IRC office hours/Office hours 2012-05-23

Time CEST.

may 23 18.32.00 <Nikerabbit> Welcome to the Localisation team office hours of May 2012!
may 23 18.32.21 <Nikerabbit> We will be holding office hours every third Wednesday of the month at this time to make things a little more predictable.
may 23 18.32.40 <Nikerabbit> This meeting lasts about an hour and will end at 17:30 UTC.
may 23 18.32.46 <siebrand> The one after this is Wednesday 20 June 2012, 16:30 UTC. Mark your calendar (!)
may 23 18.32.58 <Nikerabbit> I'll provide you with some news and topics for this meeting first.
may 23 18.33.06 <Nikerabbit> After that, we'll hopefully have a great Q&A session.
may 23 18.33.16 <Nikerabbit> Please hold your questions until after the introduction.
may 23 18.33.33 <Nikerabbit> If you want to ask questions now, please do ask them in a private message to alolita or me
may 23 18.33.43 <Nikerabbit> Many of our team members are present today, so we're ready for loads of interaction!
may 23 18.34.00 <Nikerabbit> The members of localisation team who are around today are Nikerabbit (Niklas), aharoni (Amir), pginer (Pau), alolita, planemad (Arun) and siebrand.
may 23 18.34.14 <Nikerabbit> We have a team page at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Localisation_team with photo
may 23 18.34.15 * aude curious about the language selector
may 23 18.34.18 <Thehelpfulone> Ironholds, able to voice ^ that lot?
may 23 18.34.29 <Nikerabbit> We deal with internationalization and localization issues or in other words, language support.
may 23 18.34.30 <Ironholds> sure!
may 23 18.34.37 <Nikerabbit> Basically we aim to provide everyone in the world with a local language experience that is equal to that of the one in English in every aspect of the Wikimedia universe. We are not quite there yet.
may 23 18.34.49 <Nikerabbit> We currently have four main areas of attention, input support, output support, language support for the core of MediaWIki, and localisation and translation, but the scope can be a lot wider at times.
may 23 18.35.01 <Nikerabbit> so
may 23 18.35.06 <Ironholds> missed anyone?
may 23 18.35.19 <Thehelpfulone> yep, alolita1 planemad and aharoni and pginer
may 23 18.35.19 <Nikerabbit> Our topics for today are:
may 23 18.35.42 <Ironholds> done
may 23 18.35.44 <Thehelpfulone> full house today ;)
may 23 18.35.45 <alolita1> alolita = alolita1
may 23 18.35.54 * MaxSem (~MaxSem@wikimedia/MaxSem) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 18.36.08 <Nikerabbit> Universal language selection/selector, optimization of translation workflows and some updates on language (support) teams and other work we have done
may 23 18.36.21 * aude curious who's coming to berlin hackathon?
may 23 18.36.31 <alolita1> aude: only siebrand
may 23 18.36.32 * MF-Warburg (~chatzilla@Wikimedia/MF-Warburg) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 18.36.39 <alolita1> the team will not be in berlin
may 23 18.36.43 * Toto_Azero è ora conosciuto come Toto_Azero|away
may 23 18.36.50 <aude> alolita1: yay for siebrand but we need aharoni too
may 23 18.36.50 <alolita1> aude: the team will be in dc :-)
may 23 18.37.00 <Nikerabbit> that was my intro, so let's start
may 23 18.37.02 <siebrand> You'll have to make due with me. I hope I can live up to your expectations :)
may 23 18.37.18 <aude> siebrand: i hope so
may 23 18.37.20 <aharoni> aude, "you" as in... OSM?
may 23 18.37.29 <alolita1> aude: siebrand will be busy in berlin as our rep
may 23 18.37.36 <aude> aharoni: osm, yes, but also wikidata
may 23 18.37.50 <siebrand> aude: aharoni is in the same timezone. We can do a (planned!) Skype call. Please get in touch by e-mail or something to get it arranged.
