[Translators-l] MediaWiki 1.12 about to be branched: please give localisation a push

[Siebrand Mazeland]

Dear translators,

According to the last 'CTO weekly report'[1] Brion is about to
branch MediaWiki version 1.12 this week. That means that this
version of MediaWiki is the version of the software that new
users of MediaWiki will be using for a while (outside of
Wikimedia not everyone is always running the 'bleeding edge'
version of MediaWiki).

Even though this version of MediaWiki will have the largest
increase ever in support for languages, this is the time to
finish those loose ends.

Please check if you have any remaining translations in the
core messages or if you can at least complete the most often
used messages in the languages you are able to contribute to
in Betawiki[2].

End of year 2007 I sent out an overview of MediaWiki
localisation[3]. In that report I set a few ambitious goals
for MediaWiki localisation in 2008. I am happy to report that
we are well on track to reaching those goals[4],[5]. However,
it is very important to realise that localisation is an
ongoing process: messages are being added constantly and
sometimes they also change. These are all things that are made
visible when using Betawiki as the platform for MediaWiki
localisation. Based on user input, we also keep on improving
the tools used.

We still need more translators for languages that have not
been worked on for a while and languages that still have large
gaps in localisation.

Some localisation statistics for languages that have the 10
largest Wikipedias:

|-------------------------------------------|
| language  | mostused | core |  WMF | ext* |
|-------------------------------------------|
| English   |  100%    | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| German    |  100%    | 100% |  99% |  65% |
| French    |  100%    | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Polish    |  100%    | 100% |  80% |  36% |
| Japanse   |  100%    | 100% |  58% |  32% |
| Italian   |  100%    | 100% |  64% |  26% |
| Dutch     |  100%    | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Portugese |  100%    | 100% | 100% |  74% |
| Spanish   |  100%    |  92% |  24% |  16% |
| Swedish   |  100%    | 100% | 100% |  56% |
|-------------------------------------------|

* Message groups are: most often used messages (mostused), all messages
  in standard MediaWiki (core), all messages used in extensions that
  Wikimedia wikis use (WMF), all extension messages (ext)

Have a great wiki experience and thank you for your help!

Cheers!

Siebrand

[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-February/036405.html
[2] http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&task=untranslated&group=core
[3] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2007-December/000571.html
[4] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics
[5] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics_in_time