Hi Sylvian,
Thanks for commenting. I too have some trust in WMF research, but my focus here is on WMF courtesy to the community. Speaking only for myself, I don't appreciate short notice from WMF when I think there is no compelling reason for WMF to rush the community into responding to a WMF decision. Also, giving the community more notice allows people to plan and organize their schedules further in advance rather than making people feel that they should drop an already planned activity in order to respond to a short notice decision or request from WMF.
WMF has adequate financial resources to hire professional translators for short notice requests of a few sentences, and the community is not obligated to fulfill WMF's every desire with volunteer time, especially not on short notice and when WMF can easily hire contractors to do the work. The time of skilled good-faith volunteers is very valuable, and I want to insulate good-faith volunteers from becoming frustrated or feeling overused by WMF.
I think that you are being nice by agreeing to accept short notice requests, but I think that in general WMF should avoid making short notice requests or decisions that affect others, especially volunteers. Sometimes short notice is difficult to avoid, and I don't want to set unrealistic expectatations, but for this request I see no compelling reason for short notice. A wise person once wrote, "Your failure to plan does not constitute my emergency."
Hi,
I agree that translators may wish that they had the possibility to
translate WMF notices for their language community, but I also trust
Wikimedia in its ability to study the involvement of the various
communities in the movement and to hear from them, to fight against
imbalances and monopolies. Therefore I think that if the WMF staff think
they will be more efficient by giving short notice requests to
translators, they should feel free to do it. In any case, there will
still be missing translations.
Kind regards,
Sylvain Chiron
Le 20/12/2018 à 00:56, Pine W a écrit :
> Hi Elana,
>
> I continue to think that a rush here is not needed. The strategy process
> is a long term one, and different from something like a response to a
> security incident where a short turnaround may be highly desirable. I
> would like the strategy process to proceed at a reasonable pace, and I
> think that a request for translations into all of the languages that you
> mentioned in seven days would be okay.
>
> A high level of expertise is not the same as a high level of availabiliy.
>
> In general, I don't take it very well when WMF makes short notice
> requests to volunteers without a compelling reason.
>
> I want to keep the strategy process moving forward, but I also want WMF
> to be respectful of volunteers' time. I think that a 24 hour turnaround
> here is unnecessary. I can't stop WMF from making short notice requests
> for volunteers' time, and likely some volunteers will generously respond
> in that timeframe, but I think that short notice requests should
> generally be avoided as a matter of courtesy even if they are realistic.
> Volunteers will be plenty active during WMF's holidays. If WMF wants to
> have translations done before WMF holidays then I think that WMF should
> make the request further in advance.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 3:00 PM Elena Lappen <elappen@wikimedia.org
> <mailto:elappen@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
> Hi Pine, As I’m sure you can appreciate, we want to do our best to
> get the job posting to the community as quickly as possible in order
> to maximize the amount of time potential applicants have to give it
> consideration. We are shooting for approximately 24 hours, but may
> re-evaluate depending on the translations we receive. We took
> multiple factors into account when making this determination: the
> short length of the translation (one paragraph), the high level of
> expertise in the translator community, and the fact that many in the
> community may be beginning their holidays next week. Furthermore,
> based on past experience, we know that a little over 24 hours is
> generally sufficient. Again, we may revisit this depending on
> progress. Best, Elena
>
>
> --
> Elena Lappen
> Community Relations Specialist
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
>
>
>> On Dec 19, 2018, at 1:53 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com
>> <mailto:wiki.pine@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello Elena,
>>
>> I am glad to hear that WMF wants to do outreach in a variety of
>> languages. However, I have a concern. Volunteers in many
>> languages, in my experience, don't simply appear within 24 hours
>> when someone wants a non-urgent translation, and I think that as a
>> matter of courtesy WMF should give more than 24 hours' notice for
>> a request of this nature. I think that 7 days might be realistic.
>> Is there a reason for such short notice, and is there a reason
>> that WMF cannot wait longer than 24 hours for a translation before
>> posting this message to village pumps if a volunteer does not
>> provide one within 24 hours?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018, 1:34 PM Elena Lappen <elappen@wikimedia.org
>> <mailto:elappen@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> We are looking to spread the word about nine new Strategy
>> Liaison positions with the Movement Strategy Team.
>>
>> The brief message to be translated is linked here:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ELappen_(WMF)/Sandbox
>>
>> We would like it translated into Arabic, French, German,
>> Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.We
>> will post it at those local Village Pumps in ~24 hours.
>>
>> If you want to learn more about the position or are interested
>> in applying, follow the link in the post. Please also pass it
>> along to others you think may be interested.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Elena
>>
>> --
>> Elena Lappen
>> Community Relations Specialist
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
>>
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