Grants talk:IEG/MediaWiki and Javanese script

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Anda dipersilakan mengomentari dalam bahasa Indonesia.
You are free to comment in Indonesian language.

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $3000.

Comments regarding this decision:
This project has been recommended by the committee and WMF originally provisionally approved it for a grant. As of May 2013, the dependencies upon which the grant's start was delayed have been cleared, and WMF is approving the grant to move forward.

Next steps:

  1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
  2. Review the information for grantees.
  3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
  4. Start work on your project!
Questions? Contact us.


Aggregated feedback from the committee for MediaWiki and Javanese script[edit]

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background) Score
1=weakest 5=strongest
Potential for impact
(A) The project fits with the Wikimedia movement's strategic priorities 4
(B) The project has the potential to lead to significant online impact. 3
(C) The impact of the project can be sustained after the grant ends. 3
(D) The project has potential to be scaled or adapted for other languages or projects. 3
Ability to execute
(E) The project has demonstrated interest from a community it aims to serve. 3
(F) The project can be completed as scoped within 6 months with the requested funds. 4
(G) The budget is reasonable and an efficient use of funds. 4
(H) The individual(s) proposing the project have the required skills and experience needed to complete it. 4
Fostering innovation and learning
(I) The project has innovative potential to add new strategies and knowledge for solving important issues in the movement. 3
(J) The risk involved in the project's size and approach is appropriately balanced with its potential gain in terms of impact. 3
(K) The proposed measures of success are useful for evaluating whether or not the project was successful. 4
(L) The project supports or grows the diversity of the Wikimedia movement. 4
Comments from the committee:
  • Proposal has some things to be polished, but it can work and produce good results.
  • Project can improve general participation and have a long-term impact as the language tool is developed and deployed.
  • Its promotional effect might go beyond the scope of the particular language community.
  • The materials should be able to be reused.
  • The focus is unclear as to whether it is about improving software support, increasing editorship, or increasing access to the content.
  • Audience is limited to a small number of people.
  • Would like to see more concrete measures of success.

Comments and other input/feedback are greatly welcomed! ✒ Bennylin 15:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Importance[edit]

Due to the general lack of institutionalised recognition, and the sheer number of speakers/readers, Javanese language studies are the elephant in the room in relation to language in Indonesia, and outside of Indonesia. Javanese language teaching in countries in most cases has dissappeared from academic syllabuses at places like Leiden University, Australian National University, and Cornell University - the possibly 3 main locales about 20 to 30 years ago where it was possible to learn the language outside of the country. Most study of Javanese now has shrunk to the country itself.

The project that Bennylin has proposed is somewhat restricted geographically, and should really be understood in the distribution of variation of Javanese language usage in one sense, but also in another in that the usage of the language in his home town is that which foreign linguists such as Errington, Keeler and other americans have taken as their examples. Also the extent to which Florida has mapped the textual traditions of Solo in a manner on a par with what Behrand and Lindsay were able to do in Yogyakarta, makes it the exmplary location to check usage.

