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English  • Svenska

English

Translatewiki.net’s logo.

Most Swedes have a basic understanding of English, but many of them are far from being fluent. Hence, it is important that different computer programs are localized so that they can also work in Swedish and other languages. This helps people avoid mistakes and makes the users work faster and more efficienttly. But how is this done?

First and foremost, the different messages in the software need to be translated separately. To get the translation just right and to make sure that the language is consistent requires a lot of thought. In open source software, this work is often done by volunteers who double check each other’s work. This allows for the program to be translated into hundreds of different languages, including minority languages that commercial operators usually do not focus on. As an example, the MediaWiki software that is used in all Wikimedia projects (such as Wikipedia), is translated in this way. As MediaWiki is developed at a rapid pace, with a large amount of new messages each month, it is important for us that we have a large and active community of translators. This way we make sure that everything works in all languages as fast as possible. But what could the Wikimedia movement do to help build this translator community?

We are happy to announce that Wikimedia Sverige is about to start a new project with support from Internetfonden (.Se) (the Internet Fund). The Internet Fund supports projects that improve the Internet’s infrastructure. The idea of translating open software to help build the translator community is in line with their goals. We gave the project a zingy name: “Expanding the translatewiki.net – ‘Improved Swedish localization of open source, for easier online participation’.” This is the first time that Wikimedia Sverige has had a project that focuses on this important element of the user experience. Here we will learn many new things that we will try to share with the wider community while aiming to improve the basic infrastructure on translatewiki.net. The translation platform translatewiki.net currently has 27 programs ready to be translated into 213 languages by more than 6,400 volunteers from around the world.

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The Main Page of the English Wikipedia on the new Android app.

If you love Wikipedia and have an Android phone, you’re in for a treat! Today we’ve released a revamped Wikipedia for Android app, now available on Google Play.

Our new app is native from the ground up, making it the fastest way to experience Wikipedia on a phone. For the first release, we’ve focussed on creating a great browsing and reading experience. Whether you’re looking up a specific fact or looking to spend a day learning a new topic, our search and table of contents features get you to the information you need, quickly and intuitively. We’re also offering the ability to edit in the app, so you can help make Wikipedia better for billions of readers around the world.

What features are included?

• Speed – Our new, native app allows you to browse and edit Wikipedia faster than ever before.
• Editing – You can edit Wikipedia on the app. Logged in or logged out, we thank you for all your contributions.
• Recent pages – We provide you with your reading history, so you can tap as many links as you like without ever getting lost.
• Saved pages – You can save select pages for offline reading and browse them even when you don’t have a data connection.
• Share – Use your existing social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge.
• Language support – The app allows you to seamlessly switch to reading Wikipedia written in any language.
• Wikipedia Zero – We’ve partnered with cellular carriers around the world to provide Wikipedia free of data charges to users in many developing areas.

Coming soon

• Night mode – We’ve gotten lots of great beta user feedback; one feature people love is reading Wikipedia in darker environments. The inverted colour scheme offered by night mode will make that much easier.
• Discussions – Talk pages are an important part of Wikipedia for both new users and experienced editors alike. We’re bringing them to the app.

This release is just the beginning! We’re still working hard on creating new features to make the app the best Wikipedia reading and editing experience out there. Whether you’re a long-time user of Wikipedia on Android or are brand new to the app, give it a spin and let us know what you think. This is just the first step; we hope this app will grow with us, and we’re excited to have our community help us evolve it.

Please help us improve this app by sending a note to our mailing list, [email protected], or writing a comment here.

Thank you!

Dan Garry, 
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps

Ram Prasad Joshi

Ram Prasad Joshi doesn’t have a computer. His village may be beautiful but there is no electricity. It’s a three-hour walk to the nearest road. In spite of all this, Joshi has accumulated more than 6,000 edits to the Nepali Wikipedia using nothing more than a feature phone.

