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[edit] Progress

[edit] Progress in general

Starting from nothing one month ago, I think things look pretty good. The following meta-articles are up-and-running, although some still require some native-speaker polish:

• About
• FAQ
• Copyleft
• Main Page
• Help
• Policies and guidelines
• Manual of Style
• Bug reports
• Administrator nominations
• Travellers' pub
• Babel
• Namespace index
• Template index

All article templates are in good shape and are set up to be used directly from ru:MediaWiki:Newarticletext. All vital MediaWiki and other template translations have been done as well. ru:MediaWiki:Edittools has tools set up specific to the needs of Russian keyboard users.

The bulk of the meta-article translations I did myself, which unfortunately means that they read as though a non-native speaker wrote them—comprehensible, but stylistically poor. I am confident, however, that we can get these articles polished over the next two months, as more native speakers discover the site and correct my translation errors.

A very welcome treat this month was a series of articles by User:Kneiphof on places he visited in Switzerland and Alsace this month. Two of these destination guides are unique to Russian Wikitravel, not covered by any other language version.

[edit] New contributors

We have few contributors at present, but that is nothing surprising given the youth of the project. We have three active Russian native speakers contributing, which is essential considering that my Russian has aged in a manner quite unlike fine wine since I stopped studying it years ago. Two of them are Wikipedians, the other is of course Denis. We also have had another dozen or so people drop in to either gawk or contribute what they can without knowledge of Russian.

We really need a native Russian-speaker to become an administrator. In my opinion, any one of the three native speaker contributors we have had over the past month could be an excellent administrator; it is only a matter of their long-term interest in the project and the administrator position.

[edit] Focus since last report

There have been two real projects over the past month:

1. Create the basic infrastructure for participation, in terms of meta-articles
2. Come to agreement on translations

Both pushes yielded satisfactory results, but there is plenty of work left on both fronts.

[edit] Focus during the next month

The focus for the next month will be quite similar, as we still have much important work to do on the translation of terms (we really need to come up with a final translation for "Wikitravel") and basic infrastructure. Three new projects will move to the fore of the project's priorities:

1. Create the basic infrastructure for participation in terms of the geographical hierarchy
2. Create one exemplary destination guide, to both demonstrate the potential of the project and to provide an example to new contributors of how its done
3. Attract more native speakers, now that a basic infrastructure is in place

[edit] Special issues

There is one important issue that we cannot resolve ourselves that I believe merits serious attention. It is not possible to use translated listings tags, although I have translated all the appropriate MediaWiki files. The listings tags do so much to keep listings properly formatted, and would be of great use to Russian Wikitravel. An example of their failure to work is here; also of interest is the conversation here. This is from my perspective a high priority issue—listings tags should be usable in all language versions.

One non-essential issue is that of attribution in translations. It would be nice to have the ability to import attributions from translation sources on other language versions. The "solution" I have been using is this template, which gives a link to a credit page for the translation source.

It would be nice if this long standing bug afflicting five language versions were addressed.

Finally, a question: Is it possible to use the Russian name Википутешествие in the place of Wikitravel in the names of namespace articles (e.g., Wikitravel:Оформление статей --> Википутешествие:Оформление статей). I would prefer to do so, to make it easier for Russian contributors to navigate the meta-articles.

[edit] Conclusion

Activity has actually flagged a bit over the month, due to August vacations away from the wiki world. Nonetheless I predict that Russian Wikitravel will have an excellent infrastructure in place within 2 months for anyone to contribute to. From there it will simply be a matter of attracting contributors and keeping them motivated.

[edit] Comments