Hi Maria,

Thanks for the questions.

On 8/29/13 6:48 PM, maria galea wrote:

1) Is Adam Frost still  the ASL editor of the SignWriting Wiki?

Yes, Adam is the main force behind the writing and editing for the Wikipedia with SignWriting.

2) Is this wiki http://www.signbank.org/wiki/  the only known wiki available for a sign language written in Signwriting?

Originally, that address was a custom server that we administered that ran on Valerie's servers.  Currently, that address forwards to http://ase.wikipedia.wmflabs.org .  This server is running on Wikimedia's servers, rather than Valerie's

The part of the URL "wmflabs.org" stands for Wikimedia Foundation Labs, aka Wikimedia Labs, aka Wikitech.
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org

Wikimedia Labs is a great environment that allows users to create their own server.  I created a custom installation for the ASL Wikipedia which I am the administrator.

Before a new language can have an official Wikipedia, it must demonstrate an active list of editors and a collection of well written articles.  New test Wikipedia projects usually start on the Wikimedia Incubator.  However, when we started the above Wikipedia project, Incubator was unable to support the SignWriting script.
http://incubator.wikimedia.org

Several months ago, I was fortunate to attend a Wikimedia Hackathon in Amsterdam. I posted a report on the discussion page.  Mine it the second entry.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013#What_I_did_in_the_hackathon_27993

I was able to talk with several people at the Hackathon and figure out a way for Incubator to support the SignWriting script.  It is a work in progress, but very promising.

If you go to the main ASL page on Wikipedia you will see note about the incubator project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language


The link will open the ASL Wikipedia on Incubator.
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/ase

Or you can go directly to the main page.
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/ase/M529x544S2ff00482x483S20500519x504S18517503x517

The discussion page is very interesting.
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wp/ase/M529x544S2ff00482x483S20500519x504S18517503x517

Later this year, I hope to address some of the formatting issues and start to move the articles from http://ase.wikipedia.wmflabs.org over to Incubator.

3) Can I still stay that its early stages of being a test/proof concept site (Frost, personal communication, June 2012) - or have things developed since then?

Being available on Incubator is a major step forward, but I think it is valid to say that it is early stages.

4) Is the information I'm reading about here (and written by Steve Slevinski)  http://signpuddle.net/download/draft-slevinski-signwriting-text-00.html#signwriting_script  up-to-date?

I did release a version draft-slevinski-signwriting-text-01, but it is consistent with version 00.  I added some of the details from "Modern SignWriting".
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-slevinski-signwriting-text-01

The symbol set has been stable since 2010 and the character encoding has been stable since January 2012.

Thank you very much for helping me out!!

Sure, I hope that helps.

Regards,
-Steve