last for decades. The information in articles is backed by the Wikipedia community and will be continually improved and expanded. Physical guides and maps will become outdated, but the Wikipedia articles will always be able to be updated. This potential for on-site access to up-to-date information in any language is what makes the Monmouthpedia model so exciting.

How long can Wikipedia defy the theory and continue to deliver free information to the planet in over 280 languages? We think the Monmouthpedia story provides a very optimistic outlook. If you want to find out more, visit the Monmouthpedia website and take a look at the associated articles on Wikipedia.

Post written by Roger Bamkin, Director of Wikimedia UK (Victuallers )

Welcome to the world’s first Wikipedia Town

2012-05-16T16:00:36+00:00

cc by-sa 3.0 Dilly Boase

Click image for Monmouthpedia video

A plaque on Monmouth Shire Hall

How long can Wikipedia defy the theory and continue to deliver free information to the planet in over 280 languages? We think the Monmouthpedia story provides a very optimistic outlook.

If you want to find out more, visit the Monmouthpedia website and take a look at the associated articles on Wikipedia.

- Roger Bamkin, Director of Wikimedia UK (Victuallers)

Turkish Lira is supported in #Unicode

2012-05-16T09:33:28+00:00

When #Turkey selected a new symbol for its currency, the Lira, it had to make sure that people can actually use it. Given that almost all modern computing is done with Unicode fonts, it was important to have the symbol included as soon as possible in Unicode.

The Turkish Lira will be supported in the Unicode 6.2 release that was just announced for the third quarter of 2012. The next step is to have the symbol included in fonts. A font that includes the new symbol can already be found on the website of the Turkish central bank.

In a previous Unicode release the Indian Rupee was introduced. The question is very much to what extend and at what pace people will have updated fonts that includes such symbols. The Wikipedia article on the Indian Rupee uses an image.

It is possible to create a font that includes characters like these currency symbols and make use of the WebFonts extension. In many ways it is more elegant than using graphics.
Thanks,
GerardM

GSOC – Week 3/4

2012-05-16T00:16:58+00:00

Progress was slightly slower this week, but phase 1 of the project is still well on target for a Berlin demo:

Get Translate to work on an already established message group, loading properties from wiki pages
Get Translate to work on an already established message group, saving properties back to wiki pages
Implement static thumbnail for Special:Translate
Suppress documentation for SVG images
Implement static thumbnail for individual translation page
Steal file description from file description page
Create message files in .i18n.php

GSOC – Week 2

2012-05-16T00:12:44+00:00

I analysed the 10,000 SVGs I downloaded last week (see previous blog post for the results)
I generated all three 3 important initial designs
I sought feedback on those designs
I established a new central page for the project
I got to grips with how parameters other than string could be saved within the Translate infrastructure
I exchanged security-aspect-related correspondence
I created test message group in the correct format, beginning work on getting Translate to understand it and display it using the new design
Get to grips with how parameters other than string could be saved within the Translate infrastructure.
Exchanged security-aspect-related correspondence
Create test message group in correct format

Important Factors in glove selection

2012-05-16T00:00:10+00:00

When searching for the right cleanroom gloves, it is important to remember that they are used in a variety of different environments that specifically require that they not shed any excess particles. When you are selecting which brand or style of glove to use, you need to consider not only the needs specific to your application, but also other factors such as comfort and durability. The way that the gloves feel to your staff will directly affect the likelihood of them using them and remaining in compliance. Durability is also important, as purchasing gloves that are not durable can result in contamination that can cost your lab a great deal of money. Looking at both process and performance will enable you to make sure that you are meeting all of your needs.

Some cleanroom environments require that their gloves are sensitive to static, while other applications are concerned about residue adherence to the glove’s surface. Cleanroom gloves that are used in an aseptic or sterile environment are manufactured in a cleanroom setting, then irradiated with gamma rays to make sure that there are no live organisms present before they are packaged. For manufacturing or assembly purposes it is important to know whether it’s better for your gloves to be tacky or to have a slick surface; stay in communication with department managers to ascertain which characteristics make things easier for your employees. If your employees are working with hazardous materials it is important that the gloves provide them with adequate protection, yet it is still important that they are flexible to allow for dexterity; gloves also need to be soft enough not to be irritating for those who are wearing them for hours at a time.

Be sure to check on the requirements that may be assigned to your organization by outside agencies such as the FDA, ASTM, OSHA or the EPA. It is a good idea to assemble a team of all parties involved, including employees, so that consensus is achieved before arriving at a final decision.

Legacy projects II

2012-05-15T12:50:58+00:00

When tools are no longer maintained, when they are no longer promoted, they die. The good news is that the tools created for the Myanmar language created by Keith Stribley have found a new home.