may 23 18.37.51 <aude> we have newbies here when it comes to rtl stuff and internationalization
may 23 18.38.04 <aude> siebrand: ok
may 23 18.38.08 <aharoni> actually, some Wikidata people already contacted me privately about that.
may 23 18.38.15 <aude> aharoni: good
may 23 18.38.33 * planemad doesnt want to derail the topic, but would be interested in any openstreetmap discussions later
may 23 18.38.56 <aharoni> if you need any rtl/i18n help there, feel free to ping me on IRC and to CC me on bugs.
may 23 18.39.04 <aude> aharoni: ok :)
may 23 18.39.20 <aharoni> so, Translate extension updates.
may 23 18.39.20 * aude just think some stuff needs to be fixed in core for everyone and not just wikidata
may 23 18.39.57 <aharoni> updates for Translation Notifications were deployed yesterday.
may 23 18.40.11 <alolita1> aharoni, nikerabbit: can you be more specific
may 23 18.40.25 <aharoni> now it is supposed to be able to send messages to other wikis, too.
may 23 18.40.32 * StevenW (~swalling@wikimedia/steven-walling) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 18.40.50 <aharoni> and yesterday I committed a fix that improves the wording and the usability of the messages themselves...
may 23 18.40.50 <Nikerabbit> aharoni: pending configuration of global messenger bot account, but yes
may 23 18.41.30 <aharoni> and I made these improvements because we received comments about them on a session similar to this one,
may 23 18.41.38 <aharoni> so they have influence :)
may 23 18.41.44 <siebrand> i.e Bug triage 2 weeks ago.
may 23 18.42.16 <Nikerabbit> yup
may 23 18.42.49 <alolita1> siebrand: can you post the link for the bug triage notes from earlier this month
may 23 18.43.08 <siebrand> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2012-May/000496.html
may 23 18.43.17 <Nikerabbit> we had got so many bug reports that we spend part of our sprint just to fix many of them, first for Translate and then for TranslationNotifications
may 23 18.43.18 <alolita1> thanks!
may 23 18.43.26 <siebrand> Also interesting: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Localisation_team_Sprint_15_demo.pdf
may 23 18.43.40 <Nikerabbit> And we managed to close over 20 together
may 23 18.44.05 <alolita1> nikerabbit: <applause?
may 23 18.44.08 <alolita1> >
may 23 18.44.21 <siebrand> And do attend those! Next one is next Monday, 15:00 UTC. Subscribe to mediawiki-i18n for invitations. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n
may 23 18.44.52 <planemad> <slightly delayed applause> :D
may 23 18.44.56 <Nikerabbit> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Localisation_team_Sprint_15_demo.pdf&page=12 has a short summary of some of the bugs we closed for Translate
may 23 18.45.33 <alolita1> planemad: :D
may 23 18.46.07 <alolita1> any questions on translation notifications
may 23 18.46.57 <aharoni> did everybody sign up for translation notifications already?
may 23 18.47.00 <alolita1> nikerabbit: where is this extension enabled? (which wikis)
may 23 18.47.13 <aharoni> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:TranslatorSignup
may 23 18.47.16 <Nikerabbit> alolita1: meta, mediawiki.org, incubator, wikimania2012 and outreach
may 23 18.47.35 <alolita1> nikerabbit: thanks! and twn ?
may 23 18.47.51 <Nikerabbit> not there yet
may 23 18.48.14 <Thehelpfulone> wikimania2013 wiki too Nikerabbit
may 23 18.48.31 <aude> it's worked reasonably well for wikimania2012 :)
may 23 18.48.35 * pgehres (~pgehres@wikimedia/Pgehres-WMF) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 18.48.49 <Nikerabbit> and in the current sprint, we are currently charting the coverage and documentation of various APIs of Translate extension to make sure it's easy to build on the Translate extension to do more cool stuff we can't do ourselves
may 23 18.48.53 <alolita1> aude: that's good to hear
may 23 18.49.01 <Nikerabbit> Thehelpfulone: that I didn't know yet
may 23 18.49.35 * jorm è uscito (Quit: jorm)
may 23 18.49.55 <aude> i think some of the rtl people have had some issues on wikimania wiki but i'm not really sure the details
may 23 18.50.53 <Nikerabbit> aude: please try to get them to tell about those to us in bugzilla or elsewhere
may 23 18.51.41 <Nikerabbit> anyway, I think the most important fix was made to Special:AggregateGroups so that it actually works on meta (which has lots of commas in page names)
may 23 18.52.01 <Nikerabbit> any questions about Translate or TranslationNotifications?
