[Wikimediaindia-l] Philosophical view on Google translated articles

[Ravishankar]

Hi Achal and Samuel,

Thank you for your mails.

***What is the board's view on paid editing?***

I think the issue is getting diluted / distracted being seen on a
translation kit based view.

The issue is not the use of the GTT itself. The issue is who uses, how they
use it and why they use it.

May be the WMF was aware of the operation. But the local communities were
not. We were scratching our heads for almost 4,5 months before "discovering"
that Google was doing this. This is not in anyway transparent.

So far as I have observed the operation is capable of doing severe damage to
the community dynamics (Regular Wikipedians Vs Google Translators? Who
contributes more? Can paid contribution be compared to volunteer effort? Is
translating the only wiki work? Why preferential treatment for Google
translators? Should the community's time be wasted in cleaning up paid
worker's mess).

If the community is not healthy and united, the project will die soon. These
are more serious issues than the quality of articles.

Ravi
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