User talk:Quiddity (WMF)

Welcome to Meta![edit]

Hello, Quiddity (WMF). Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 21:58, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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1

wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy[edit]

I wonder if you have permission to edit on wmf:? I would like to ask you to help me translate this resolution page into Vietnamese. Thanks! Tryvix1509^Discussion 06:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delayed response here. I'll just add (for the record) that I had asked internally about this, and replied to your (same) question over at wmf:Wikimedia talk:Babel#Resolution:Licensing policy with a few more details. Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source languages[edit]

Just want to bounce an idea off to you before maybe taking it to project talk.

I’m wondering, if we modified the translation system so that some paragraphs need not be in English (e.g., paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 in zh-tw, paragraphs 10, 12 in zh-cn, the rest in English [just making these numbers up]; or all paragraphs in French). Or modded it so that some paragraphs can have a flag set so that the system knows English is actually a translation (possibly a mistranslation) and knows how to fetch the real source text in case the translator can make use of it. Would that be a big change, or would that be a CWS-sized change?

I’m wondering because I just did a translation to Canadian English and it was not quite the “just change some spellings” pseudo-translation because after a while I realized why some parts sounded odd was French was the real source language. (Some other translators clearly also figured this out, seeing how, for example, zh handled one heading.) A few months ago I did one where half of the page was originally in Chinese (mostly zh-tw, a couple of paragraphs in zh-cn; that one I saw it just at the right time, before the Chinese parts became English “source” and all traces of those English paragraphs being translations erased).

What do you think? Al12si (talk) 22:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Al12si Hiyo. Hmmm. I'm not quite understanding the question/context. I'll ramble a bit, in case that helps you form the followup question elsewhere. :)

Looking at your recent-contributions, I believe you are asking about something related to ContribuLing 2023. (links/examples almost always help!)

If I understand correctly, you've deduced that ContribuLing 2023/fr was essentially the source text, but the original author setup the page to use their manually-created English-translation as the page-translation 'source' (and then copy&pasted the original as the /fr 'translation').

(Sidenote: I should mention, in case you or other talkpage readers are unfamiliar, that it's possible to use any language as the main page-translation source. E.g. Wikimédia France uses French as the basis for all translations.)

Again, if I understand correctly (the part I'm very unsure of), you're asking if it's possible to have a mixture of source-languages? Or, possibly you're asking about using one translation as the basis for another translation (directly within the interface), but only for specific 'chunks'?

Overall, I'm not a dev, and cannot even begin to speculate about how technically-complex any change like those would be. I suspect it's far larger than a Wishlist proposal, but writing it up as a proposal may help you structure the question the most clearly. Alternatively, you could ask at mw:Extension talk:Translate.

I hope that helps! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Quiddity (WMF) – Yes, your guess is correct, and my other example was Wikimedia Taiwan/The Chinese Wikimedia Open Meeting on the 2021 Foundation Official Action/Documentation. In the latter case the system claims that /zh “is a translation”, which of course is a false and misleading statement; the truth is 50% of the English page is a translation, and for the other 50% the Chinese page is a translation.

For ContribuLing, I’m not saying French is “essentially” the source language; I’m saying it is the true source language and the way the system is designed sometimes true source languages are buried in “translation” pages. (You read both the English and the French and it’s clear English isn’t the source; it’s translated from the French.) Given the nature of the conference, it’s really sad to see how, for example, ja has “translated” the first heading — or rather not translated it, since the English makes no sense and the Japanese translator clearly could not figure out what it was supposed to mean. — Al12si (talk) 00:18, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, that's what I meant by 'essentially', sorry for the unclear wording! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong language in tech news[edit]

Hello I noticed that technews is posting in kannada (kn) language on https://tcy.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಚಾವಡಿ/ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ_ಸುದ್ದಿಲು&curid=6742&diff=152385&oldid=152212 , it should post in Tulu (tcy) language. Noted no one is translating that language in tech news,I was wondering why it happening in case this would happen to other newsletter also ~aanzx ^✉_© 05:21, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @~aanzx. This is due to the "fallback language" system.