may 23 18.52.15 <Nikerabbit> we are still working towards to get email notifications for TranslationNotifications working
may 23 18.52.26 <alolita1> nikerabbit: are notifications only via email or other channels too?
may 23 18.52.49 <Nikerabbit> alolita1: translators can choose to have email or message to wiki talk page
may 23 18.53.34 <alolita1> nikerabbit: thanks
may 23 18.54.15 <Nikerabbit> okay, let's switch topic to ULS... if you come up with questions about these we can have them closer to the end
may 23 18.54.20 <siebrand> We're looking forward to people designing other notification mechanisms, like Echo integration!
may 23 18.55.35 <Nikerabbit> pginer: are you ready to tell about uls?
may 23 18.55.49 <pginer> Yes
may 23 18.56.01 <pginer> The ULS is a tool that will allow users to select a language and configure its support in an easy way.
may 23 18.56.11 <alolita1> pginer: links?
may 23 18.56.28 <pginer> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector
may 23 18.56.38 <pginer> There are many different contexts where languages can be selected and there are many languages to support (about 400). So during the past months we have been an of user needs and the definition of representative scenarios to support.
may 23 18.56.41 <alolita1> thx
may 23 18.56.50 <pginer> Then, we explored different ideas in the form of sketches and wireframes through different iterations. And now we got interactive prototypes to test our ideas with real users.
may 23 18.57.24 <pginer> In the project page above you can see that we are combining different interaction mechanisms to make such a big list of languages easier to explore
may 23 18.57.37 <pginer> Recently we announced the design efforts for the Universal Language Selector.
may 23 18.57.39 <pginer> A blog post was published at Wikimedia blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/21/introducing-designs-for-the-universal-language-selector/
may 23 18.57.57 <pginer> We announced the availability of the Universal Language Selector designs to gather feedback on the proposed solutions through the talk page of the project, but also to ask users to test our prototypes.
may 23 18.58.24 <pginer> About 15 users have already asked for participation. Anyone can request for participation at https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDBUMkVqczBCZVVZeTJzMEUtQkVlVEE6MQ but we are focusing on Arabic, Dutch, Hebrew and Hindi mainly (because prototypes need to be adapted to each language)
may 23 18.59.12 <Nikerabbit> pginer: how much work is it to adapt it to a new language?
may 23 18.59.24 <alolita1> pginer: so we are looking for more folks to participate in ux tests with us
may 23 19.00.04 <planemad> Nikerabbit: the prototypes? not much :)
may 23 19.00.27 <pginer> Nikerabbit: Adapting the prototypes is not much work
may 23 19.00.30 <planemad> its been built so that its easy to adapt the tests for different language and location scenarios
may 23 19.00.36 <aharoni> i translated the needed strings to Hebrew and Arabic
may 23 19.00.41 <pginer> but it depends whether we want to translate the UI of the selector
may 23 19.00.57 <pginer> or just to adapt it to a different language with the English UI
may 23 19.01.06 <aharoni> and Pau already did practically all of the RTL work.
may 23 19.01.34 <aharoni> it takes just a few minutes to translate the strings.
may 23 19.01.46 <aharoni> i hope that we'll have them on TranslateWiki ASAP :)
may 23 19.02.01 <planemad> the categorization/grouping of languages in the list is an interesting aspect. it would be good to receive more feedback on how you think languages should be grouped
may 23 19.02.27 <Nikerabbit> +1 on the interesting
may 23 19.02.30 * TBloemink (~TB@wikimedia/tbloemink) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 19.02.41 <alolita1> pginer: <applause for rtl support in uls>
may 23 19.02.51 <pginer> Yes, we decided to group them by script type so users can focus on the zone that looks more familiar to them.