I would recommend that this project is supported, and that User:Mersault - if he is still editing on wikipedia anywhere be consulted for his opinion, as he is possibly the most adept at understanding the issues, well beyond what the average editor is capable of grasping. sats (talk) 16:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely would love to see User:Meursault2004's support on this proposal. I'll left a message on his talk page. ✒ Bennylin 17:04, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Thanks for the support :). ✒ Bennylin 17:16, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that to the unitiated, explaining the issues and politics of Javanese language can be a bit arcane and obtuse. For verification of my comments above, I have made sure that most of the authors that I have invoked in my notes above are actually in the Javanese language article 'further reading' section on Wp en - [1], the work of Florida, Behrend, and Lindsay is more relevant at [2] however the article is of very low quality and lacks adequate cites or elaboration of the modern era.
For a while the late 20th century, a Javanists newsletter which was based at Leiden - Monash University. Dept. of Asian Languages and Studies (1900), Caraka : a newsletter for Javanists, Dept. of Asian Languages and Studies. Monash University, retrieved 18 February 2013  (It has struggled and appears to still exist in Australian quarters) - was able to provide the outsider (ie foreign researcher) a window into the world of the research into Javanese language related issues.
Unfortunately there are no easily accesible roads into the Javanese languages issues. The conferences on Javanese language in Indonesia in the last decade actually are even as difficult as the language - they no longer appear to support non-Javanese presentations about their language - it has to be in the language itself, If I am to understand the news reports.
For a view into the issue via a biographical story of two years ago - see [3] sats (talk) 09:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Quote: "The conferences on Javanese language in Indonesia in the last decade actually are even as difficult as the language - they no longer appear to support non-Javanese presentations about their language - it has to be in the language itself, If I am to understand the news reports." > That's what baffles me most. The conferences (id:Kongres Bahasa Jawa, last in 2011, next in 2016) doesn't seem to connect with the reality, with the advent of digital age... It's a pity actually, that for an international conference like that, no effort was given to Javanese script in digital media. ✒ Bennylin 09:54, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Even more reason to argue for your project - the sandi sandi tricks of javanese literaure - things are hidden/things are not what they seem - parallel texts of javanese text - I have not seen - to date... sats (talk) 10:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fortunately I've found a font exactly for that purpose. Have you try it? Sample side-by-side text: https://sites.google.com/site/jawaunicode/text-sample and several in jv.wp, although not in main namespace yet. For typing, try right on this site (Meta), on the top menu (where your user page, user talk page, preferences, log in, etc. are), click the language tool, and choose input method in Javanese. (You have to install the font first tho... (see jv:Wikipedia:Aksara Jawa#English for the necessary "3F's"). ✒ Bennylin 15:09, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
SatuSuro, seeing that you've already interested in this project, your endorsement would be greatly appreciated in this. ✒ Bennylin 07:48, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Improving a Wikimedia project?[edit]

Hi, and thanks for your submission. One of the eligibility criteria for IEGrants is that a project aims to improve one or more existing Wikimedia projects. I've added a couple of fields to your infobox, including one for your engagement target, but based on your project plan I'm still not sure which existing projects you are primarily aiming to improve. Can you please clarify which Javanese-language projects you plan to have users upload content to? Thanks! Siko (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Siko. Javanese projects currently have 3 projects + another one in Wikisource. Javanese Wikipedia (jv:), Javanese Wiktionary (wikt:jv:), and Banyumasan-Javanese (map-bms:) all could benefit from this, while a special focus will be put on Javanese Wikisource (oldwikisource:Jv) to become its own http://jv.wikisource.org (s:jv:). Therefore, I do not want to restrict this into a certain project. ✒ Bennylin 03:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

USB drive[edit]

Coming from bawolff's blogpost: what you want is Kiwix. Emmanuel also wants to use it to let people propose edits: of course it's not trivial but probably easier than inventing something from scratch. Get in contact with him, you probably don't need a grant to make use of what already exists in an effective way. --Nemo 06:27, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nemo, thanks for the comment. As you might have read, I ask nothing for the USB. The grant is for other things. I thought we're free to speak our idea. If every grant is treated this way, I suppose I'm better of not asking anything. And yes, I've been in contact with Emmanuel longer than this proposal, thank you very much! ✒ Bennylin 06:55, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bawolff comment[edit]

From: http://bawolff.blogspot.com/2013/02/tech-related-ieg-proposals.html

This is an interesting one. It would be interesting to see what someone from wmf's i18n team thought of it.

As far as I understand, the main points are:

  • There are no input methods generally available for the Javanese script except in MediaWiki (which sounds odd to me)
  • People should be able to type in their own script easily
  • Therefore we should distribute MediaWiki-on-a-stick (A Wiki on a usb stick, so you can take the wiki with you).