(Background: You probably already know about it, but just in case: MediaWiki software has a feature that shows alternative-language messages, in places where the messages have not yet been translated into the preferred (wiki or user-preference) language, instead of just defaulting to English. A couple of years ago, the MassMessage extension was enhanced to also be able to use this feature (phab:T165128).)

In this case, I see in the settings file that Kannada is configured as the fallback language for Tulu. So, yes, it would happen for any other MassMessage, or any part of the User Interface, that has been translated into Kannada but not into Tulu. The intent is that it is more helpful to the majority of users, than English would be. I am not sure how fallback language decisions are originally determined.

If you have any further questions about this part of the software, I'd suggest asking the language engineering team.

I hope that information helps! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for info and links, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165128#6506363 made sense how it happened, I got confused when when last week's was in English language and this week was in kannada language. Now that I remember last week tech news was sent early before I translated newsletter. ~aanzx ^✉_© 08:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Since you froze Tech News, I caught an issue[edit]

You'll want to handle this adjustment as appropriate. The issue of course is that that message itself would disable reply links on not archived pages after it's turned on, like almost every user page likely to get that, and probably a fair few centralized talk pages too. @Quiddity for good measure. Izno (talk) 01:19, 1 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno D'oh/Yikes! Thanks for catching that. Could've been very messy, and very stressful for me! It's been a... long week.

Luckily, it's within a tvar, so we can update it without invalidating the existing translations, which Ameisenigel has already done. (In case you're curious and unfamiliar, here's a screenshot of part of the interface for translation admins.)

Thanks again! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In passing ...[edit]

We haven't been, so as I am. A wave and hope that all is well for you. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:21, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, while waving, what is the process for putting a non-talk page, eg. s:en:Wikisource:Scriptorium/Announcements ( community contribution page for its newsletters) onto a Global Message delivery where the content model is "MassMessageListContent"? Currently the system says #yeahnah.

The edit page for Special:EditMassMessageList says to use {{target}} (nada), the extension help page says try {{#target}} (nada), and the extension page is mute. The help page talks about the ability to opt out a page, however, not the ability to opt in a page. It seems that there is a system setting for that content-type to stop non-talk pages. If not your space, then a pointer of who to bug would be handy. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

After some fruitless digging through examples here, and then through Phab (just searching the Workboard for "target" and then "namespace") I found phab:T279478#8476250 -

TLDR: It's a known bug -- the system is confused by the Namespace link matching the Interwiki link -- the workaround is to use the shorthand for the namespace. I've added the WS page, and noted the problem.

Now I wonder if I should convert it back into a plain wikitext page until this is solved... >.< Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the initial note, too. :-) 'tis good to receive a friendly wave! I keep seeing you around, doing the needful, but not in places I've needed to weigh in; so thanks for all that, too! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for updating tech news![edit]

I know you are only to credit for writing the items and not executing them, but this week's news are really exciting and I'm thankful to have someone updating it! Aaron Liu (talk) 00:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the rare happy-feedback! 'tis appreciated. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP down?[edit]

Hi, only Meta seems to work, dewiki, enwiki, commons, all down? Could you take a look? Thx --Itti (talk)

@Itti: I think they should be working again now. It looks like there were some problems related to phab:T350443. Commons and Enwiki should have been unaffected, as they are on different sets of servers. I'll add more here later, if I find further details. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thx for your helb

Support. Besst Itti (talk) 06:29, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #151 is out: New API for calling Wikifunctions and celebrating 1000 functions[edit]

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we discuss the new API for calling Wikifunctions, we celebrate our first 1,000 functions, and we take a look at the latest software developments. Also, there's a job opening for joining our team!

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive.

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:57, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia Newsletter #152 is out: Welcome, Sharvani![edit]

There is a new update for Abstract Wikipedia and Wikifunctions. Please, come and read it!

In this issue, we welcome a new member of the team and we take a look at the latest software developments.

Want to catch up with the previous updates? Check our archive.

Enjoy the reading! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]