Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the process at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate your statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the affiliates eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees. I am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are limits to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do it fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands it well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members that I am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this decision is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates, and how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in terms of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators are chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider this option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request (and suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community. So (at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Question... so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking them if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the statements. By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats
Hoi, I am the last one to say that multi-linguality is not important. However, given that the affiliates board is selected by an organisation that NEEDS to communicate in English, I disagree.
It is vital for people of the affiliates to have a reasonable understanding of English and when they do not, this is not the place to start remedying it. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 08:36, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the process at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate your statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the affiliates eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees. I am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are limits to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do it fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands it well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members that I am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this decision is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates, and how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in terms of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators are chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider this option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request (and suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community. So (at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Question... so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking them if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the statements. By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Gerard, You don’t have to be able to communicate in English to vote for the representative who needs to communicate in English Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: Sunday, 06 March 2016 9:45 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS
Hoi, I am the last one to say that multi-linguality is not important. However, given that the affiliates board is selected by an organisation that NEEDS to communicate in English, I disagree.
It is vital for people of the affiliates to have a reasonable understanding of English and when they do not, this is not the place to start remedying it. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 08:36, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the process at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate your statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the affiliates eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees. I am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are limits to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do it fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands it well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members that I am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this decision is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates, and how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in terms of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators are chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider this option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request (and suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community. So (at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Qu estions#Turnout_in_this_selection_process so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking them if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the statements. By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/St ats _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hoi, You need at least to be able to understand it in the written format. To be blunt in the final analysis it is officials who elect these seats. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 09:20, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
Hi Gerard, You don’t have to be able to communicate in English to vote for the representative who needs to communicate in English Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: Sunday, 06 March 2016 9:45 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS
Hoi, I am the last one to say that multi-linguality is not important. However, given that the affiliates board is selected by an organisation that NEEDS to communicate in English, I disagree.
It is vital for people of the affiliates to have a reasonable understanding of English and when they do not, this is not the place to start remedying it. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 08:36, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the process at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate your statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the affiliates eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees. I am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are limits to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do it fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three
"community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands it well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are
translated into Ukrainian.
They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members that I am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this decision is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or
reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates, and how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in terms of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators are chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider this option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being
not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request (and suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community. So (at least) informing your own members is
important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Qu estions#Turnout_in_this_selection_process so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking them if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the
statements.
By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/St ats _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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The affiliates should be engaging their members and their broader ccommunit/stakeholders in this process, and to do that the members should have translated material to evaluate.
-- John
Agree with John here
we are talking about two distinct needs one is the candidates being able to communicate within the boards hence the need for english,
the second which is equally important is the need for Affiliates to be able to engage their community in the decision process and its here where translations are necessary
On 6 March 2016 at 17:44, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
The affiliates should be engaging their members and their broader ccommunit/stakeholders in this process, and to do that the members should have translated material to evaluate.
-- John _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as many languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most amount of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many translation programs available.
The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from their members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as important but also a courtesy to all communities
On 6 March 2016 at 15:44, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, I am the last one to say that multi-linguality is not important. However, given that the affiliates board is selected by an organisation that NEEDS to communicate in English, I disagree.
It is vital for people of the affiliates to have a reasonable understanding of English and when they do not, this is not the place to start remedying it. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 08:36, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the
process
at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate
your
statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the
affiliates
eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees.
I
am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are
limits
to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do
it
fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that,
of
course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands
it
well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board
members
of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members
that I
am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this
decision
is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates,
and
how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in
terms
of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators
are
chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider
this
option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request
(and
suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community.
So
(at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Question...
so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking
them
if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the
statements.
By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On 2016-03-06 09:26, Gnangarra wrote:
You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as many languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most amount of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many translation programs available.
The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from their members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as important but also a courtesy to all communities
Do we have a list of languages into which the statements REALLY need to be translated? I would say, with all due respect, that translating it to Swedish and Dutch is rather a waste of time, whereas translating for example to Spanish and Italian might indeed help.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 3:37 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-03-06 09:26, Gnangarra wrote:
You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as many languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most amount of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many translation programs available.