First of all, it would be kind of cool if Wiki on a stick was supported for MediaWiki. The author mentions XAMPP, but there might be simpler options (Using PHP's built in webserver, combined with sqlite). However the wiki on a stick part seems to be a means to an end, not the main goal of this project.

For the actual project, I'm not sure what the end goal is - Have Javanese speaking people start using MediaWiki as a personal word processor? It seems like making an input method for X11/where ever input methods go in general for various operating systems would be much more effective at accomplishing the authors goals. Its also unclear how this benefits Wikimedia, other than wiki on a stick support would benefit MediaWiki. Having more Javanese speakers familiar with MediaWiki might make them more likely to contribute to a Javanese project, but that seems like a rather indirect benefit.

Reply:
  • Yes, there's currently some "keyboard mapping", but these requires a lot of special keys, and not "natural" to those who've used to type in Latin (Indonesian, or Latin-Javanese) in regular keyboard. Thus, the benefit of MW's Narayam/ULS.
  • True. It's only a mean, not the goal.
  • False. We need to distribute MW on schools and other partner organizations (Javanese communities).
The goal is twofold, first to let them used to type the script in MW so that they, in turn, could contribute to WMF's Javanese projects. I'm rather hesitant to say that "we're going to add content to Javanese Wikisource and Wikipedia" because then the proposal would deemed ineligible, but as of now, the only way to add content is in Latin script, we're going to add content in Javanese script, with the help of these trainings and social outreach. It would be great if Bawolff could read this reply here instead of me having to reply in his blog. ✒ Bennylin 07:37, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Endnote: I know what I'm proposing is not very technical, doesn't promise a "huge impact" to the Wikimedia movements, especially in an obscure script from a Third World country (Global South, mind that), which no one really cares about, not even the speakers (some 80+ million) of that language. But I thought that's the whole purpose of this IEG, and besides compared to other grant proposal, the sum that I requested here I think is very small, and if I'm wrong and this is deemed too small of a project with no very little benefit at all to the movement, then I could only apologize and kept my ideas to myself in the future. ✒ Bennylin 07:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think I may have misunderstood your proposal. Are you wanting to distribute mw on a stick or mw plus wikipedia on a stick. Are the intentions of the training sessions to train users to be able to edit personal documents in Javanese that are present on a personal wiki that is locally installed on a usb stick, or is the intention to be able to train users to effectively edit wikipedia/wiktionary in Javanese? Ive been assuiming the former in my blog post. --Bawolff (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I just read your comment. No, probably it is safer to forget the stick, because it's just a mean, not an end of itself. :) ✒ Bennylin 10:17, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Narayam keyboard[edit]

Hi. I wonder whether there is any plan to develop/implement Narayam keyboard for Javanese language as part of this work? The extension has already been implemented in many languages, and has been demonstrating successful stories in promoting input in non-latin scripts. --Haithams (talk) 21:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the question. The answer is yes. It's already live in several projects which uses UniversalLanguageSelector, such as this page (try it :)
I type this without leaving the edit box on this site --> ꦩ​ꦠꦸꦂꦤꦸꦮꦸꦤ꧀ (matur nuwun or "thank you"). Of course to be able to read it you might need to download the font first and other requirements. See jv:Help:Aksara Jawa#English. The Narayam keyboard itself is online and editable in jv:User:Bennylin/Narayam. Inputs are welcomed. ✒ Bennylin 10:15, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Putting the language speakers into perspective[edit]

File:Asean Thai Post.jpg
The number of Javanese speaker is more than 80 million. If it's a country, it's as big as Vietnam (rightmost)