The question is to what extend are they salvageable and is it worth the effort. For software there are two primary considerations; copyright and licensing and, the source code.

Without source code the first question is less relevant and, the reference to the mercurial repositories is a reference to Keith's old website. This old website is gone. There are references to the CC-by-sa license on some pages but for software such a license is not really appropriate.

When you look at the subjects Keith covered, they are still very much relevant and impressive. At the Myanmar Wikipedia two out of three webfonts do not work for me. We do not have an input method yet. It will be great when we find that the tools Keith created can find another use.

The result of my previous post is this update. I hope that there will be a future update to this post bringing you more positive news.
Thanks,
GerardM

#CLDR will know language names in #Esperanto

2012-05-15T09:22:17+00:00

#MediaWiki uses the language names as defined in the CLDR. It is therefore important that people compile a list of the translations for their language make them available to be used as the standard translation.

Arno did exactly that. The list he created contains all the codes as used for Wikipedia combined with the translation in Esperanto. It is an important effort and it would be great when we have such a list for all the other Wikipedia languages as well.

As standards are standards, we were asked to provide the list in an XML format. It took some pastes and find and replaces and it looks good. The only problem is that some of the codes used are not standard codes. Several codes have been removed, "als" for instance is the code for Albanian Tosk not Alleman. There may be some other "language codes" in there that are not recognised in a standard.

When your language can do with additional translations, please follow the Esperanto example and provide a list of translations in your language.
Thanks,
GerardM

Wikipedia Signpost – Volume 8, Issue 20 – 14 May 2012

2012-05-14T22:02:40+00:00

Special report: Wikimedia and the “seismic shift” towards open-access research publication
News and notes: Finance debate drags on as editor survey finds Wikipedia too bureaucratic
WikiProject report: Welcome to Wikipedia with a cup of tea and all your questions answered – at the Teahouse
Featured content: Featured content is red hot this week
Arbitration report: R&I Review closed, Rich Farmbrough near closure
Technology report: Cross-wiki watchlist controversy; and is “go file a bug” really a useful response?

Single page view
PDF version

Very important blog post about ads on Wikipedia

2012-05-14T20:30:42+00:00

Erik and I just released a very important blog post about ads on Wikipedia.

In short, if you’re seeing ads… your computer is probably infected with malware.

Read it on the Wikimedia blog.

Announcing OATHAuth, a two-factor authentication extension for MediaWiki

2012-05-14T20:12:15+00:00

I’ve just released OATHAuth 0.1 for MediaWiki. This is an HMAC based One Time Password (HOTP) implementation providing two factor authentication. This is the same technology used for Google’s two-factor authentication.

OATHAuth is an opt-in feature that adds more security accounts in a wiki. It provides two-factor authentication, using your phone as the something you have, and your username/password as the something you know. If you are using iPhone or Android, you can use the Google Authenticator app as a client. There are also clients for most other phones and desktops; Wikipedia has a good list of clients.

If you have an account in Wikimedia Labs, you can enable two-factor authentication via the sidebar now.

As of version 0.1, OATHAuth only works when chained with LDAPAuthentication. Version 0.2 will work in a standalone manner. See the following image gallery for how it’s used:

If you’re seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer is probably infected with malware

2012-05-14T19:49:20+00:00

We never run ads on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is funded by more than a million donors, who give an average donation of less than 30 dollars. We run fundraising appeals, usually at the end of the year. If you’re seeing advertisements for a for-profit industry (see screenshot below for an example) or anything but our fundraiser, then your web browser has likely been infected with malware.

Malware installed on your computer may inject advertising into a page on popular websites, such as this Wikipedia article. This is an example that we've seen in the wild. Note the tiny text "ads not by this site" immediately below the ad, which may or may not appear next to these types of injected advertisements.

One example that we have seen installs itself as a browser extension. The extension is called “I want this” and installs itself in Google Chrome. To remove it:

Open the options menu via the “pipe-wrench” icon on the top right, and choose Settings.
Open the Extensions panel and there is the list of extensions installed.
Remove an Extension by clicking the Remove button next to an item.

There is likely other similar malware that injects ads into Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and other popular browsers. If you see examples that you can document, please point them out in the comments.

Ads injected in this manner may be confined to some sites, even just to Wikipedia, or they may show up on all sites you visit. Browsing through a secure (HTTPS) connection (which you can automate using the HTTPS everywhere extension) may cause the ads to disappear, but will not fix the underlying problem.

