I wrote:
[...] I got another, loosely idea: Could we use the language templates in the descriptions to build a "missing matrix" of translations, for translators? I speak English and German; I would like to see images that only have a German description, and translate it to English. A special site (toolserver?) could show me the image and the German description, I enter the English one in a text box, and go to a page with everything prepared for me, just click save and be done.
Go ahead: Toolserver's Templatetiger database has - though rather raw - data for Commons (cf. URI:http://toolserver.org/~kolossos/templatetiger/tt-table4.php?template=Information&lang=commonswiki&where=&is=). Problems I see:
- Tagging those pictures where the language of the descrip- tion is not specified (cf. [[File:Quail1.PNG]] (English) vs. [[File:Helsinkitram.jpg]] ((probably :-)) German).
- Dealing with all the pictures that do not use {{Information}}.
BTW, it would be awesome for traceability if this transla- tion thingy (and similar Toolserver tools like the Interwi- ki-Link-Checker) could execute those edits using the login credentials of the user who supplied the translation. (Yes, that's a bad idea if interpreted as written - I'm thinking of some JavaScript gadget that fires up an edit window for a random page from the hidden [[Category:Needs Language Tag- ging]] or [[Category:Has German and needs English Transla- tion]] followed by another gadget that positions the cursor in the sourcecode field accordingly and presets the summary line with "Added English translation.".)
Tim