Talk:Wikimedia Foundation website/2017-2018 update

Multilingualism

Among many missing requirements in the proposal, particularly outstanding is the lack of mention that we need to improve multilingualism. Most of the websites mentioned in the page are a stark regression even compared to foundationwiki, so I hope they won't be a model. Something entirely different is needed. Nemo 19:22, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: what proposal are you talking about? Heather Walls (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I believe he just means your plan to update the website. We are an international organization and we need an international website. Has multilingualism been considered and is it currently in the list of requirements? Nikerabbit (talk) 06:58, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I like to +1 Nikerabbit's question. --Steinsplitter (talk) 16:40, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

@Nikerabbit:@Steinsplitter: Yes, it is a consideration. If you have examples you prefer, please share them. Thank you, Heather Walls (WMF) (talk) 06:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Heather (WMF): My expectations are that both the user interface and most of the content are translatable, and that our regular translation tools (Special:Translate) is used to translate them. Moreover, I expect that UniversalLanguageSelector (or the jquery.uls library) is used to allow users of the new website to change the language. If possible, the default language should be based on the ULS algorithm instead of always defaulting to English. –Nikerabbit (talk) 09:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Nikerabbit: Do you have an example of a place where things are set up this way? Heather Walls (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I have some: https://manual.limesurvey.org/ http://sjwiki.org/wiki/ https://www.whonix.org/wiki/ https://isogg.org/wiki/ https://docs.joomla.org/ https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/ http://wiki.kiwix.org/ . --Nemo 15:26, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

• (From 2017 Community Wishlist Survey) Can only support what is already said by Nemo. The fact that the policy site is simply untranslatable for 2 years now because of reliance on the outside system that is significantly worse at this aspects than MediaWiki software is nothing but regrettable. Moving more and more sites to that kind of infrastructure equals to making sure that the future content is strictly Anglocentric and, therefore, inaccessible to many people. stjn^[ru] 00:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Well said. I hope it's not true that people are sending translations by email, it would be a pity to have sent us back to stone age. --Nemo 06:43, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Key stakeholders

I wonder who these are. --Nemo 19:24, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: the Foundation as a whole, staff who have a direct relationship to pages, community members, and audiences like donors and readers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Heather (WMF) (talk)

Deploy

What does "deploy" mean in the last point of the process? Is there an assumption that things will become radically different or harder, so that "how to make changes" will need special education? There seems to be some hidden premise here. --Nemo 19:26, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: deploy means that we will deploy a site and tell people how to make updates. We'll know what that means when we get to that point. Heather Walls (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

I suggest using a more generic terminology then. "Update" or "edit" sounds ok. --Nemo 08:15, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Heather Walls (WMF). The timeline says that the deployment will tentatively happen in January and February 2018. I wonder if we're "to that point" yet.

This entire proposal sounds like a move from MediaWiki to WordPress or similar. This wouldn't be very surprising, but it will obviously be disappointing. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Message from a community stakeholder

Dear @Heather (WMF): while I agree that the WMF website might need an update to appeal more to external audiences and I appreciate the work you are doing in that direction, I consider that this update should not happen at any cost. More particularly, since the WMF is a global organization, that should be reflected on the website with translations into as many different languages as possible. Additionally, as already expressed on the mailing list, I consider the Wikimedia Blog a shared space between the WMF, several other organizations, and community members, as such I find inapropriate to change its url to the WMF website. --Micru (talk) 16:30, 14 June 2018 (UTC)