An image shot by Ram Prasad Joshi on his feature phone: Devotees paying homage to the Thama Mai Temple (replica of Badimalika, Bajura) in Dailekh

“On Wikipedia I write about geography, history and culture of my surroundings,” he said. “I am a Hindu so I write about the Hindu religion and Hindu culture. I edit and write new articles on the Sanskrit, Hindi, Fijian, Bhojpuri and Gujrati Wikipedias, as well as in Nepali. I can introduce my village, my locality and my culture to the world.”

An image shot by Ram Prasad Joshi on his feature phone: Stone script of Damupal near Kartikhamba in Dailekh established by King Prithivi Malla B.S. 1038 (981 A.D.). It is claimed to be the first stone script in the Nepali Language.

In addition to his writing, Joshi has contributed almost a hundred photographs to Wikimedia Commons. He took part in Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 and his images of archaeological monuments in his area won him the prize for best mobile contributor.

Due to its remote geography, his contributions may be the only representation his village will get online. “No newspapers, no magazines, nothing arrives here,” he explains. “In my village there are many people who have never seen a television. Now the mobile phone emerged, villagers watch videos on mobile, but no-one owns a television.”

For Joshi, his initial introduction to editing began on a somber note four years ago. While living and working in Haridwar, a small city in northeast India, his mother became seriously ill and passed away. “According to Hindu culture, all children should perform the rituals; they have to sit isolated for thirteen days in mourning,” he explained. “I was grieved greatly by her loss. My eyes still become wet when I remember her death. Parents are regarded as the almighty and holy in my culture.”

“I had to find ways to divert my thoughts from the memories of mom. As a way to vent my grief, I began to surf mobile internet more which helped me a lot. I explored the Nepali Wikipedia. I also saw the edit button in each article and the sub heading too. I then learned that I could edit these encyclopedia entries. When I remember my mom, I open Wikipedia and read or edit,” he added.

Fortunately, Joshi might no longer be alone in his editing endeavors; soon others will be able to benefit just as he did. Wikipedia Zero’s partnership with Nepali GSM mobile operator Ncell has given more people the opportunity to learn what Wikipedia is and how they can contribute to Wikimedia projects. “I have conveyed to my family and my villagers about Wikipedia,” said Joshi. “But for most people the Internet is out of reach, so it is a vague topic for them. After Ncell announced [their partnership with] Wikipedia Zero, some have given concern to it. Earlier when I started talking about Wikipedia they treated me as if I had gone mad.”

“Ncell broadcast advertisements for Wikipedia Zero through local radio. Many people now understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of knowledge.”

Ncell’s partnership is ideal for those looking to access and contribute to Wikipedia from a mobile phone, in the same way Joshi has for so long.
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Screenshot mock-up of Akruti Sarala – Unicode Odia converter

It’s been over a decade since Unicode standard was made available for Odia script. Odia is a language spoken by roughly 33 million people in Eastern India, and is one of the many official languages of India. Since its release, it has been challenging to get more content on Unicode, the reason being many who are used to other non-Unicode standards are not willing to make the move to Unicode. This created the need for a simple converter that could convert text once typed in various non-Unicode fonts to Unicode. This could enrich Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by converting previously typed content and making it more widely available on the internet. The Odia language recently got such a converter, making it possible to convert two of the most popular fonts among media professionals (AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala) into Unicode.

All of the non-Latin scripts came under one umbrella after the rollout of Unicode. Since then, many Unicode compliant fonts have been designed and the open source community has put forth effort to produce good quality fonts. Though contribution to Unicode compliant portals like Wikipedia increased, the publication and printing industries in India were still stuck with the pre-existing ASCII and ISCII standards (Indian font encoding standard based on ASCII). Modified ASCII fonts that were used as typesets for newspapers, books, magazines and other printed documents still exist in these industries. This created a massive amount of content that is not searchable or reproducible because it is not Unicode compliant. The difference in Unicode font is the existence of separate glyphs for the Indic script characters along with the Latin glyphs that are actually replaced by the Indic characters. So, when someone does not have a particular ASCII standard font installed, the typed text looks absurd (see Mojibake), however text typed using one Unicode font could be read using another Unicode font in a different operating system. Most of the ASCII fonts that are used for typing Indic languages are proprietary and many individuals/organizations even use pirated software and fonts. Having massive amounts of content available in multiple standards and little content in Unicode created a large gap for many languages including Odia. Until all of this content gets converted to Unicode to make it searchable, sharable and reusable, then the knowledge base created will remain inaccessible. Some of the Indic languages fortunately have more and more contributors creating Unicode content. There is a need to work on technological development to convert non-Unicode content to Unicode and open it up for people to use.

