User:MF-Warburg/Glaskugel

This page yearly in the end of December becomes a workspace in order to put together the...

end-of-the-year review - review of the year's events - Look back at 2012 - 2012 in review

After the tremendous interest that Incubator:News/2011 report was met with, we go into the second round :P

Introduction (like last year)

This is the Wikimedia Incubator yearly report for 2012, it is the second time that we created one. Incubator (http://incubator.wikimedia.org) is a wiki of the Wikimedia Foundation which serves as a platform where anyone can build up a new language edition of a Wikimedia project (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote & newly Wikivoyage) that does not yet have its own subdomain, provided that it is a recognized language. These so-called "test wikis" on Incubator can be used like (nearly) any other real wiki. When the community desires so and there is enough activity, they can request to move to an own subdomain through the requests for new languages process.

Wikisource and Wikiversity are not mentioned above, as their tests belong to Old Wikisource and Beta Wikiversity, respectively. Regarding test wikis, this report will focus on Incubator mainly.

The Language committee is a body which reviews these requests, deciding about the eligibility of languages and determining whether test wikis are deemed active enough to sustain activity on an own subdomain.

Site creations

Geographical distribution

7 new language subdomains of Wikimedia projects were created in 2012. These were Veps Wikipedia, Lezgi Wikipedia, Punjabi Wiktionary, Marathi Wikisource, Gujarati Wikisource, Belarusian Wikisource and Slovenian Wikiversity.

Upcoming projects are Assamese Wikisource and Livonian Wikipedia; as well as Wikivoyage in Spanish and Portuguese (see below).

NEW

WY

• Nov/Dec: As mentioned in the previous report, new language versions need to take the usual process of the language proposal policy, except 8 languages, for which content from preexisting Wikitravel projects can be used as a base. The creation of these projects is requested one-by-one considering the interest of a community for it. At the time, Spanish and Portuguese Wikivoyage are waiting for creation & editors are already able to contribute on Incubator.

Highlighted policy issues

• Change in Language Proposal Policy: The MediaWiki localisation requirements for new language versions were considerably lowered: It remains unchanged that for a first project in a language, the 500 most used messages should be translated; but for any subsequent project, it is no longer necessary to translate the complete core plus main extensions used on Wikimedia projects, only to prove that the community is continuing to improve the localisation at a reasonable pace.
• Prekmurian language: 22 June: Discussion about m:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Prekmurian and the rejection of the ISO code request. The request continues to be on hold as the rejection reason offers the possibility that SIL reconsiders the request if more information is provided.
• Mapundungun language code: It has been discussed whether it could be allowed to use another code for the URL of the Wikipedia in Mapundungun (test project: incubator:Wp/arn), for example of the codes that is reserved for "private use" in the ISO 639-3 scheme (it would e.g. be qmp.wikipedia.org instead of arn.wikipedia.org then); because the ISO code "arn" derives from a word which is claimed to be seen as offensive by the speakers of the language. No decision was taken, but
  • Some members tended to accept such a thing, others tended to rule out such a deviation from the ISO standard. The general importance of the standard was highlighted.
  • Most members would like organizations/speakers of the language to try to get the ISO code changed first, but it was also noted that such a change would be very unlikely to be accepted.
  • The details of why/how the code is considered offensive by the speakers were discussed. It is generally agreed that the code will not be changed for political reasons. Currently (bla), the president of Wikimedia Chile has been contacted and will try to get statements from these NGOs and Universities.
  • Nov/Dec: The topic of the ISO code for the Mapundungun language (see July report) has been brought up again, namely by the "Red de Derechos Lingüísticos y Culturales de los Pueblos Indígenas de Chile". The conclusion of a heated discussion was to ask the ISO 639 authority to consider a change, which Michael Everson proposed to them. A discussion on the Ietf-languages list about it can be found at [1].
• Dari Persian: A request for a Wikipedia in Dari Persian has been rejected because the language was not considered to be sufficiently distinct from Standard Persian (fa:).

Language Committee & stuff

• Langcamp
• 1st September 2012: Creation of a Wikimedia mailing list dedicated to languages-related topics: languageslists.wikimedia.org.
  • WIL
• GELP
  • August: Please see m:Cooperation between Wikimedia and Endangered Languages Project for the cooperation with http://endangeredlanguages.com which was already mentioned last month.

Technical improvements

(last year: Incubator extension + missing.php)

• 6 February 2012: The Translate extension has been enabled on the Incubator. Translators can now translate in an easier interface at Special:Translate.
• (Incubator: Special:SearchWiki, MediaWiki:Wminc-error-help, page content language updates, ...)
• (probably includes TitleIsAlwaysKnown function: Wx/xyz info pages will be treated as existing pages)
• (automatic info page detects existing Main Pages)
• (a few small fixes, such as: subpage links will also be shown for dynamic info pages; language names are now lowercase where usual and preference is given to MediaWiki names over CLDR; WebFonts menu will now be a checkbox instead of a round button when there are no fonts to choose from; current language won't be a link in Special:Userlogin)
• (Babel box language correctly tagged, so e.g. WebFonts works on it)
• (Incubator: basic info page parser function)
• inputbox on www portals which goes via Special:SearchWiki
• (Special:IncubatorFirstSteps; dates in sortable tables depend on page language; change Incubator preference option)
• (Some work on info page parser function; Image alignment follows the page content language; DateFormatter follows the page content language; new language Turoyo (tru); Uzbek (uz) language converter)
• (info pages logos are localised, test wiki logo feature actually works now, IncubatorFirstSteps can take "testwiki" parameter and the info page links to it if it's a missing wiki)
• (Wikivoyage added to Incubator; action=info contains page content language)

• Sept/Oct: Recently, some activity at the Bugzilla entry concerning wiki renames.
• June: The idea of a Wikipedia in American Sign Writing as a labs wiki (because of technical restraints) has been presented. [2]
• August: Some discussion about the request for a Manchu Wikipedia, which is now going to be developed on Incubator (Wp/mnc), preliminarily in Latin script until technical requirements are met.

Plans for 2013

Cf. Plans for 2012

For 2012, we hope to simplify the processes for requesting a new subdomain and to improve Incubator's usability. Therefore it will be easier for people to contribute here, resulting in an increased participation in new language versions. Unfortunately, our documentation is very poor at the moment, so that will be in our focus very much. It is also planned to gain more feedback from users about how the Incubator phase and wiki creation process could be made easier and more attractive.