The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from their members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as important but also a courtesy to all communities
Do we have a list of languages into which the statements REALLY need to be translated? I would say, with all due respect, that translating it to Swedish and Dutch is rather a waste of time, whereas translating for example to Spanish and Italian might indeed help.
We could use the same list of languages as the process for the community elected/selected seats?
This is also being discussed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016#Mes...
-- John Vandenberg
The voters do not have to know English. The board members of a national organisation do things for which they might or might not need knowledge of foreign languages. As antanana pointed out, five of seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine know English. The situation is similar in other chapters. Obviously those who know English take care of international projects, but the others must have the possibility to read about all the candidates, because they are also representatives of their community. I am quite sure that each affiliate will be able to find a person to translate the resumes from English into their own language, but I am also quite sure that not everybody would like to do it in the volunteer time.
Лорд Бъмбъри / Nikola Kalchev
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On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 10:56 AM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 3:37 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-03-06 09:26, Gnangarra wrote:
You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as
many
languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most
amount
of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many translation programs available.
The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from
their
members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as
important
but also a courtesy to all communities
Do we have a list of languages into which the statements REALLY need to
be
translated? I would say, with all due respect, that translating it to Swedish and Dutch is rather a waste of time, whereas translating for
example
to Spanish and Italian might indeed help.
We could use the same list of languages as the process for the community elected/selected seats?
This is also being discussed at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016#Mes...
-- John Vandenberg
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Nataliia,
You asked the WMF to fund and commission translations for the election.
I am not the WMF and do not know what they might think, but I wanted to carry on the conversation. One part of your concern that I would like to address is pricing. You suggested that for a small amount of money, translation could be done of election writings. You say, "If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated".
The active Wikipedia community needs perhaps 10-25 languages, and maybe we could select 15. If we hired a translation service for this amount of text and that many languages, the cost I would expect is not less than USD $75,000. I think that if we discuss your request, we should begin by imagining it as a request for $75,000 to go to a translation company. I am not sure why you mentioned a $6 price. This would not be inexpensive.
Can you please clarify how much money you are proposing be spent on translation?
yours,
Hello!
The pages were marked for translation but no notification was sent out asking for help with them. A mass message to the translators via Meta and an email to the translators mailing list might help to get extra help with the translations.
Regards, Luis El 06/03/2016 03:56, "John Mark Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com escribió:
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 3:37 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-03-06 09:26, Gnangarra wrote:
You would think though that someone who wanted to represent all of the affiliates would endeavor to have their statement translated into as
many
languages as possible to ensure their message got heard by the most
amount
of people, even if they did it themselves using one of the many translation programs available.
The affiliates if they are transparent will be asking for input from
their
members as to who they should be supporting, I'd consider it as
important
but also a courtesy to all communities
Do we have a list of languages into which the statements REALLY need to
be
translated? I would say, with all due respect, that translating it to Swedish and Dutch is rather a waste of time, whereas translating for
example
to Spanish and Italian might indeed help.
We could use the same list of languages as the process for the community elected/selected seats?
This is also being discussed at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016#Mes...
-- John Vandenberg
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Is it a written rule that one needs to know English to participate in Wikimedia's governance?
If it isn't, then the word "need" must not be used about it. If it is, it must be changed (and that would be a topic for a different thread).
English is an important practicality, but demanding it goes again the Internationalism guiding principle. Most people in the world don't know English.
Nat points out an important problem correctly. Rejecting it outright is wrong.
Whether her proposed solution is right? - I'm not sure, because the resources are limited, and we do try to stick to volunteers whenever possible. Also, from experience, paid translation of Wikimedia materials tends to be bad - professional translators who aren't Wikimedians are remarkably bad at understanding our jargon (and I don't blame them!)
A reasonable compromise, which doesn't require a lot of discussion, for the current case is to find a list of eligible voters who don't know English and to proritize their languages somehow. Also, I'd imagine that a potential board member should be able to find somebody to translate at least her or his page ;)
The Foundation could think of a better way to accommodate this better in the future; at the very least, prepare the lists of required languages earlier. בתאריך 6 במרץ 2016 09:45, "Gerard Meijssen" gerard.meijssen@gmail.com כתב:
Hoi, I am the last one to say that multi-linguality is not important. However, given that the affiliates board is selected by an organisation that NEEDS to communicate in English, I disagree.