Disabling browser add-ins is a good starting point to determine the source of these types of ads. This does not necessarily fix the source of the problem either, as malware may make deep changes to your operating system. If you’re comfortable attempting a malware scan and removal yourself, there are various spyware/malware removal tools. Popular and well-reviewed solutions include Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes. But be aware that these types of tools may also bundle software, or leave your computer in an unusable state.

If in doubt, have your computer evaluated for malware by a competent and qualified computer repair center.

There is one other reason you might be seeing advertisements: Your Internet provider may be injecting them into web pages. This is most likely the case with Internet cafes or “free” wireless connections. This New York Times blog post by Brian Chen gives an example.

But rest assured: you won’t be seeing legitimate advertisements on Wikipedia.

We’re here to distribute the sum of human knowledge to everyone on the planet — ad-free, forever.

Philippe Beaudette, Director of Community Advocacy
Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development

Legacy projects

2012-05-14T17:12:08+00:00

Last year, I reported the death of Keith Stribley. Keith was well known for the support he provided for the Myanmar language. Keith used his own website where people could download the tools that he had written.

Today, I tried to visit his website. It was gone. I googled for some of his projects, I did not find them. It is truly sad when there is little to find of the good and relevant work that Keith did.

I am sure that Keith's projects are not the only relevant projects that came to an all too abrupt halt. I can only hope that someone will prove me wrong with regards to Keith's projects.
Thanks,
GerardM

Benefit from the #MediaWiki Babel extension

2012-05-14T12:16:50+00:00

At #translatewiki.net a Northern Sami Wikipedian asked for and was given translation rights. When a person wants to localise in a language, we ask to provide us with information about the person's proficiency in the languages he or she knows. At translatewiki.net we use the Babel extension for this.

When the Babel extension is not localised, I often ask people to localise Babel. This time the person had not provided us with the opportunity to send him an e-mail so I went to his profile on the se.wikipedia.org to ask the question.

On the profile page I found his Babel information provided by templates and as you can see to the right, many templates are missing and some like the one for Swahili and Japanese are incomplete. I copied his Babel information to my talk page. For some of the languages there is no localisation but the information is now at least readable in English.

The templates provided me with enough information to localise some of the Babel messages in Northern Sami. All that is left is for these messages to be distributed to the Wikimedia projects.
Thanks,
GerardM

Tanzania and Tourism

2012-05-14T07:18:20+00:00

I recently stumbled across a website offering tanzania safari tours. Africa… safari… sounds fun and adventurous! Eventually this left me wondering why I had never once considered Africa as a vacation destination. I must be the only one, or one of a very small group in any event; apparently Tanzania is a tourist Mecca.

What’s the appeal? Well, how about 13 National Parks, 40 Conservation areas and 29 game reserves? Tanzania totals 342,000 square miles – 25 separate regions of mostly unspoiled natural splendor. Home to the tallest (at 19,336-feet) freestanding mountain in the world, Mt. Kilimanjaro is simply breathtaking – well the photos I’ve seen. I’m sure it’s even more grand and impressive in person! Where else in the world can you go for a trek through the mountains with elephant, leopards, buffalo, antelope and primates?!

Then you have the Ngotongoro Conservation Area and the Ngotongoro crater which has been called Africa’s “Garden of Eden”. Evidently most Tanzania safari tourists are in search of the “Big Five”, rhinoceros, lion, leopard, elephant, and buffalo, all of which call the Ngotongoro crater “home”, alongside wildebeest , zebra and gazelle (among other species). Talk about a one stop viewing shop!

Of course Tanzania is also home to the Serengeti with 5,700 square miles of wild and wonderful scenery. According to the Tanzania Parks website, the Serengeti has recently been called the “7th world wide wonder, famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson’s gazelle join the wildebeest’s trek for fresh grazing.” That sounds like a sight worth seeing. From a safe distance anyway!

As an incredible bonus, if you tire of mountains and plains, Zanzibar (Island) and its gorgeous white sand beaches, warm water, coral reefs and rich history is just a short distance away.

I will definitely be adding Tanzania to my list of potential vacation destinations!

#Font subsets IV

2012-05-12T09:47:56+00:00

After installing #Fontforge, I still have to use it for real. The problem I want to solve is to reduce an existing font in size and reduce its use to only one script.

There are many fonts around that include everything and the kitchen sink too. When the only thing that is needed is a specific font for use on a specific webpage, it does not make sense to send the excess bulk as well.