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Tablet users, rejoice! The Wikimedia Mobile Web team has been working to optimize the mobile view of all our projects, so that reading, browsing, and editing content are all easier on mobile touch screens of any size. Now our changes are finally live on tablets, too!

Why a new tablet view?

Wikipedia and its sister sites were designed long before the rapid growth of smartphones and tablets. For the past two years, we’ve worked to improve the reading and editing experience for smartphone users, and now we’ve turned our attention to tablets. If you’ve used Wikipedia on your phone, you may recognize similarities in the new tablet view. But we’ve also departed from the smartphone experience in some ways, in order to create a tablet-specific experience.

Just the features you need, designed the way you need them

• Typography and layout. We’ve increased the font size and narrowed the width of the content area to improve readability. These changes are responsive, too, so it looks great whether you’re on a tablet, a phablet – or even the mobile site on your desktop computer.

• Table of contents and sections. Get to the section you need quicker, but don’t be afraid to lose yourself in the content once you’re there. We’ve taken advantage of the larger screen space that tablets provide and kept article sections open to encourage long-form reading.

• Last modified byline. Wikipedia is never finished. Getting more readers to see that our content is constantly growing and evolving is a big priority for us. Now you can see at a glance which articles have been edited recently, and which could use some love from contributors like you…

• Editing. See a typo? Fix it! Simple formatting options and mobile-friendly linking to pages or references are coming soon for all tablet users, and starting this Thursday you can get a preview of this functionality now by opting into our experimental beta site (look for Settings in the site menu and tap to turn on Beta).

• Other features. The contribution features you know and love, optimized for tablets: uploads, watchlist, page history, notifications, and more.

Your tablet, your choice

If you don’t want to leave the old desktop experience, fear not. You can switch between the desktop view and mobile view from any page by scrolling to the bottom and tapping the “Desktop” or “Mobile” links.

How can I give feedback?

We’re excited to hear from you about these changes! Leave us a comment here and let us know what you think.

Maryana Pinchuk, Product Manager, Mobile

Major news in May include:

• changes to the mobile site to better show the editors behind the curtain;
• the announcement of CyrusOne in Dallas as the location of the new Wikimedia data center;
• the Zürich hackathon and Lila Tretikov’s perspective on it;
• experiments by the Growth team to encourage more contributors to register;
• the one-year anniversary of the launch of Tech News;
• the launch of Wikipedia Zero in Nepal in partnership with NCELL;
• the launch of a second request for proposals for the release management of MediaWiki for third-party users.

Note: We’re also providing a shorter, simpler and translatable version of this report that does not assume specialized technical knowledge.
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Later this year, we’ll say good-bye to Bugzilla, our bug tracking platform, and migrate its content to another software called Phabricator. This will be an opportunity to centralize our various project and product management tools into a single platform, making it easier to follow technical discussions you’re interested in. This is the result of a six-month community review and discussion that identified requirements, evaluated options and decided on Phabricator.

What does this mean for me?

Bug reports and feature requests are listed as “tasks”, in an attractive interface not too different from Bugzilla’s.

If you’re a casual reader of Wikipedia and its sister sites, nothing will change (except maybe the rate at which you see improvements to the site, if our productivity increases).

If you’re an editor on a Wikimedia wiki, we expect this change to make your life easier, if you sometimes report bugs, request new features or participate in other technical discussions:

• You’ll be able to use your SUL username to log into Phabricator;
• No more having to go through half a dozen different tools to follow what’s happening on a specific bug or feature you’re watching: eventually, everything will be in one place.
• Existing bug reports will be migrated to the new tool, and most links will continue to work; they will redirect to the bugs’ new location.
• You’ll need a little time to adjust to this new tool, but hopefully Phabricator’s modern interface will make it easier for you to report bugs and participate in technical discussions.