may 23 19.02.51 <planemad> right now, its been done based on language/script similiarity
may 23 19.03.50 * philinje è uscito (Ping timeout: 265 seconds)
may 23 19.03.50 * pchang è ora conosciuto come philinje
may 23 19.03.54 <aharoni> and also geography
may 23 19.03.57 <alolita1> questions on our ULS work so far - this will affect wikidata also
may 23 19.05.01 <MF-Warburg> sort of... what exactly does this mean for users? No more drop-down box on Special:Preferences, but actually a userfriendly tool?
may 23 19.05.46 <planemad> yup, thats the idea. wherever a language selection is required, the uls will come to life :)
may 23 19.05.53 <pginer> The ULS can be adapted to different contexts
may 23 19.06.40 <pginer> you can use this solution wherever you need to select or configure one (or even several) languages
may 23 19.06.51 <planemad> maybe it should be called the universal language picker?
may 23 19.06.53 <alolita1> ULS would affect the language selection for your wiki's chrome (UI), input method selection for a language
may 23 19.07.45 * srikanthlogic (~logic@wikipedia/Logicwiki) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 19.07.47 <alolita1> ULS would also affect language selection for content (but in a later version)
may 23 19.07.54 <alolita1> srikanthlogic: hi!
may 23 19.08.07 <srikanthlogic> alolita1: Hi!
may 23 19.08.08 <planemad> srikanthlogic: hallo
may 23 19.08.12 <alolita1> MF-Warburg: it would be a pretty userfriendly tool
may 23 19.08.38 <aude> the mockups show the interwiki links still there
may 23 19.08.48 <aude> it that the plan?
may 23 19.09.03 <alolita1> pginer, planemad: can you post the links for your prototypes
may 23 19.09.06 <Thehelpfulone> can we make this ULS global?
may 23 19.09.13 * jvandavier (~jvandavie@wikimedia/jvandavier) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 19.09.23 <Nikerabbit> what do you mean with global?
may 23 19.09.54 <alolita1> Thehelpfulone: do you mean part of global prefs?
may 23 19.10.26 <planemad> alolita1: the prototypes are sitting in my dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jgz9r3o4eorgm3f/gCJvFZe7XY/wikimedia/w_universal_language_selector_test
may 23 19.10.29 <pginer> The ULS design is capable of replacing interlanguage links, but targeting that involves too much for the first steo
may 23 19.10.32 <pginer> step
may 23 19.10.44 <aude> pginer: ok
may 23 19.10.49 <Thehelpfulone> alolita1: yes
may 23 19.10.52 <planemad> needs to be used with pau's test instructions, but feel free to poke around :)
may 23 19.10.57 <Thehelpfulone> sorry, I got caught up with something else
may 23 19.11.02 * xlorm è uscito (Quit: xlorm)
may 23 19.11.13 <aude> pginer: just an observation, but a drop down menu for interwiki lik
may 23 19.11.18 <pginer> For the initial stages we defining placements for the ULS that can work well with the interlanguage links: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector#uls-location
may 23 19.11.19 <aude> links could be awkward
may 23 19.11.42 <aude> when some pages have 100+ languages and others might have just 1 interwiki
may 23 19.12.10 <alolita1> aude: yes
may 23 19.12.34 <siebrand> Interlanguage links are out of scope for now.
may 23 19.12.54 <siebrand> aude: ask Denny. We discussed it for 10 mins. or so a week or two ago.
may 23 19.13.29 <aharoni> When I announced the ULS in the Hebrew Wikipedia, one of the technical guys there immediately asked me whether the ULS will also be used for pages in Commons.
may 23 19.13.46 <aharoni> Currently pages in Commons usually have English titles, but they can be in any language.