Fontforge as a tool is intended to build fonts. My intention of reducing a font in size is a use case that seems not to be what the tool is there for. I do not know the tool really so I am looking for help. The ultimate goal is to have efficient web fonts for every script.
Thanks,
GerardM

Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2012, Almaty: Other Highlights and Summing Up

2012-05-12T08:52:31+00:00

Other highlights

Of course, the Turkic Wikimedia Conference had many other highlights except my talks and workshops. Jonas Öberg from Creative Commons delivered a keynote speech about the importance of letting people freely share their works, especially with regards to cultures which are not as known as the American or the Western European, such as that of Kazakhstan. Basically, anybody who is curious about the culture of Kazakhstan will only be able to know about it the things that are freely posted online. If it’s gathering dust in the library or locked behind a password in a pay-to-read website, nobody will read it.

Jonas Öberg. By: Ashina. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.

The Wikimedian Daniel Mietchen, who is an advocate for Open Science, convincingly explained why opening up academic articles and experiments will not just make them cheaper, but also more correct scientifically.

Daniel Mietchen

Daniel also impressed lots of people with his Russian speaking skills: Apparently, he grew up in East Germany, where all children had to study Russian in schools, and he was one of the few children who actually bothered to learn it well. He said that at first he didn’t like to be forced to learn a language that wasn’t useful to him, but when he had to read a book of prose – The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin – as homework, he found it very satisfying, even though it was very hard in the beginning.

Another highlight was a book about editing Wikipedia given to me by one of its authors Irada Alakbarova, a participant from Azerbaijan. It is similar in content and scope to the book written by the French Wikimedians Guillaume Paumier and Florence Devouard, but it’s impressive that Irada is not just an enthusiastic Wikimedian, but also a department head in the Information Technology Institute of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, and the book’s other author Rasim Aliquliyev is the Institute’s director. (In precise Azeri spelling their names are İradə Ələkbərova and Rasim Əliquliyev. The letter Ə is a part of Azerbaijan’s Latin-based writing system, but looks too weird to many English readers.)

İradə Ələkbərova

Irada also told me that some time ago she gathered any information that she could about Wikipedia’s server configuration and used it as an example for teaching configuration of high-performance websites. She was very happy when I told that the Wikimedia server configuration became even more transparent recently.

Summing up

I participated in many conferences lately, and this one was unusually satisfying in many ways.

As usual, meeting the people was the best part. This refers both to the people from places like Bashkortostan and Sakha, with whom I communicated by email for many years, hardly imagining how do they look, and also to people whom I had not known before and who came from countries that I could hardly imagine of ever visiting, like Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. The international press mostly reports bad and weird news from these countries, but as it often happens, the image created by the media has little to do with the real people – I was stunned by the talent, the originality and the vigor that they demonstrated.

I was not the only one who felt that the conference was a great success, so we already started to throw around ideas for the location of another one. The names of Bishkek, Ufa, Baku and Istanbul were suggested, and I would certainly be very happy to go to any of these cities or to meet these wonderful people elsewhere.

Most importantly, this conference left me and the other participants a long list of exciting tasks to do.

Filed under: Free Software, translation, Wikipedia Tagged: Creative Commons, Open Science

Algerian university students contribute their first Wikipedia articles

2012-05-12T03:30:00+00:00

Campus of Médéa University

As part of the Arabic Language Initiative, I had the chance to visit Algeria in the last week of April, where I had the privilege to speak to students at Médéa University (Médéa Province) about Wikipedia and invite them to contribute to it.

With a size of almost 2,400,000 square kilometers, Algeria is the largest country in Africa and the Arab World, and the tenth-largest country in the world. Algeria has about 4.1 million internet users (12% of the total population of 35 million), however they contribute only 0.08% of the total global edits on Wikimedia projects. While the official language of Algeria is Modern Standard Arabic, French as the ”de-facto” co-official language is still widely used in government, culture, media, and education due to the country’s colonial history. This fact can be clearly noticed in the readership numbers of Wikimedia projects in Algeria: While 52.2% of Wikimedia traffic from Algeria went to French language pages in the first quarter of 2012, Arabic language traffic shared only 30.7%. Having said this, the share of Arabic language traffic has almost doubled in the past three years, from only 17.0% back in mid 2009.

In particular, I could feel the passion for reading and adding content to Arabic language Wikimedia projects during my visit to Médéa University, where I delivered a lecture about contributing to Arabic Wikimedia projects, followed by an editing workshop over two days organized by Dr. Fareh Abdelhak. The introductory lecture laid out the current situation of Wikipedia contributions from Algeria, and a few thoughts on how Wikipedia works, and why is it important to contribute new content to Wikimedia projects. The lecture ended by giving the attendants (about 130, most of them students) a homework exercise: To think of one person they respect and one of their famous quotes, in addition to translating a topic from the English or French Wikipedia or writing an article based other sources that does not exist on the Arabic Wikipedia. Later on, I was informed that the students posted a report in Arabic about the lecture, and shared the homework on Facebook, so more interested people would be able to join the workshop on the next day.