It is vital for people of the affiliates to have a reasonable understanding of English and when they do not, this is not the place to start remedying it. Thanks, GerardM
On 6 March 2016 at 08:36, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the
process
at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate
your
statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the
affiliates
eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees.
I
am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are
limits
to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do
it
fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that,
of
course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands
it
well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board
members
of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members
that I
am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this
decision
is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates,
and
how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in
terms
of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators
are
chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider
this
option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request
(and
suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community.
So
(at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Question...
so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking
them
if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the
statements.
By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats
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I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF BoT election pages is important.
To reach the goal where "every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" the wikimedia movement needs to prioritize translation as a regular part of key processes.
We are failing at this today. The wikimedia movement lacks a clear strategy to shift the cost (funds and human resources) from non-English speaking volunteers to the broader wikimedia movement.
I welcome a hearty discussion about how the Affiliate-selected Board of Trustee election can be made more accessible to more non-English speaking people. And also a larger discussion as part of the WMF Strategic Plan discussion, and the upcoming WMf Annual Plan. Warm regards, Sydney User:FloNight
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 2:36 AM, attolippip attolippip@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
As you are (probably) aware, the 2016 affiliate-selected Board seats process has started already. And I do think that the process is broken somewhere [1]. The democracy principles even in my country, though it is far from being a role model for transparency and governance, state that people are equal and they have rights and responsibilities. But the process at the moment is not fair and equal footing is not provided for. It is great to have dedicated friends across the Movement that can translate your statement into German or Chinese, but as long as not all statements are translated into the languages used in all affiliates eligible to vote, I deem the process broken.
Thus I formally request that WMF spend enough resources to have all nominations pages translated into all languages requested by the affiliates eligible to vote [2] [3] and all languages used already by the nominees. I am sure that the three facilitators cannot provide it. And there are limits to what volunteers can do [4] or how fast. If WMF refuses, I am going to use my own money [5], it costs 150 UAH (around 6 USD) to have a page translated into Swedish, for example :) I can manage 7 pages translated into as many languages as my personal budget will allow, but I shall do it fairly at least, so we won’t have Susanna’s statement only in English and Spanish, while Osmar’s is also in German, Catalan and French. WMF spends considerable resources (mostly in staff time) on supporting the three "community-elected" seats, but these two seats are not lesser board seats than the three "community" ones.
The nominees write their statement in English. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But for a tiny little (and big) thing: not everybody understands it well enough to make an informed choice. But even among seven board members of Wikimedia Ukraine, two DO NOT SPEAK English, so they can read the statements only if they [the statements] are translated into Ukrainian. They have no choice, actually. In discussing whether to endorse my candidacy, they either have to believe the rest of the Board members that I am the most wonderful candidate and the others are just not as wonderful and that’s it, or they are to ignore the Board meeting where this decision is to be made. They can spend time editing Wikipedia or reading instead.
And beyond the language issue, there is the informing and participation issue: I am not sure how this process is organised in other affiliates, and how you make your decisions to vote for this or that possibility (in terms of this, I believe that there are seven possibilities presented at the moment, by us, as nominees. So you can accept or decline what we seven offer). You (actually) do not know us and if we are going to be great or poor as Board members of WMF, and if we are the right-for-the-moment choice, but you are going to choose. Are you really going to choose just based on your personal contacts? Remember, in most cases administrators are chosen more objectively, as it is almost impossible to get to know them first personally. They are ‘judged’ by their deeds before, during and after… Were you going to ask your communities what they think about the candidates? And the members of your affiliate? If not, please consider this option. We do have a sad example of an appointed Board member being not accepted by us, as the Community.
I am sorry for the long letter. I do believe I have a right to request (and suggest) this. I was a part of a team that made sure that the Ukrainian community REALLY knows about the elections so the eligible users on UKWP have voted [6] [7] And we really worked to make that happen. As you can see, Board elections may be of great importance to the whole community. So (at least) informing your own members is important, I believe.
