Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising Update - Japan - Focus Group and Survey Findings

[Yusuke Matsubara]

Thanks for sharing the update, Seddon. It indeed contains a wealth of
information on readers from Japan.

Could you please expand on this:

> We found a more urgent, direct translation was perceived as better than a 
> more natural translation.

I have just skimmed it, so I might have missed something, but the PDF
you linked 

(Page 8, "Executive Summary: Banners, Emails, and Images") gives this
analysis:

> On explicit measures of which banner they find most visually
> appealing and which they prefer overall, readers say they prefer
> Banner B (the more polite language) over Banner A. Banner A is
> viewed as too blunt and direct.

It sounds like at least there is one factor against using banners with
a direct translation.

Best,
Yusuke

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to communicate compassionately with non-native English speakers

[Yusuke Matsubara]

> 2016-07-05 21:59 GMT+02:00 Nick Wilson (Quiddity) :
>> I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any suggestions?
>> I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and the
>> [[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find that
>> collects advice like this, is the first section at
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What page
>> might I have missed?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 5:05 AM, Birgit Müller
 wrote:

> Link it on Meta: I found
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_in_giving_a_Wikipedia_presentation
> and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations, but both pages seem to be a
> bit outdated/not visited very often.
>

Perhaps https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Writing_clearly as well?

-Yusuke

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 5:05 AM, Birgit Müller
 wrote:
> Nick, thanks for sharing! This is really awesome. (Or should I write: "This
> is helpful" to fit into the German stereotype? :D)
>
> Link it on Meta: I found
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_in_giving_a_Wikipedia_presentation
> and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations, but both pages seem to be a
> bit outdated/not visited very often.
>
> Might also make sense to link it on the general conference/Hackathon pages
> like
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hackathons/Hackathon_tips_for_organizers#Communications
> ?
>
> cheers
> Birgit
>
>
>
>
>
> 2016-07-05 21:59 GMT+02:00 Nick Wilson (Quiddity) :
>
>>
>> https://medium.com/@mollyclare/taming-the-steamroller-how-to-communicate-compassionately-with-non-native-english-speakers-d95d8d1845a0
>> A good essay.
>>
>> TL;DR: Some detailed examples of how to improve communication and
>> interactions, for the benefit of anyone who uses English as a second
>> language.
>>
>>
>> Excerpts, to whet [sharpen or stimulate] your appetite:
>>
>> > Phrasal verbs in English can be particularly hard to master. Just think
>> about “cut off” vs. “cut up” vs. “cut over” vs. “cut in” vs. “cut out” vs.
>> “cut down” vs. “cut back” and you’ll see how confusing it can be when you
>> recommend “cutting back” on something, or asking someone to “cut it out”.
>> [...]
>>
>> > Make your message very clear, especially your request. This is doubly
>> true for me, because I work with Germans, who are famously direct. The
>> American habit of softening and burying a request is just confusing and
>> pointless to them.
>>
>> > The last thing you and I want to do is overwhelm. We work across language
>> barriers, not because it’s glamorous or fun or easy, but because we care
>> about collaborating with people who are different from us [...]. And
>> non-native speakers are committing to this collaboration even more than we
>> are: they’re reaching out to us by working in English. [...]
>>
>> n.b. Yes, there are some over-generalizations and stereotypes in there.
>> It's still good overall, though! ;-)
>>
>>
>> I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any suggestions?
>> I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and the
>> [[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find that
>> collects advice like this, is the first section at
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What page
>> might I have missed?
>>
>> Quiddity
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>
>
>
> --
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> Community Communications Manager
> Software Development and Engineering
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia's 15th BD

[Yusuke Matsubara]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> You may think by now we are in the free information world, and the players of 
> the 1980 Japanese ice hockey team are on Wikipedia.
(snip)
> Japanese Wikipedia, as far as I can tell, is not better. A team of mystery 
> persons.

Try then the freely editable knowledge base. :) Two of them [1] are
now on Wikidata:
http://tinyurl.com/zganwzg
http://tinyurl.com/jgdnxwu
(click "Execute" to see the list)

Happy birthday and thanks for sharing your stories - an excellent way
to celebrate.

-Yusuke

[1] Herb Wakabayashi - apparently, a Canadian who was naturalized to
Japan later - is not in the query results. That piece of information
is missing on Wikidata and I couldn't find a credible source to cite
immediately.

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> On 2016-01-15 00:30, Mardetanha wrote:
>>
>> Dear Fellow Wikimedians
>> I would like to congratulate you on Wikipedia's 15th birthday, it was
>> historic moment for all of us, I am glad to let you know we had a
>> celebration in Tehran and we were the first country to celebrate it.
>> you can find images here
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_15_in_Iran
>> Mardetanha
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>
>
> I feel like today is time for stories, and I guess this thread is exactly
> the place we can share some stories today. I wish everybody does, since this
> is a nice way to celebrate 15y.
>
> It could be in principle anything remotely Wikimedia related. For example,
> the highest real-life rank of a person I ever blocked on Wikipedia was a
> member of the European parliament (or someone impersonating him). But these
> stories mainly reveal human stupidity, and today we want to talk more on the
> human knowledge. Therefore I am going to spend my daily quota of wikimedia-l
> post for smth else.
>
> I was born in 1967 in the Soviet Union and I am coming from a pre-internet
> generation. I first used internet in 1995 or so, past my PhD degree.
> However, I was always interested in learning things, this is probably why I
> later joined the Wikimedia movement. And I was a pretty advanced-knowledge
> teenager, knowing things my peers would normally not know anything about,
> and I was interested in all kinds of stuff: from exact sciences to history
> and languages and to geographical names. It was really painful to get any
> non-mainstream information. Let me give you a couple of example of the
> problems I encountered.
>
> One was languages. Well, for mainstream foreign languages like English or
> German it was relatively easy to find textbooks and dictionaries. They were
> nothing like modern means of language learning, for example the Teach
> Yourself series, not even speaking of online courses. Other languages were
> more difficult. Some languages were impossible. Well, I grew up in Moscow,
> which had a 10M population, and there were couple of libraries where I
> presumably could find dictionaries of even uncommon languages, but these
> were difficult to get in (normally one had to be 18 yo), they did not let
> the books out of the building, and for a number of practical reasons they
> were not really an option. On the other hand, I was hiking a lot in Central
> Asia, and I was suffering from inability to understand what the local Turkic
> names (in Kazakh and Kyrghyz mainly) mean. Well, you learn soon that Ak-Suu
> means "White river", meaning "aq" is white and "suu" is a river, but this is
> about it). So what I did I searched all available literature at home and
> around including the school library, and came up with a list of about 100
> words. This was my own, personal, self-made Kyrghyz-Russian dictionary. It
> was weird, since, for example, did not include verbs, and it did not help me
> to speak Kyrghyz in any sense - and I still do not - but it was fine to
> understand the names and to feel kind of like at home. Now we have of course
> professional dictionaries available online. (Kyrghyz is still not in a
> Google translate though).
>
> The second story. For whatever reason, when I was about twelve, I needed to
> have Japanese names. I do not remember why I needed them, but Japanese names
> were notoriously difficult to find. The books I had available only mentioned
> a few individuals. The newspapers rarely wrote about Japan, and again only
> mentioned a few individuals. Then there happened the 1980 Winter Olympics in
> Lake Placid, and Japanese team entered the ice hockey tournament. (They
> ended up last). There was a sports newspaper which I had access to, which
> published the results of the games, and of course ice hockey was at