Students attending the editing workshop at Médéa University

Although Friday was a day off at the university, about 30 students managed to come in the morning to attend the editing workshop. Unfortunately, since most of the university facilities were closed, we couldn’t use the PC rooms and provide every student with a PC. However, this situation did not preclude students from joining the workshop using their private portable PCs, where each group of 3 to 4 students had to share one PC with their colleagues.

The session started by registering a user account on the Arabic Wikiquote. Wikiquote was chosen as a start for two reasons, first to raise awareness about Wikipedia’s sister projects, and secondly in order to enable students adding content directly in their first edits without much interference from the larger Wikimedia community. Most students managed to register an account smoothly, and we started adding pages with the texts that most of the students had prepared as their homework. After students had learned the wiki basics on Wikiquote, we moved to the Arabic Wikipedia to start adding new articles there.

The workshop session resulted in creating 8 new articles on Wikipedia and 10 new pages on Wikiquote. At the end of the workshop, most of the students answered positively to a question on whether they will continue to add content to the Arabic Wikipedia. Indeed, in the evening I noticed that some of the students who attended the workshop went back to the Arabic Wikipedia and Wikiquote and continued improving their previously added articles, and also added new content. Later on, I received a message on my discussion page saying “When we meet next year, I will have already created a number of pages that exceeds yours!”… I really wish you will!

Haitham Shammaa, Editor Growth and Contribution Program consultant

2012-05-12T01:26:58+00:00

Here is a blog post about two of my favorite academics fooling around with, and getting a gleeful kick out of, Wikipedia's delightful meta qualities. Pretty great.

p.s. "The Information", which is a fabulous book, name-checks Wikimania 2007 in Alexandria and a few of the participants there -- Gleick attended, interviewed a few folks, and was generally part of the festivities.

New mobile skin added

2012-05-12T01:25:09+00:00

A mobile skin for this blog is now used by default for mobile browsers. Now you can get a regular dose of wikilove on your pocket pc, handy, video-twiddler or other mobile device.

Commons Picture of the Day: Kiril Lazarov, Macedonian handballer

2012-05-12T00:48:43+00:00

Kiril Lazarov, Macedonia national handball team captain.

German Wikipedia contributor and handball aficionado Armin Kübelbeck routinely takes pictures of sporting events, where he captures what he calls “unrepeatable moments,” or candid expressions that capture a sliver of time that will not come again. “I can’t tell a player, ‘Can you do it one more time, but now with a smile on your face?’” he said. “I have to take the available light and the moments as they come.”

In the unrepeatable moment above, which was the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Day on 10 May, 2012, Kübelbeck captured Kiril Lazarov, the captain of the Macedonia national team and one of the most notable Macedonians in the history of the sport, right before he took a seven-meter throw. Unlike many of his images of players in action, this shot shows a much more interesting human element and very little movement.

“For me this smile shows resoluteness and a good portion of slyness and self-confidence. I’m not sure to whom he was looking: his coach, the other team’s coach, a teammate or an opponent,” said Kübelbeck, who was sure Lazarov was not looking at the goalkeeper, who stood in front of him at the time. “But the message is clear: I’ll throw that ball behind the line.”

Adult European Robin.

Kübelbeck began taking photos in the 1980s with a Canon A-1 with a 50mm 1:1.4 lens. He developed the black-and-white images he took in the basement of his parents’ home, where he set up a studio and experimented with many kinds of chemical processing effects, such as sepia toning and solarization.

On December 31st, 2006, he uploaded his first photo to Commons, which he refers to as an archive for his pictures. Kübelbeck said he is not active in the Commons community nor does he submit his own photos for consideration as Featured Pictures.

He is committed, however, to improving the encyclopedic content of Commons and Wikipedia. He also contributes self-made illustrations when his photos don’t successfully capture the meaning of the article he is editing.

He did also admit to enjoying the attention his photos get when they are featured: “Where else would my images and writing have such an audience? A dilettante’s work!”

Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager

#MathJax is looking for #money

2012-05-11T22:38:38+00:00

#Mathematics is said to be a language of its own. When you look at a formula, all the logic is in the formula and any text only aids in the understanding. Who cares for text..

This must have been what the developers of MathJax had in mind when they wrote their application. It is all about mathematics and all the rest is obvious eh, English.

MathJax CDN is what the people behind MathJax are asking money for. It provides a service that gives you beautifully presented mathematical formulae in your browser. Because MathJax knows YOUR browser, it does the best for the web page that is provided.

To finance the CDN service, they are asking for donations. I do understand English so I can inform you that at the time of publishing this blog post they had $370.00 in pledges.