Best regards,
antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv
Wikimedia Ukraine
[1] There is a question about the ‘turnout in this selection process’
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Question... so you’d think that people care. But do they? Really? [2] I think that contacting each affiliate eligible to vote and asking them if they need help to translate the statements and if yes, what languages are required by memberships/affiliates’ leadership to read the statements. By doing this we also make sure that they are aware of the upcoming elections and are engaged
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[4] Because they just may be not willing to do it
[5] well, I was going to translate into Ukrainian all statement anyway, translating is the best way to read the statement thoughtfully :) [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-May/077966.html [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Stats _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 2016-03-11 15:58, Sydney Poore wrote:
I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF BoT election pages is important.
To reach the goal where "every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" the wikimedia movement needs to prioritize translation as a regular part of key processes.
We are failing at this today. The wikimedia movement lacks a clear strategy to shift the cost (funds and human resources) from non-English speaking volunteers to the broader wikimedia movement.
I welcome a hearty discussion about how the Affiliate-selected Board of Trustee election can be made more accessible to more non-English speaking people. And also a larger discussion as part of the WMF Strategic Plan discussion, and the upcoming WMf Annual Plan. Warm regards, Sydney User:FloNight
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
Hi Sydney,
as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid there are two things mixed up here. There a big step between making the candidate statements and answers to questions to all individuals who are eligible to vote at the forthcoming elections, and providing the sum of human knowledge in all languages.
In practical terms, every person who speaks Dutch and is a member of Wikimedia Nederland / Belgium also speaks English and would be able to understand the candidate statements. On the other hand, Dutch as a language is spoken by 20M people, and we need of course to consider support of Dutch Wikipedia / sister projects / Wikidata, Commons, and Mediawiki interface with a high priority. As another example, I believe we have zero Quechua speakers who are eligible to vote, and translating statements into Quechuan languages would be a loss of time. On the other hand, these languages have 9 million speakers, and definitely need their own projects.
I agree that both should be discussed, but let us separate the things. One issue is a global priority of languages in terms of the projects etc and whether they need to be supported, another issue is whether there are some languages the statements of the candidates should be urgently translated to in order to help the voters decide.
Cheers Yaroslav
Hello Yaroslav
Thanks for your reply.
My point is that there is no clear strategy or process for prioritizing which pages get translated. So, perhaps it is easy for some people to be mixed up.
But I'm pretty confident that I understand the issues, and I'm not getting anything mixed up. :-)
Looking at the upcoming election's pages on Meta, I see that many of the basic pages that describe the election are not translated into more than a few languages and those are not up to date.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats_election_FAQ#...
Additionally, I feel strongly that most everyone in the wikimedia movement should have the opportunity to read the candidate statements and Q&A of the future WMF Trustees. But right now we don't have anyway of making sure that even the languages of voting Chapters or thematic organizations have a good method to get it done in a timely way.
It is troubling to me that an Affiliated organization's Board needs to be proficient in English to do the translation. Not to mention that the Board members don't select the timing of this election and may have serious limitations on their time that prevents doing the translation.
This dynamic in the wikimedia movement needs to change. It is exclusionary and unwelcoming.
We can not reach the people that the wikimedia movement needs to reach if the burden of translation of these important official WMF processes a completely volunteer process.
Going forward, I would like to see the percentage of pages translated as a metric that is tracked, reported, and discussed regularly.
Warm regards, Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-03-11 15:58, Sydney Poore wrote:
I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF BoT election pages is important.
To reach the goal where "every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" the wikimedia movement needs to prioritize translation as a regular part of key processes.
We are failing at this today. The wikimedia movement lacks a clear strategy to shift the cost (funds and human resources) from non-English speaking volunteers to the broader wikimedia movement.
I welcome a hearty discussion about how the Affiliate-selected Board of Trustee election can be made more accessible to more non-English speaking people. And also a larger discussion as part of the WMF Strategic Plan discussion, and the upcoming WMf Annual Plan. Warm regards, Sydney User:FloNight
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
Hi Sydney,
as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid there are two things mixed up here. There a big step between making the candidate statements and answers to questions to all individuals who are eligible to vote at the forthcoming elections, and providing the sum of human knowledge in all languages.
In practical terms, every person who speaks Dutch and is a member of Wikimedia Nederland / Belgium also speaks English and would be able to understand the candidate statements. On the other hand, Dutch as a language is spoken by 20M people, and we need of course to consider support of Dutch Wikipedia / sister projects / Wikidata, Commons, and Mediawiki interface with a high priority. As another example, I believe we have zero Quechua speakers who are eligible to vote, and translating statements into Quechuan languages would be a loss of time. On the other hand, these languages have 9 million speakers, and definitely need their own projects.
I agree that both should be discussed, but let us separate the things. One issue is a global priority of languages in terms of the projects etc and whether they need to be supported, another issue is whether there are some languages the statements of the candidates should be urgently translated to in order to help the voters decide.
Cheers Yaroslav
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On 2016-03-11 18:00, Sydney Poore wrote:
Hello Yaroslav
Thanks for your reply.
My point is that there is no clear strategy or process for prioritizing which pages get translated. So, perhaps it is easy for some people to be mixed up.
But I'm pretty confident that I understand the issues, and I'm not getting anything mixed up. :-)
<...>
This dynamic in the wikimedia movement needs to change. It is exclusionary and unwelcoming.
We can not reach the people that the wikimedia movement needs to reach if the burden of translation of these important official WMF processes a completely volunteer process.
Going forward, I would like to see the percentage of pages translated as a metric that is tracked, reported, and discussed regularly.
Warm regards, Sydney
Thank you, it more clear now.
However, my point is we can not translate everything to all languages. we do not have and we will never have resources for that. We need to prioritize. I would say in the case of the upcoming elections, it would be great to know what languages we need to translate the documents into - the languages spoken by the members of boards of the organizations who actually intend to vote, and only in the case they do not speak English. I asked this already a week ago in this very same topic of the mailing list, and got a reply from someone (was it Amir? - sorry, I can not easily check it now) that there is a generic list of languages important messages get translated into. In this situation, I would say, we need first to make a custom list for these elections - hopefully it is more narrow than the generic list, and then see what is the best way to proceed. I am not sure there is a general solutions - probably different documents just need to be translated into different sets of languages.
Cheers Yaroslav
I have been involved with efforts to translate medical content into as many languages as possible since 2012 in collaboration with Translators Without Borders, donations of translation time by for-profit translation companies, and movement volunteers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas...
It takes a lot of time and effort to build capacity and to coordinate volunteers. I have personally hired a project manager to help and the WMF was providing support to one collaborator through an IEG.
I guess the question is how do we prioritize this work versus other translation efforts? We switched to writing three to four paragraph simplier summaries of topic in English specifically for translation as translating entire high quality articles was too resource intensive.
James
On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
On 2016-03-11 18:00, Sydney Poore wrote:
Hello Yaroslav
Thanks for your reply.
My point is that there is no clear strategy or process for prioritizing which pages get translated. So, perhaps it is easy for some people to be mixed up.
But I'm pretty confident that I understand the issues, and I'm not getting anything mixed up. :-)
<...>
This dynamic in the wikimedia movement needs to change. It is exclusionary and unwelcoming.
We can not reach the people that the wikimedia movement needs to reach if the burden of translation of these important official WMF processes a completely volunteer process.
Going forward, I would like to see the percentage of pages translated as a metric that is tracked, reported, and discussed regularly.
Warm regards, Sydney
Thank you, it more clear now.
However, my point is we can not translate everything to all languages. we do not have and we will never have resources for that. We need to prioritize. I would say in the case of the upcoming elections, it would be great to know what languages we need to translate the documents into - the languages spoken by the members of boards of the organizations who actually intend to vote, and only in the case they do not speak English. I asked this already a week ago in this very same topic of the mailing list, and got a reply from someone (was it Amir? - sorry, I can not easily check it now) that there is a generic list of languages important messages get translated into. In this situation, I would say, we need first to make a custom list for these elections - hopefully it is more narrow than the generic list, and then see what is the best way to proceed. I am not sure there is a general solutions - probably different documents just need to be translated into different sets of languages.
Cheers Yaroslav
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Hi,
2016-03-11 15:58 GMT+01:00 Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com:
I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF BoT election pages is important.
I agree. FWIW I havce asked in the WM-IT members mailing list if somebody can help with Italian translation. As a member of the board of WM-IT if our members request it I would also been open to consider to pay for a translator.
C
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