User talk:Varnent/Archive 10

Latest comment: 9 years ago by Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) in topic Wikidata weekly summary #161

15:06, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2015)

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Board election translations

Dear Varnent , I made some changes at Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Candidates. I am sorry for spending your time. Please note your work is very much appreciated. All the best, Taketa (talk) 05:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

You are very welcome, and it is no worry. :) You are welcome to make any other edits during the remaining open window, and we will make it work on our end. :) Thank you for your candidacy! --Varnent (talk)(COI) 05:23, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Barnstar

 
Original barnstar

For your very active work on the Elections Committee. --Pine 01:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! --Varnent (talk)(COI) 04:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #157

This Month in GLAM: April 2015

 




Headlines
Read this edition in fullSingle-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

15:38, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from April 2015

Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in April 2015.
 
About · Subscribe/unsubscribe, 01:24, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2015 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Questions and discussion with the candidates for the Board will continue during the voting.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 17 to 23:59 UTC May 31. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2015 Board election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 12:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC) • TranslateGet help

 

This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2015 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Questions and discussion with the candidates for the Board will continue during the voting.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 17 to 23:59 UTC May 31. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2015 Board election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,
-Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent)
Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 12:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC) • TranslateGet help

Wikidata weekly summary #158

15:21, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Candidates translation

Hi Varnent,

I am planning to translate WMF Board candidates statements into Ukrainian, and I hope to do it before the deadline this time in order to have them published together with other translations. However, this page is quite misleading as each candidate has two statements, and Translate extension does not make a distinction between long and short statements. Is it possible to put those messages that will appear in SecurePoll into a separate group to avoid the waste of time for translating that will not be displayed there? Thanks — NickK (talk) 19:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I did not get any answer so I translated the entire page. There are many redundancies, but I hope my work was not useless. Please proceed with publishing Ukrainian translations — NickK (talk) 04:39, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
I have checked https://vote.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:SecurePoll/vote/512&uselang=uk and I have noticed that only half of messages were moved to the voting server, but only the first 11 candidates (from Housemeddin Turki to Phoebe Ayers) are in Ukrainian, the remaining being in Russian. In addition, names are also in Russian, e.g. I do remember translating Phoebe Ayers as Фібі Аєрс here, however, her name is displayed in Russian as Фебе Айерс. Could you please update these translations or tell me whom I should contact to have this updated? Thanks — NickK (talk) 13:10, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
I will be doing the next translation batch updates tomorrow morning on my travels home from WMCon. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 16:20, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. Could you please try to do it faster. The notification received a very negative feedback because of being half Russian and half Ukrainian: a user said that he does not want to vote because he made efforts to translate the text (which is true) but he did not understand why his translations were not published.
I understand that Ukrainian, unlike Russian, is not a priority language for WMF, but please note that we still have a community of some 2500 active users who are unlikely to vote if the text remains half translated. Thanks — NickK (talk) 07:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Please keep in mind that we are volunteers doing this task, and that we are working as quickly as we reasonably can. Setting up this one set of translation is not the only request or task we have right now. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 10:01, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I do understand that you are volunteers. Sorry for writing too much, but the translation infrastructure is simply not transparent this year.
I have also found some gender errors (see Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections 2015#Gender forgotten, for example, in Russian Maria Sefidari is a man who founded LGBT wikiproject), please fix them either. I could not find where to fix them, they are not available on Meta.
Sorry for writing to you again, I would be glad to write this in a more specific place, but I can't even find who else can publish these translations. Thanks — NickK (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Anyone on the committee is able to update the translations on VoteWiki. I am not sure what you mean by the infrastructure not being transparent this year. We are utilizing the same infrastructure in place for several elections, and have more than tripled the number of translations typically available for the elections. I am mindful of these errors, but our focus remains on removing barriers to actual voting before we work on making the translations better. I recognize the errors are not good to have, but the feedback has been that they are making it more accessible for folks, they get the general info they are looking for, and we are already seeing 3x more participation from voters than at this same time in 2013. They will never be perfect, there will likely always be some grammar errors, it is unlikely all 200+ languages will be included in the near future, and while we investigate unexpected technical errors and work on making as many translations available as possible, we will not likely be doing as much correcting of the translations on VoteWiki. I have already nudged the WMF to consider how to make the quality better in the future, but that will require some time to investigate and consider. I recognize that is not a very satisfying answer, but I wanted to give you some insight into how this happened and why it may not be getting resolved as quickly as you were hoping. There is also the practical issue that some of us attended the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, which has left some of us unusually busy these past few days. That was, unfortunately, a problem we could not avoid given the need to have results ready far enough out from Wikimania to allow for travel arrangements to be made for those elected. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 20:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Under transparency I mean that there is a huge gap between professional translations and volunteer translations this year. I can even say that these translations were prepared from reader prospective, while voters are editors:
  • Professional translations were made in languages with large populations, but not with large communities. Polish community has over 4,000 active users but did not get a translation, while Swahili community has 70 active users and did get a translation. I know that Poland is in Global North and Africa is in Global South, but there should be better priorities.
  • Professional translations were done by people who are unaware of Wikimedia movement and thus contain serious mistakes (Maria's statement in French says she founded English Wikipedia). It is great for readers who have no idea of Wikimedia, but voters do know what Wikimedia is, and can seriously thinks that it is a candidate who does not understand our movement, not the translator.
  • Professional translations are not easy to edit. That's quite anti-wiki: you have a wiki page without "edit" button, and without a talk page to suggest changes. That is not as transparent as wikis, as this is basically the only page where one cannot find how to edit.
  • Infrastructure for volunteer translations is poor. I could not get which paragraphs belong to statements that will be published and which not, so I had to translate the entire page, which included even wikicode of signature of Francis Kaswahili. Links from the banners point to banner translations, not to statement translations. There is no translation link on the voting page.
To sum up, yes, it is great for newbies (who meet the threshold) whose native language was selected by WMF and who will not be surprised by the fact that Maria Sefidari founded English Wikipedia. No, it is not great for those whose language was not selected by WMF and who understands Wikimedia movement better than translators do. I can make some suggestions how to do this system better, but that's probably more appropriate for Post mortem.
And please do publish Ukrainian translations. I do want to promote the vote in Ukrainian Wikipedia village pump, but I can't do it because it is half translated and our Village pump is currently discussing the translation, not the election. Thanks — NickK (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
As I've said, we will publish the Ukrainian translations, but it won't do them much good if we don't sort of the technical errors first. Please be patient. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 22:01, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for publishing Ukrainian translations! Could you please also fix the gender errors I have listed at Talk:Wikimedia Foundation elections 2015#Gender forgotten? It is pretty bad that we are fighting the gender gap and translating statements by female candidates using male language... Thanks! — NickK (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