Sadly both the MathJax software and the MathJax website are not internationalised. As you can read in this mail, the software will need to be adapted to allow for localisations. When the MathJax developers work together with the fine people at translatewiki.net, they will find people who can advise them on how to internationalise. Recently the JavaScript used by MediaWiki has been adapted to use grammatical gender and plural. Possibly the code or the expertise can be used for MathJax as well.

Once MathJax is internationalised it will be localised in many languages .. There are many proud mathematical cultures and traditions outside of the English speaking world. Given that MathJax is already more or less usable in the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, translatewiki.net is the obvious choice for the MathJax localisation.

When everything is said and done, the request for donations will be made in other languages as well. It surely helps when you address people in their own language.
Thanks,
GerardM

Lion Population in Africa

2012-05-11T13:12:13+00:00

Although lions once roamed the plains of Africa in vast numbers, their population has dwindled over the last several years. This is due to a variety of reasons, including the encroachment of civilization into areas that had previously been their territory, and hunting. Many people may imagine the lions still living in fast numbers and wandering free, but the truth is that the majority of Africa’s lions are now housed on enormous game reserves where they are protected. Animal lovers and nature enthusiasts who plan to take an exotic african lion safari to see these noble animals, along with many other amazing types of wildlife, will probably end up spending the majority of their time on nature and game reserves.

Lions live in groups known as prides. There are generally about twelve to fifteen lions that make up a pride, and they largely consist of females and her cubs, along with one or two males. The females are the hunters while the males protect the prides. Where once there had been approximately 200,000 lions on the continent, now there are less than 30,000, and most of them are protected in these reserves. The few lions that remain in the wild are vulnerable both to hunters and local farmers, who see them as liabilities. Because lions are likely to attack both livestock and people, conservationists are working both to educate the locals and to protect the lions in a number of ways, including gathering them into these vast preserve environments. If you are taking an african lion safari, you do not have to worry about feeling like you’re in a zoo … the preserves are enormous, and you will not be able to tell that you are not out in the wild except for your knowledge that there are far more animals in this safe environment then you would find in the unprotected exterior.

New book dives into the architecture of MediaWiki, git, puppet and other open-source applications

2012-05-11T12:00:19+00:00

The Architecture of Open-Source Applications is a collection of technical essays detailing the architecture of twenty-four major open-source applications.

The second volume of the Architecture of Open-Source Applications book, which includes a chapter on MediaWiki, is now available online and on lulu.com.

The Architecture of Open-Source Applications is a collection of technical essays detailing the architecture of twenty-four major open-source applications. This is the second volume of a series that aims to help developers understand how great and large programs are constructed, and the decisions (or accidents) that led to the way they now work. The series draws inspiration from books used by architects that feature case studies of the great buildings of history.

This volume contains a chapter detailing the inner workings of MediaWiki, the wiki software that powers all Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia.

The writing of the chapter was coordinated by myself and Sumana Harihareswara. While I put together the majority of the content, it wouldn’t have been possible without the initial knowledge-sharing effort made by many Wikimedia engineers and volunteer MediaWiki developers, who also reviewed and improved the several revisions the text underwent.

The chapter on MediaWiki is available on the book’s website, along with the other chapters from both volumes. Its content was integrated into the documentation on mediawiki.org (at MediaWiki history and Manual:MediaWiki architecture) when it was completed in November 2011.

Greg Wilson and Amy Brown, the book’s editors, contacted the Wikimedia Foundation in August 2011 to offer to feature MediaWiki in the second volume. We chose a very collaborative approach to writing the chapter to ensure that the content was accurate and thorough, and also to split the workload among subject matter experts.

This volume dives into the inner workings of other tools familiar to the Wikimedia community, like Git, GNU Mailman, nginx and Puppet.

All of the book’s content is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license, similar to the license used on Wikimedia sites. It is freely available for reading online at http://www.aosabook.org, and you can also order a print from lulu.com. E-book and PDF versions will be available for purchase shortly. All royalties from purchases are donated to Amnesty International.

This is the second book published this year that contains a chapter written by Wikimedia staff, after the publication of Open Advice, a collection of essays, stories and lessons learned by members of the Free Software community.

I hope the chapter on MediaWiki, and also the rest of the book, will prove useful and interesting to the Wikimedia community and other developers. If you enjoyed it, learned from it, or would like to see more publications of this type, let us know!

Guillaume Paumier
Technical communications manager

The #OpenID challenge

2012-05-11T09:53:13+00:00

At #Translatewiki.net a request was made to support OpenID. The beauty of OpenID is that it reduces the number of websites that store your password. This makes browsing the Internet arguably safer.

