Test features in a right-to-left language environment

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Wikimedia sites are facing many technical changes, like VisualEditor, Wikidata, Flow and Echo, just to name a few. As an ordinary Wikipedian, I like it very much and I’m pretty excited, but sometimes change is scary, especially for people who are working on “small” wikis. People constantly ask “Is this feature localized for my wiki?” or “Will it work properly?” and if you’re using a right-to-left (RTL) language (like Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.), an otherwise great feature can quickly become a nightmare.
Sadly, it is difficult to test these features in your language before they are enabled on Wikipedia. Even if you’re an experienced MediaWiki developer, and you can install a wiki on your own server and add these features to test them, reporting bugs is hard because a locally-hosted wiki isn’t accessible to the rest of the world.
This is why we’ve set up a public test wiki dedicated to RTL languages. Wikimedians can come and test upcoming features, and see which interface messages are translated incorrectly. They can report bugs easily, communicate with other Wikimedians who are working in RTL languages, and work with them on features. Maybe you want to be sure a feature works properly in your language, or maybe you’re just curious and you want to know what Wikipedia will look like in the future. In both cases, the RTL test wiki can help you.
You can visit the RTL test wiki at http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikitest-rtl/w/ ; we have already installed some upcoming features, but if you think something is missing, feel free to contact me or Amir Aharoni and ask us to add it. This wiki uses the Universal language selector, which means that when you open it, the language of the interface is automatically set to the one your browser requests, and you can easily change it.
We hope to see you soon on the RTL test wiki.

Amir Sarabadani (User:Ladsgroup), editor on the Persian Wikipedia and pywikipedia developer

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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[…] bugs is hard because a locally-hosted wiki isn’t accessible to the rest of the world.” said Amir Sarabadani, an editor on the Persian Wikipedia and pywikipedia developer on the Wikimedia […]