Monday, September 01, 2008

On the monthly Betawiki info

Yesterday, Siebrand send out the third Betawiki e-mail newsletter. As always his evaluation of the state of play at Betawiki was concise. The newsletter was send out to 830 people who have a confirmed e-mail account and who did not opt out.

The newsletter is important, the blogging and posting about localisation is important. Why we do it is best explained by the "sea of red" that can be seen in the group statistics. Localisation is vital for the success of all the projects in a language. Localisation is hard work, hard work that is done by a few good men for the benefit of all. We need many more good men and women to help our projects do better.

At the end of the month, we always reflect on the new statistics in time. This time it does not look too good. Most numbers have gone down. I have been told that it has to do with a lot of messages that have been "FUZZIED". When you compare the numbers included in the newsbrief, comparing 12 July with 30 August, you will find that in that time frame, the numbers have gone up.

We want to show good results, for this to happen we need active participants for the many languages that we support. Some languages like Arabic, Czech and Farsi always seem to do really well where it counts. Many other languages do not even have the 500 most basic messages localised and no activity to expect change.

What more can we do to improve our MediaWiki localisation ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

No comments: