Maybe some of you would be interested in this event...
After two assemblies at December 2005 which was in real life, our
other assemblies are on our wiki (http://rs.vikimedija.org/).
The process is different then in real life gatherings, so we made a
different time line of assemblies. Our present time line is made
because of different dynamics of talking face to face and over wiki.
This time line for sure is not the best, but it is for sure better
then to introduce time line from real life assemblies. And, of course,
if someone has good ideas related to our "network assemblies", we are
open for suggestions.
Our assembly has three phases and each of them has duration of one
week: (1) proposals for assembly agenda (for this assembly: 18th-24th
December); (2) discussion about proposals (25th-31st December); and
(3) voting (1st-7th January).
I have to mention that our Executive board has power just to do
something which Assembly is not able to do because of time. Because of
that on this assembly I put the proposal to have permanent assemblies
divided quarterly (just to have the beginning and the end of assembly)
and our 5th (winter) assembly will be kept between January 15th and
March 15th 2007.
If the proposal related to permanent assemblies passes (I don't see
any reason why not to pass), anyone who want to propose to assembly
something would be able to do so and, in general, one week would be
needed for discussion and voting.
I'm still catching up with foundation-l since joining. I had no idea so
much discussion happened here regarding FundCORE.
All the questions/comments are paraphrased.
> Translating is very hard without context. I can't tell if something's
> a noun or a verb, nor what gender to use for adjectives.
I'm very new to internationalization, so please be patient. I'll have to
add context explanations to each translated word/phrase. Also keep in
mind that the previous fundraising report system was English-only, so I
have no existing translation set on which to build.
> Using flags for languages is terrible.
I agree. It happened to be the default for the internationalization
system I'm using, but I've disabled it now.
> Some languages people want don't have translations for Drupal's core
> already, and translating Drupal's core for these languages isn't
> feasible.
For languages that don't have Drupal translations already, we only need
to translate the very limited set of Drupal phrases and words that are
publicly visible. Well over 90% of the Drupal core translation is for
the administrative area, which does not need internationalization into
every language because very few people use it. About 10 additional
words/phrases require translation if no Drupal core translation exists.
> I've translated "Fundraising C.O.R.E." to another language, but the
> title for the site remains untranslated.
The translation templates for Drupal modules are automatically created,
and I should have pruned it better. "Fundraising C.O.R.E." should either
not be translated at all or translated everywhere. I don't know how to
change the site title for each language (or even if it's possible), so
I'll probably opt for the former.
> The "coming soon" announcement isn't offered for translation.
That's intentional. I change it so frequently that it would be in
English most of the time, anyway. It's also non-essential to using the site.
> "Central Online Reporting Engine" isn't available for translation.
I'm working on this. I think this needs to be localized. Unfortunately,
how to do so is not obvious because it's not part of my module; it's
part of the global site configuration.
> Why not just use MediaWiki? It has translations for many of these
> languages.
1. I would have to write significantly more code to offer the same
features from within MediaWiki.
2. Our fundraising database is CiviCRM, which is Drupal-based.
3. I hope to roll many of the features of FundCORE into CiviCRM itself.
If the initial code is Drupal-based, this will be far easier.
4. The CivicSpace team (Drupal-based) is interested in contributing to
the project.
5. Drupal is free software, so it's not morally worse for the Foundation
to use.
6. Creating a Drupal module that integrates with CiviCRM is a more
valuable contribution to the free software community than contributing a
MediaWiki extension that integrates with CiviCRM.
7. Cherokee is the first and only translation we've been offered that
doesn't already have extensive Drupal support. Now that a member of our
community has generously contributed a full Drupal core translation,
this is no longer an issue for us. The Drupal community has also benefited.
8. Most of the translation effort is for my module. MediaWiki's existing
translations do not help here.
> What are the current top priorities for FundCORE?
- Right-aligning amounts
- Filtering comments for donations less than US$5 or equivalent
- Implementing full support for matching donations in the meter and on
the donations listing:
<http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/payments/meter/index2.php>
> Dictionary translations are terrible. Why would anyone suggest we do
> one?
I'll take the heat of first noting this in an email to Brad. I wasn't
expecting it to be re-published to foundation-l. My intention was to
relay how simple I thought the translations would be, not to have people
without any language experience blindly use a dictionary. I apologize
for any confusion.
Sincerely,
David Strauss
Now the home page of its website says,
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
Is it a final version we can call for translators (at least for website)?
Besides that, one day I found a question about that on feedback page.
An anonymous inquirer was worried if married people had no seat in the
world we've envisioned ;) It is always difficult to talk without
misunderstanding .....
--
KIZU Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
I examined the .pot files for the Drupal translation, and they're
unfortunately in the wrong format. The msgid must contain the original
text, and the msgstr must contain the translation.
Example:
msgid "I have %number."
msgstr "Ich habe %number."
Also, the ".pot" extension is for translation templates, where the
msgstrs are all empty. The ".po" extension is for translations. This
second problem is trivial to fix.
I can fix the files with some script to reprocess the translations into
the correct format, but it will take another day or two considering
other things I need to complete before heading to Canada for the holidays.
Of course, we're still very grateful for the translation work. I look
forward to offering Cherokee as a language option on FundCORE.
David
P.S. Normally I'd reply to preserve threading, but I just subscribed to
foundation-l to keep up with this issue.
I have cleaned up the Cherokee Wikipedia Foundation site, but I need to
update the banner to add the fundraiser. It currently still
reflects Wikimania of last year (????) Which MediaWiki variable
controls the banners on the top of the wiki?
Jeff
Recently, Tim enabled [[m:Oversight]] on all wikis (earlier it was
only enabled on en: and test:). En en: the situation is "under
control", as the Arbitration Committee handles and decides upon
requests about oversight status. For other wikis, however, there are
no policies on the matter, so we need to make one (since oversight is
about the same level as checkuser). My suggestion is that we should
use the checkuser requirements for oversight as well (e.g. more than
25 votes, 70%-80% support, at least two users meeting these criteria).
What do you think about this?
Also, I think a system should be established for stewards to perform
oversight globallt, much like [[m:RfCU]]. However, since requests for
oversighting will naturally be a lot more sensitive than requests for
checkuser information, I think that we should use a mailing list for
such requests, either using the existing oversight-l or stewards-l, or
creating a new mailing list, for example oversight-requests-l or
something like that, so that people can send their requests there, to
be handled by stewards. Does that sound like a good idea?
--
Best regards,
Jon Harald Søby
Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby(a)gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby
I noticed that all the other completed translations seem to be working
on the CORE site, so I guess someone figured out how to map them all
in. Can the Cherokee be posted in at this point?
Jeff