The translatewiki staff is hesitant to support yet another nice to have extension. It has been burned by accepting LiquidThreads in the past. LiquidThreads is a great idea and it provides a much better user experience but it has not been properly supported. There is a promise for a release somewhere in an unspecified future.

Wikinaut did take over the OpenID extension support. He provided patches updated the documentation and equally important, he runs it on his own MediaWiki wikis. The need for support seems to be fulfilled, the question is not only if translatewiki is interested but also if the WMF is interested in providing improved security.
Thanks,
GerardM

59 percent of logged-in Wikipedians started as anonymous editors

2012-05-10T20:40:09+00:00

As we work on new product features to improve various aspects of editing Wikipedia, we asked our editors to share more about their editing experiences. Here are some highlights from the Editor Survey that we found to be valuable:

a. 59 percent of editors edited Wikipedia anonymously before creating an account

b. Decline in edit activity is more pronounced for experienced editors

c. Edit history influences editors’ views on problems with Wikimedia culture as well as desired solutions

a. 59 percent of editors edited Wikipedia anonymously before creating an account

59 percent of respondents pointed out that they had edited Wikipedia anonymously before they set up a login account on Wikipedia. (The survey was only announced to logged-in editors.) Portuguese (70 percent) and Spanish (66 percent) Wikipedia editors were more likely to have edited anonymously in the beginning compared to English (60 percent), Russian (58 percent) and German (59 percent) editors. Among editors, the three biggest motivators for setting up a login account are: tracking their edit history (54 percent), creating new articles (54 percent) and having a watchlist of articles to follow (49 percent). Interestingly, while the English Wikipedia makes it mandatory to obtain an account before one can start a new article, respondents there cited this reason less often (39 percent). Among Spanish (67 percent) and Portuguese (68 percent) language editors this percentage was much higher, even though these Wikipedias allow creation of new articles without being logged in.
76 percent of those respondents who had started anonymously said that they had made between one and 50 anonymous edits before they registered a user account. The majority of these respondents (54 percent) saw the benefit of having a user account only after editing Wikipedia anonymously for more than 10 times.

QD3b. What prompted you to set up a user account? n=6378

b. Decline in edit activity is more pronounced for experienced editors

When asked about their level of activity in 2011 compared to the previous year (2010), 30 percent of respondents said that they were less active, another 30 percent stated that there was no change in their activity and 41 percent said that they were more active. However, more experienced editors (with 100+ edits) were more likely to point out that they were contributing less often. The most common reasons reported for becoming less active on Wikipedia are: Having less time (59 percent), spending more time on other offline activities like reading (44 percent), spending more time on school or academic work (34 percent), spending more time on other online activities like Facebook or Twitter (23 percent), and rules and guidelines for editing becoming too complicated (17 percent).

QD7a: Thinking about this year (2011) how active were you on Wikipedia compared to the previous year? (ratio of 'less active' answers) n=3890

c. Edit history influences editors’ views on problems with Wikimedia culture as well as desired solutions

We asked editors to choose the top three problems with Wikimedia culture that have affected them personally, making it harder for them to edit. The most commonly picked responses were: Other editors who feel that they own specific articles and don’t want others to collaborate (46 percent), too many rules and policies (41 percent), editors who are not fun to work with (39 percent) and lack of access to research materials like scholarly articles or books (39 percent).
When we sliced data through edit counts, we found that experienced editors are more likely to identify issues with other editors as the biggest problem that plague Wikipedia culture, while newer editors are more likely to identify complicated policies and software. For example, 45 percent of emerging editors (1-9 edits), 48 percent of aspiring editors (10-50 edits) and 44 percent of new Wikipedians (51-100 edits) said that too many rules and policies were the main problems that they faced in Wikimedia culture. But these numbers were significantly smaller for more experienced editors: 39 percent for active Wikipedians (100+ edits), 36 percent of very active Wikipedians (1000+ edits) and 34 percent of highly prolific Wikipedians (5000+ edits). Correspondingly, 59 percent of highly experienced Wikipedians, 53 percent of very active Wikipedians and 47 percent of active Wikipedians pointed out that editors who are not fun to work with formed one of the main problems that they were facing. But only 22 percent of all newer editors (emerging, aspiring and new Wikipedians) reported this as an issue.

Q23: Please pick the three most important problems that have affected you personally, making it harder to edit. n=5962

Similarly, when asked about changes that might make it easier to contribute to Wikipedia, newer editors were more interested in simpler policies and rules, and a more user friendly editing interface. On the other hand, more seasoned editors are looking for improvements in editor behavior. All editors, irrespective of their edit history, agree that they need access to better research materials for writing articles.