bn translation

Please correct this translation: [27] - replace "মেটা ইউজার পাতা" with "মেটা ব্যবহারকারী পাতা". Thank you --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 14:03, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

  Done - thank you! --Varnent (talk)(COI) 17:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Hi Varnent, could you please also fix the nl translation of my candidacy please. My nomination text now says "Wikimedians" which in Dutch should be "Wikimedianen". Also "De komende jaren" should be "de komende jaren" without the capital letter, like it is in my English text. "bovendien" should be "bovenal" (bovendien has a completely different meaning). There needs to be a dot behind the sentence "Ik geloof in minder bureaucratie" and please change my name from "Taketa]" to "Taketa", and the link to my talk page from "talk:Taketa talk" to "overleg". I checked and see that my signature is messed up in every single language. All the best, Taketa (talk) 05:09, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
I see you are active. If you have access to vote.wikimedia, please fix this. Thank you, Taketa (talk) 05:29, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
We are not actively translating signatures, but I will get to the other edits when I am able. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 06:19, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
It does not need to be translated. Simply displaying it properly would be fine. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 06:23, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Partially   Done, see here. Trijnsteltalk 13:14, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

16:12, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #159

My picture

The photo I used on my candidate statement (and which has been on my Wikipedia user page for two years) was queried by a third-party on specious grounds in Wikicommons (c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ifyoustare.jpg) after I posted my statement, and to my dismay has been removed. This leaves a red file name on my statement instead of the photo. I have just sought to replace this with a different photo but the page is closed to editing. These circumstances prejudice my candidature - can you please do something to help? Thanks, --Smerus (talk) 21:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

It looks like it has been restored - but yes - if there is a photo you would like us to use instead, please let me know and we can switch. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:08, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Prompt action by User:Green Giant at Commons rescued the pic, so should be OK now - many thanks for your response - Best, --Smerus (talk) 07:18, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Template:WMF elections/Vote count status