may 23 19.13.51 <alolita1> aude: since the wikidata team is looking at interlanguage links, we plan to collaborate with them on using/integrating ULS
may 23 19.14.27 <alolita1> aharoni: interesting suggestion but currently out of scope
may 23 19.14.34 <aharoni> I /suppose/ that this can also be done with the help of Wikidata, but that's just a guess.
may 23 19.14.41 <alolita1> for ULS
may 23 19.15.03 <alolita1> there will be a lot more development around multimedia and commons later this year
may 23 19.15.20 <alolita1> so ULS integration for commons may get prioritized at that point
may 23 19.15.44 <Thehelpfulone> Nikerabbit: so it it doable? make it a global preference?
may 23 19.15.48 <siebrand> One of the problems with using ULS on multi lingual wikis is that the concept of multilingual is not formally implemented, in implemented in several ways between wikis, and even within the same wiki.
may 23 19.15.58 <aude> alolita1: okay
may 23 19.16.12 <Nikerabbit> Thehelpfulone: there are many issues that tie into ULS, and we are taking it by small steps
may 23 19.16.14 * aude awaits instructions on what to do
may 23 19.16.14 <siebrand> To catch all that in a JavaScript tool will be a major challenge.
may 23 19.16.33 <pginer> From the design perspective, the ULS can be applied to many places (and I'd love to see it applied in as much as possible), but the technical implication have to be studied case by case.
may 23 19.16.58 * BlackRectangle è ora conosciuto come YuviPanda
may 23 19.17.07 <Nikerabbit> I don't think we will be implementing global preferences ourselves, but we certainly need to consider what is available on that area
may 23 19.18.35 <aude> will you be implementing anything more sophisticated for Interwiki_sorting_order?
may 23 19.19.04 * siebrand would like to have global preferences, but thinks it's outside of the Localisation team's scope. It's general engineering.
may 23 19.19.06 <Nikerabbit> interwikis are not yet in scope, but we want feedback on the grouping and ordering of languages in the selector
may 23 19.19.07 <aude> it seems ULS will deprecate that
may 23 19.19.22 <alolita1> aude, TheHelpfulOne: no dates yet for integrating ULS into global prefs yet; but that will change
may 23 19.19.23 <aude> Nikerabbit: ok
may 23 19.19.24 <Nikerabbit> Arun has still one topic to present, so I think we should have it now and do remaining questions after that on the remaining time
may 23 19.19.46 <siebrand> aude: I'd like to think that eventually there will be a custom interwiki sort order per wiki, that can be overridden on a per logged in user basis.
may 23 19.19.57 <srikanthlogic> would Narayam, WebFonts be deployed to all wiki's along with ULS ?
may 23 19.20.11 <siebrand> aude: given the implications of centrally administered interlanguage links in wikidata, the former is a must.
may 23 19.20.14 <alolita1> srikanthlogic: Narayam is currently integrated in the ULS designs
may 23 19.20.19 <aude> siebrand: that would be nice
may 23 19.20.32 <aude> right now it's hackishly done on some wikis
may 23 19.20.34 <alolita1> srikanthlogic: WebFonts is not yet
may 23 19.20.48 <siebrand> Actually, it is.
may 23 19.21.02 <siebrand> It's just not an active feature in the prototype.
may 23 19.21.07 <alolita1> siebrand: in the prototypes?
may 23 19.21.22 <alolita1> siebrand: ok, thought so
may 23 19.21.52 <siebrand> alolita1: the selector is there, but inactive.