If you’re more involved in the Wikimedia technical community, you’ve probably already participated in the discussions that have led to this decision. If you have other questions, you can ask them on the help page.

Why are we moving?

Since we started to use Bugzilla, the size of our technical community has dramatically increased. There are now dozens of developers, engineers, designers, tools maintainers, bot owners, project and product managers, etc. (not yet counting the hundreds of users regularly reporting bugs and participating in technical discussions).

It’s easy to see how a single tool with a limited scope (bug tracking) may not be able to meet the needs of all members of our technical community. Therefore, over the years, we’ve started to use other tools to complement Bugzilla in the areas of code review, project and product management, and quality assurance.

This had led however to a proliferation of scattered tools that barely talked to each other; engineers wrote scripts to keep some of them synchronized, but this wasn’t an ideal solution. Discussions about a single technical issue could be split across Bugzilla, Gerrit, Trello, Mingle and/or Scrumbugz. It was difficult for developers, and even more so for casual users.

Phabricator solves this problem by offering all those features under a single unified umbrella; eventually, everything will be in one place, tightly integrated and neatly organized. Initially, we’ll focus on bug tracking and project management, but we’re planning to also use it for code review once the features we need have been added.

How was this decided?

Phabricator notably includes a project management feature, allowing users to organize tasks in “boards” familiar to developers using the Agile methodology.

In late 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation started to facilitate a community review of all the project management tools then in use in the Wikimedia technical community. Developers, engineers and anyone who identified as a stakeholder in this discussion was invited to provide input and share their use cases, needs and usual processes. After this consultation period, this input was summarized into consolidated requirements.

A list of options was proposed, and discussed by the community to only keep those that were true contenders, based on our requirements.

Phabricator emerged as the only real challenger to the status quo. After a three-week request for comment, the technical community had weighed in the costs and benefits, and expressed an interest in moving to Phabricator. There were still a few issues and missing features to iron out, as well as a carefully-prepared migration plan to put in place, but overall the feeling was that once those had been resolved, there wouldn’t be any social blockers.

The Wikimedia Foundation is now preparing for the migration, and your help is much welcome. You can get involved directly in our test instance of Phabricator, that was originally set up just for testing, but that later became home to the migration project itself in order to become more familiar with the software.

When will this happen?

The migration plan gives an overview of the current timeline. There’s still work to be done, and Wikimedia engineers are working closely with the Phabricator development team, who’s been very responsive and open to collaboration. Together, they’re making sure that the features we need are present, and that we can adapt the software to our various workflows.

The current plan is to deploy a bare bones Phabricator instance with only Wikimedia SUL enabled, and make a first community call to test only the login process. The next step will be to deploy the Trusted User Tool required by the Legal and Community Advocacy team to keep track of agreements signed by community members. These steps will help guaranteeing a successful Day 1, when Phabricator will become the new driver of our development infrastructure.

On the Wikimedia side, Andre Klapper is leading the migration project, Mukunda Modell is lending his Phabricator expertise and Chase Pettet is handling the Operations side. You can read Andre’s retrospective on the review process and the road ahead. You’re also encouraged to follow the progress of the migration (dubbed “Wikimedia Phabricator Day 1″) on the dedicated page, the tracking item and its associated board in our test instance.

Guillaume Paumier, Technical communications manager

“Aksharam,” Samskrita Bharati Office in Bangalore.

In 1981, a movement called the “Speak Samskrit Movement” started in Bangalore. The effort quickly spread across India and evolved into the organization “Samskrita Bharati” in 1995. The movement has a number of dedicated volunteers who aim to popularize the Sanskrit language, Sanskrit culture and the Knowledge Tradition of India.^[1]

Inline with these objectives, Samskrita Bharati embarked upon a mission to enrich Sanskrit Wikipedia in 2011. This project involved approximately 50 volunteers with some of them working full-time. Most of the contributors are based in Bangalore, Karnataka or Karnavati, Gujarat. As a result of tremendous effort and dedication, the team was able to substantially grow the number of articles on Sanskrit Wikipedia. With only 2,000 articles in 2011, mostly written in Hindi, the present number of articles is well over 10,000, with articles ranging from geography and history to health and society.