A language that is spoken by more than 80 million people might not be easy to comprehend; to put that into perspective, that is about the same as the population of 5 countries of ASEAN combined: Brunei (408,786), Cambodia (14,952,665), Laos (6,586,266), Malaysia (29,179,952), Singapore (5,353,494) + the whole population of Oceania continent! (35,670,000 people from 14 countries and 25 dependencies); it's also about the same as the population of the smaller 12 countries (out of 18) of Western Europe: (Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Ireland, Luxembourg, Iceland). So imagine the reach of this language and the diversity stemmed from it. The Javanese script used to be used by these people. It's the largest Brahmic scripts outside of India (Indo-Aryan language). ✒ Bennylin 10:30, 19 March 2013 (UTC)​ (In fact, it's the fourth largest abugida script, after Devanagri, Bengali, and Gurmukhi)[reply]

Some comments[edit]

Hey, I just popped in. Sorry for my belated arrival. Of course I would like to help if it's possible next to my daily tasks. I have some comments:

  1. The Javanese script needs to be based on the official (ie classical) style
  2. The Javanese script should also be able to be used to write Old Javanese

Meursault2004 (talk) 08:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

^‌_^ thanks for stopping by. We will keep everyone posted on this talk page, while I'll create a Javanese version on jv.wp and Indonesian version on id.wp of all the activity. If you don't hear anything in quite some time, do ask me about the latest activity, I might need some people bugging me to get me to write reports :p
As of this week's agenda: Sunday, 7 April, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. in Solo Car Free Day (Slamet Riyadi Street, around Sriwedari) -- Initial reach out, planned to attract several hundred people to our booth, and we will give print-outs of their name in Javanese script. (the weekly event itself attracts tens of thousands of people every week, strolling on the empty main street during Sunday morning -- google it). Coordinator: Mr. Mayor Haristanto of "Republik Aeng-Aeng" community. ✒ Bennylin 14:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Update: [4][5]. ✒ Bennylin 12:05, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As of your comment, do you mean the current font (Tuladha Jejeg)? Don't worry, what font we're using is secondary in this matter. Because currently that's the only Unicode font available (and a great one at that to be able to cope with the complexity of the script!), we're going to use it right now. I've been in talk with the font maker, and he's ready to come up with the next iteration of font, which, based on what I saw, is a lot better (the first one is "gagrag Surakarta", while the second one is "gagrag Yogyakarta" which I learned at school, and a cursive font, i.e. italic).
Have you tried it? (see jv:Wikipedia:Aksara Jawa on how to enabled it on your browser), in the PDF that you got when you download the font, it says it's able to write Old Javanese (and IMO the only one with that ability). So, nice font, really! ✒ Bennylin 14:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Past Events[edit]

I'm going to list all the events that would culminate (hopefully) in greater awareness of what this grant would achieve. Please tell me if you think this talk page is not the appropriate place for this, and I'll move it to my personal user space. ✒ Bennylin 13:18, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Other newspaper also run the news either on the same day or on different dates, i.e. id:Radar Solo, id:Harian Jogja, id:Koran Sindo (image), id:Metro TV (image), id:Tribun Jogja, and some other newspapers. All news are in Indonesian language. ✒ Bennylin

Status Change[edit]

Hello Bennylin, I just wanted to let you know that I am changing the status of your IEG project to incomplete because of an incomplete final report and lack of response to follow-up outreach. Should you want to finish your project, please don't hesitate to reach out about next steps. I am happy to offer support at any point. Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 28 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Marti, thanks for the notif. Which part of the final report did I miss? ✒ Bennylin 09:15, 5 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Upon re-visiting the Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script/Final page, and re-reading emails from Siko and Janice that I missed (dated July 3 and 11, 2014), I've completed the Grants:IEG/MediaWiki_and_Javanese_script/Final#Part_2:_The_Grant section of the page. Hope that is sufficient. ✒ Bennylin 09:30, 5 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Marti, could you take a look again at the report and see if I still missed anything? Thanks. ✒ Bennylin 15:23, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bennylin, thanks for your ping. Did you see the follow-up email response from our Grants Administrator sent on August 21 by email? I want to make sure you are aware that, in addition to finalizing your report here, there is an administrative piece that needs to be closed out in order to finish up this project. Let me know if you haven't received that email and I will re-send it. --Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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