Bounjour Valentin, 

je suis dessolée que je dois écrire en anglais, j'espère que c'est utile quand même…

I think even generating discussion about this within French MediaWiki aligns with Wikimedia Foundation strategic goals, as it stimulates discussion around values and norms and who is included and excluded. So regardless of outcome in code, I think you've already had impact in culture. 

I value your efforts, but am not in a position to influence the code outcome since I'm not involved with MediaWiki and my French isn't good enough to meaningfully contribute… though I appreciated practicing my French in reading the discussion thread you shared :)

When I was in a similar position recently I backed up my contributions to GitHub https://github.com/cobismith/wikipedia-edits so that if it got deleted, I still had the work I'd done on hand and documented with dates etc. as evidence. Though discussions/contributions are meant to stay on Wikipedia, someone had started a combination of merge/deletion processes that would have removed the contribution history, so I found having a backup I could control myself reassuring. (in the end the contributions in question stayed, for anyone interested in that see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ancestral_domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lands_inhabited_by_indigenous_peoples) 

I am one of at least dozens of people around the world involved in researching representation issues like this linked to my PhD, so even if your changes are reverted, it's good to document these discussions and processes. Particularly cases like this when you attempt to follow process and begin with no objections enthusiastically, then suddenly someone starts rejecting your contribution, which inevitably impacts your own attitude to contributing. See for example this recent research on shared leadership in Wikipedia: http://www.citeulike.org/user/cobi/article/12773359 - you're being a leader Valentin :)

I'm not sure if you're already involved in this, but for any women wanting to back up code or markup for open projects, you can do it privately (though I think doing so publicly helps raise awareness) for free via: http://adainitiative.org/2013/06/supporting-477-women-in-open-source-through-github-and-ada-initiative-partnership/

I hope this helps a little :)

Cheers, Cobi
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alixos



On Nov 16, 2556 BE, at 6:44 PM, Valentin Lorentz wrote:

(English version below)

Bonjour,

J’ai commencé la semaine dernière à corriger la traduction française de
MediaWiki, en respectant les accords si possible (l’information n’est
pas toujours fournie par le code à la traduction, mais j’ai ouvert un
ticket à propos de cela [1]), et en affichant une grammaire neutre sinon.

[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57076 (en anglais)

Vu l’absence de réaction, j’ai pensé que ça passait bien et j’ai
continué, mais un fil de discussion a été créé pour en discuter, et le
consensus semble aller vers une annulation de la plupart des changements
que j’ai effectués.
J’en ai discuté sur IRC (#geekfeminism sur freenode), et on m’a
conseillé de le mentionner ici, pour « avoir quelques allié-e-s en
faveur du changement »(traduction de la formulation originale).

Voici donc la discussion qui a été créée :
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Thread:Portal_talk:Fr/De_la_traduction_des_genres_en_fran%C3%A7ais

Cordialement,
Valentin

PS : Je viens de m’abonner à cette liste de diffusion pour poster ce
message, désolé si ce n’est pas le bon endroit pour le faire.


=======================

Hello,

I started last week to fix French translation of MediaWiki, trying to
respect grammatical gender if possible (the gender of the user is not
always available from translated messages, but I opened an issue about
it [1]), and displaying a neutral form otherwise.

[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57076

As nobody reacted, I thought it was ok and resumed, but a talk thread
has been created to discuss it, and the consensus seems to be to revert
most of these changes.
I talked about it on IRC (#geekfeminism on freenode), and I have been
adviced to mention it here, to “have a few allies for the change”.

Here is the discussion that has been created:
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Thread:Portal_talk:Fr/De_la_traduction_des_genres_en_fran%C3%A7ais

Best regards,
Valentin

PS : I just subscribe to this mailing list to post this message, sorry
if it is not the right place to do it.


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