Hi! This bad way - combine one string from different messages. This is hardly localised. For useful translation, this should be one string T:152:

| 2015 vote count intro = <translate> As of 26 May 2015, there have been 2,500 votes cast* in the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections. There are 54,216 eligible voters.</translate>

(instead 144, 152, 153 in Template:WMF elections translations) --Kaganer (talk) 21:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

We were trying to avoid having to update the translations template everyday for various reasons. If you have a suggestions on a better way to structure the sentence, I am open to that. I may have an idea I can try. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Different languages have different ways of constructing phrases for various cases. This "message-kit" may be useful for English, but inapplicable for Russian or Hebrew. There is no ideal solution, but is normal working scheme: combine your text from whole short phrases (or parts, but with the meaning). Current example may be combined from:
  1. As of {{#dateformat:26 May 2015}},
  2. there have been {{formatnum:2,500}} votes cast*
  3. in the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections
In this way, each message is meaningful and translatable (vs current way, where "As of" and "there have been" is untranslatable into Russian without related text. Template Template:WMF elections translations needs to documenting for explain all exists "use cases".
But one problem remains: if in English this example is formed as "1 2 3", then in Russian this will be "1 3 2". Therefore, I propose to go back to my original proposal for include whole phrases into translation, with replacing only variable values (numbers, dates, etc.) to "tvar" code.
--Kaganer (talk) 15:58, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
I changed the structure of the sentence yesterday, let me know if that works better. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 16:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Okay, this change is more translatable. But needs documenting! --Kaganer (talk) 16:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Agreed, we have bad at documenting the translations due to the very tight time window for the elections. My hope is that is addressed soon. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 16:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Some bugs

  1. Please fix one bug: Template:WMF elections/Countdown3 contains code {{ls2|WMF elections translations|there are}}, but Template:WMF elections translations is not contains "there are" section (only one "there have been"). --Kaganer (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  2. (fixed) Another problem: some languages requires genitive form of the month names. Instead {{#dateformat:28 May 2015}} should be {{#time:j xg Y|28 May 2015|{{CURRENTCONTENTLANGUAGE}}}}. --Kaganer (talk) 16:52, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  3. Also need exclude asterisk from "vote count asterisk" string (and add into template code as nowiki). --Kaganer (talk) 17:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
  4. Count of days, hours, eligible voters etc. requires using "PLURAL" rules for related texts (in some languages). This requires that such numbers were available to the translator in a simple format, without thousand separators. --Kaganer (talk) 17:23, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #160

15:35, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Meta Collaboration of the Month for June 2015: Events!

Events (discuss) has been selected as the first-ever Meta Collaboration of the Month for June 2015! Join the fun there and in the discussions.--Pharos (talk) 19:00, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

This Month in Education: May 2015

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:44, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription.

Wiki Loves Pride

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride!

  • What? Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to document and photograph LGBT culture and history, including pride events
  • When? June 2015
  • How can you help?
    1.) Create or improve LGBT-related articles and showcase the results of your work here
    2.) Upload photographs or other media related to LGBT culture and history, including pride events, and add images to relevant Wikipedia articles; feel free to create a subpage with a gallery of your images (see examples from last year)
    3.) Contribute to an LGBT-related task force at another Wikimedia project (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.)

Or, view or update the current list of Tasks. This campaign is supported by the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, an officially recognized affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit the group's page at Meta-Wiki for more information, or follow Wikimedia LGBT+ on Facebook. Remember, Wiki Loves Pride is about creating and improving LGBT-related content at Wikimedia projects, and content should have a neutral point of view. One does not need to identify as LGBT or any other gender or sexual minority to participate. This campaign is about adding accurate, reliable information to Wikipedia, plain and simple, and all are welcome!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the campaign's main talk page.


Thanks, and happy editing!

User:Another Believer and User:OR drohowa

I know you know, but consider this invite a formality. :) --Another Believer (talk) 04:30, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Any prediction on the results timing?

Just curious whether you would make a prediction on when the results will be released. Feel free to ignore this message. Cheers, --denny (talk) 16:25, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

As soon as the certification process is complete. The current step is not in the committee's hands - so I'd rather not predict when others will complete a task. ;) --Varnent (talk)(COI) 16:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Wise. Thanks! --denny (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #161

Return to the user page of "Varnent/Archive 10".