User blog:Marphimon/Introducing IVT

Hello Wikia community! I am Marc-Philipp (also known as MtaÄ). I have been editing on Wikia since 2008 and a member of the International Volunteer Team (IVT) since 2009. Today, I wanted to give you a little more insight into what "working on International Wikia" means and introduce the international team.



What is the IVT?
Wikia is around the world and has a vibrant international community of readers and editors. The IVT is a team of helpers on Wikia that work on international communities, with a special emphasis on the German, Spanish, Italian, French, Polish and Russian communities.

Supporting our international communities means that we are supporting local communities by answering questions in our local community forums, writing help pages and translating blog posts into the respective language. Additionally, we often provide assistance with CSS or JavaScript specific questions, as well as basic to very advanced wikitext support. We also give users support on topics like how to solve community problems (e.g. dealing with spammers, vandals or difficult users), and with adoption and spotlight requests.

Other important topics we're working on are projects to improve language-specific community engagement – every nation's people are different and so are its users! Not everything works for all languages – so selecting topics for new wikis we could start according to the trends in the language is important.

Meet the full international team - find us here.

Wikia Features & Internationalization
Another important aspect of our international work is giving feedback on internationalization for new features. It is important that all our features are translatable into all languages, so that people who don't understand English can enjoy and use them on their wikis as well! Personally, I work on translating features into German. If you are interested in helping with this or another language, the international community would love your help. You can learn more here.

Other International Focuses
Another interesting thing I'm personally working on is to adapt all logos and graphics to other languages, as well as help manage Wikia's international social media feeds. You can find those international social media feeds on our team page soon.

Interested in getting involved or learning more? Let us know in the comments below or stop by translators.wikia.com.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the International Volunteer Team and that you now have a better understanding of what we work on. As a quick quiz: Do you know how many languages Wikia is offered in? Leave your guesses in the comments below. Happy editing!