may 23 19.21.58 <alolita1> timecheck: we have about 9 mins
may 23 19.22.05 <alolita1> siebrand: yes
may 23 19.23.08 <planemad> ok, before i am squeezed out for lack of time
may 23 19.23.16 <planemad> i'm happy to announce that the process for redesigning a more efficient workflow for translation on translatewiki.net is underway
may 23 19.23.37 <planemad> the plan is to study the existing workflow of translators to see how they use the current interface for translation
may 23 19.23.55 <planemad> identify interactions which can be automated or machine aided to reduce repeated actions
may 23 19.24.56 <planemad> and come up with a redesigned and more optimal interface to translate with minimum effort and time
may 23 19.25.40 <Nikerabbit> I'm very excited about this, because we really, really don't want to waste translators time
may 23 19.26.19 <planemad> current status: i've been using twn myself to identify potential issues, did user observations of god level translators (read:siebrand)
may 23 19.26.35 <Nikerabbit> haha
may 23 19.26.35 <siebrand> tsk :)
may 23 19.26.36 <alolita1> nikerabbit: +1 ; it will be great to have improved UX for our translators
may 23 19.26.52 <planemad> also got feedback from a couple of tamil translators. thanks to srikanthlogic
may 23 19.27.10 <planemad> i'm putting together an initial document with my findings
may 23 19.27.31 <planemad> and also integrating some of pau's observations
may 23 19.28.01 <planemad> the document should be out in a day or two. rough sketches should be ready in a week
may 23 19.28.39 <planemad> ready for feedback :)
may 23 19.28.45 <Nikerabbit> yay
may 23 19.28.46 <alolita1> planemad: excellent; looking forward to the rough sketches
may 23 19.28.58 <Nikerabbit> any quick questions?
may 23 19.29.20 <alolita1> 2 minutes for questions :-) any last minute suggestions?
may 23 19.29.30 <siebrand> Can has pony?
may 23 19.29.36 <Nikerabbit> nope
may 23 19.29.41 * siebrand cries softly.
may 23 19.29.46 <alolita1> siebrand: aaw
may 23 19.29.48 <srikanthlogic> planemad: you are also factoring page translations for rough sketches ?
may 23 19.30.15 <planemad> srikanthlogic: can you elaborate?
may 23 19.30.49 <Nemo_bis> Nikerabbit, was the signup confirmation feature request discussed?
may 23 19.31.01 <Nemo_bis> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36959
may 23 19.31.19 <Nikerabbit> Nemo_bis: we are aware of the issue
may 23 19.31.28 <srikanthlogic> planemad: the way of making a page translatable is slightly hard (atleast on my first try). Making things easy will help
may 23 19.31.35 <Nemo_bis> oki
may 23 19.31.45 * StevenW è uscito ()
may 23 19.31.59 <Nikerabbit> I'm going to say some ending words, but feel free to stay around for a whlie
may 23 19.32.32 <Nikerabbit> You can stay up with out progress by attending our sprint demos
may 23 19.32.44 <Nikerabbit> We will be holding a sprint demo every fortnight, on Tuesdays at 15.00 UTC.
may 23 19.32.47 <Nikerabbit> During these demos, will go in-deph on the output we have had as a team in the two weeks before, and we will outline what we will be working on in the two weeks to come.
may 23 19.32.53 <Nikerabbit> Our latest progress report is at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Localisation_team_Sprint_15_demo.pdf
may 23 19.32.56 <planemad> srikanthlogic: is that within twn? for now i'm limiting scope to message translations on twn
may 23 19.32.56 * alolita2 (~asharma@216.38.130.166) è entrato in #wikimedia-office
may 23 19.33.08 <Nikerabbit> Our next sprint demo will be on May 29, 2012 at 15.00 UTC. It's a max. 40 minute meeting, with a presentation of at most 20 minutes, and then we have a Q&A until the meeting ends or until there are no more questions.
may 23 19.33.09 <aharoni> planemad: I'm not calling myself "god", but please check my translation process, too.
may 23 19.33.23 <Nikerabbit> We use WebEx, and invitation for the demos are sent to the mailing list mediawiki-i18n -> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n. Subscribe!
may 23 19.33.25 <planemad> aharoni: :P will do
may 23 19.33.34 <srikanthlogic> planemad: thats not for twn, thats mainly for meta
may 23 19.33.39 <Nikerabbit> Thanks everyone for being here.
may 23 19.33.39 <Nikerabbit> We're doing this again on Wednesday 20 June 2012, 16:30 UTC.