In terms of editing difficulties, Samskrita Bharati editors, like other Sanskrit Wikipedians, encountered difficulty in the use of modern terminology and the paucity of referenceable literature. Most of the contributors of Sanskrit Wikipedia are from the Southern region, resulting in confusion due to pronunciation differences between northern and southern regions for some Sanskrit words.

As part of the outreach efforts, Samskrita Bharati conducted introductory workshops in many educational institutions like Karnataka Samskrit University, Delhi University and Christ University, Bangalore.

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Graphic designed for the Snowden anniversary.

On June 5, 2013, the Guardian confirmed that the US National Security Agency collected communication records of millions of individuals — indiscriminately and regardless of whether they were the subject of an investigation. The story revealed the first of a series of government documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Today, one year later, individuals and organizations all over the world will speak out against mass government surveillance.

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation reaffirmed its opposition to mass surveillance by signing the Necessary and Proportionate Principles on the application of human rights to surveillance. In that spirit, we would like to inform the Wikimedia community about the global actions taking place this week. Here are some of the events around the anniversary of the Snowden revelations.

Europe

United Kingdom: A coalition of digital rights organizations will organize a Don’t Spy On Us campaign against mass surveillance by the UK’s intelligence services. They will hold a public event on June 7th, featuring speakers such as Jimmy Wales, Bruce Schneier, Cory Doctorow, Alan Rusbridger, Shami Chakribarti and Stephen Fry. Additionally, Simon Davies will release an analysis of the global impact of the Snowden revelations based on contributions from NGOs, academics and legal professionals.

Spain: The Association for Progressive Communications will hold a TakeBackTheNet! conference. There, human rights activists and technology providers will discuss strategies to give people control over their own data when using the internet.

Poland: This year, Poland is celebrating 25 years since their overthrow of communism. Many politicians, including President Obama, will visit the country. Fundacja Panoptykon will take this opportunity to highlight the importance of freedom of speech and the right to privacy in a country that has been subject to ubiquitous surveillance before overthrowing an oppressive regime. The campaign will encourage people to post pictures of themselves while holding a sign that reads “Surveillance is not freedom. Say it on the 4th of June” and tag the pictures with the hashtags #ObamaPL and #25latwolnosci. Fundacja Panoptykon will also hold an event with a wide range of activities, such as workshops on how to encrypt emails and how to create a “safe wallet” that prevents attacks on cards with RFID chips.

Germany: Digitale Gesellschaft is organizing a rally in front of the Chancellery on June 6th to demand the government stop extending the surveillance powers of the Bundesnachrichtendienst and address mass surveillance issues by various intelligence agencies.
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Wikipedia Android app (beta) screenshot

The Wikipedia for Android app has a new look, and you can help test its new reading and editing features!

The Wikimedia Foundation Mobile Apps team has just released a beta version of a new Android app to the Google Play Store. This native app features a major design update and focuses on creating a faster and more immersive browsing and reading experience. We’ve added a history of recently viewed articles, so you can figure out how searching for that hot new Summer blockbuster led you to reading about the developmental biology of the jellyfish. We’re also featuring an interactive table of contents to help you navigate long articles and get you to the information you need faster and easier.

In addition to a better reading experience, this new app also offers the ability to edit articles, so you can improve and expand Wikipedia’s content from the convenience of an app. While editing has been live on our mobile site for about a year, this is the first time that we’re offering an editing feature within an app, and leveraging the speed and smoothness of native technology will make contributing to articles via a phone much easier.

If you don’t have a Wikipedia account, you can create one from the app, or log in to an existing account to keep track of your edits across any of the devices you use to contribute to Wikimedia projects.

Android users, help us improve this app! You can download it from the Play Store and use it alongside the existing Wikipedia for Android app. Test out the new features and design before it goes live for all Wikipedia for Android users and let us know what you think; leave us feedback in the Play Store or send your comments to our mailing list, [email protected].

Maryana Pinchuk
Product Manager, Mobile