Q24. Please pick three changes that you believe will make it easier for you to contribute. n=6176

If you are interested in more information about Wikipedia editors, please check out the topline findings from the survey.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research
Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

In December 2011, we conducted an online survey of Wikipedia editors in 17 languages. This is the third in a series of blog posts summarizing our findings. If you are interested, you can find out more about the methodology of the survey here.

Another great infographic

2012-05-10T20:32:28+00:00

Telling, eh?

The most read books ever

Getting Ready for Monmouthpedia

2012-05-10T12:38:33+00:00

Come along to the Monmouthpedia launch on 19th May

Here’s a short video about the project, showing how the signs are made.

Gutter cleaning

2012-05-10T00:00:01+00:00

Should I clean my gutters?

Over time, downspouts can get
clogged and gutters can fill up with leaves and twig. Cleaning your
gutters can be quite a daunting task and many people don’t know where to
start. I know someone who fell off their his roof while cleaning the
gutters. So there is some danger in the task. But it’s worth it.

Why clean my gutters?

Mosquitoes live and breed in standing water. The water in your gutters
that’s just sitting there because the gutters are so full of leaves and
twigs is the ideal home for the aforementioned mosquitoes. Why an ideal
home? Because it’s near a source of food. Your blood and your families
blood is one of the reasons the mosquitoes want to move in. Moving to a
less dramatic reason. Clogged gutters are bad for your roof and can
damage your house.

How do I clean my gutters?

If you
have grown up children or nephews or friendly neighbors that is always
the ideal approach. However, if you absolutely must clean them
yourselves I recommend the following procedure.

Needed tools:

Rubber gloves

Long garden hose with spray nozzle

Ladder (unless you plan to climb out a window on to the roof, which for insurance reasons, I do not recommend)

Method:

Start at the point farthest from the downspout. With gloved hands fish
out any heavy debris spray like a lunatic. You want to direct the stream
of water straight along the gutter, flushing out as much as possible.
The closer you get to the downspout the heavier the mess will get. You
can fish the muck out with your gloved hand or if you’re lazy like me
you can use the patient water blasting method. It’s worth adding that
before you start the undertaking you might want to ask yourself if it’s
time for new gutters. The average lifespan on gutters is under thirty
years. When installing gutters Maryland contractors recommend finding a
professional installer.

What do the people want? Part 2: Machine translation in their language – Google or Apertium

2012-05-09T08:02:00+00:00

Another technical issue that bothered many people in the Turkic Wikimedia Conference in Almaty is support for their language in Google Translate. Though this is not directly related to Wikimedia, I was asked about this repeatedly by the participants, as well as by local journalists who interviewed me. Some people even referred to it as a “conspiracy”.

Tilek Mamutov, giving a talk about Google Translate

Luckily, one of the participants was Tilek Mamutov, a Google employee from Kyrgyzstan, and he delivered a whole talk about it. His main message was that there is no conspiracy, and that to support more languages Google mostly needs to process as many texts as possible in that language, if possible – with a parallel translation. There are much less digital texts in languages like Kyrgyz and Bashkir than there are in German and Spanish, so it is not yet possible.

However, there is hope: a group of volunteers in Kyrgyzstan is working on creating a database of digital translated texts with the specific goal of making it usable in Google Translate. WikiBilim, the Kazakh association that organized the conference works on a similar initiative, too.

On my behalf, I suggested a convenient way to gather texts in these languages: to upload literature in them to Wikisource. I also mentioned the existence of Apertium. Apertium is a Free machine translation engine, which can be adapted to any language. It was developed in Valencia, and the first languages that it started to support are languages that are relevant for Spain: Spanish, Catalan, Basque, English and also the closely-related Esperanto, and it translates between them quite well. It supports a few other languages, too.

And it can support even more languages. ~~Like Google Translate, it also needs as many digital texts as possible to actually start working, and it also~~ It needs dictionaries and tables of grammar rules, because it tries several methodologies for translation. Work has already begun for Turkish-Azeri and Turkish-Kyrgyz, and there are projects for Turkish-Chuvash and other language pairs. All these projects need people who can test them, contribute words to the dictionaries and check the grammar rules. So if you want to help complete a Free Turkish-Azeri machine translation system or to create an English-Kyrgyz translation system, contact the Apertium project.

To be continued…

Oh (edit): A correction came from Apertium developers: Apertium *doesn’t* need any texts, except for testing purposes. The more texts we have, the more we can test, of course, but above all, we need native speakers of languages who understand the grammar of the languages they’re working on and can work with computational formalisms.

Filed under: Free Software, Google, language, translation, Wikipedia Tagged: Apertium, Chuvash, digital texts, Kyrgyz, parallel translation, Turkish, wikisource