Recently, one person deleted a lot of MediaWiki pages on nl: because there was now a general translation. Apparently doing the same thing that others do is more important than doing the thing we ourselves think is best. I very much OPPOSE what is being done here, and would ask anyone to STOP FORCING US TRANSLATIONS WE DO NOT WANT!!!!!
WikipediaNL has had MediaWiki software for over 3.5 years now, and we have changed things with good reasons. Don't undo that without good reasons yourself!!!
I'm slightly confused, can you explain it further?
On 7/8/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
Recently, one person deleted a lot of MediaWiki pages on nl: because there was now a general translation. Apparently doing the same thing that others do is more important than doing the thing we ourselves think is best. I very much OPPOSE what is being done here, and would ask anyone to STOP FORCING US TRANSLATIONS WE DO NOT WANT!!!!!
WikipediaNL has had MediaWiki software for over 3.5 years now, and we have changed things with good reasons. Don't undo that without good reasons yourself!!!
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2006/7/9, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com:
I'm slightly confused, can you explain it further?
There seems to be a project, on itself a very good idea, to translate the MediaWiki texts in various languages. However, apparently someone thought those were so good (and they definitely are not) that without any further discussion they should replace what we have put on WikipediaNL ourselves. We have been working on our current versions for 3.5 years. That might be a sign that they are not very bad in most cases.
Hoi!
Well... It did not happen with pms, because we got there and had the starting pms text imported from our own. So when it got redistributed it was our stuff once again, and we manage all modifications ourselves.
It's nice to have a single interface in your language distributed all over the different wikies, I use our pms version even in en:wiki and I find it handy to have a constant UI environment, no matter what's the content language. But no doubt it's unpleasant to loose things, especially if they were elaborated in long years of work...
Maybe you could simply organise a better co-ordination level? The original files can be imported into the central distro, AFAIK. So anyone downloading mediawiki will have the best possible NL interface.
Tot ziens! Bèrto
----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "Andre Engels" andreengels@gmail.com Кому: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Отправлено: 9 июля 2006 г. 2:35 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Protest!!!!
2006/7/9, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com:
I'm slightly confused, can you explain it further?
There seems to be a project, on itself a very good idea, to translate the MediaWiki texts in various languages. However, apparently someone thought those were so good (and they definitely are not) that without any further discussion they should replace what we have put on WikipediaNL ourselves. We have been working on our current versions for 3.5 years. That might be a sign that they are not very bad in most cases.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Andre Engels wrote:
2006/7/9, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com:
I'm slightly confused, can you explain it further?
There seems to be a project, on itself a very good idea, to translate the MediaWiki texts in various languages. However, apparently someone thought those were so good (and they definitely are not) that without any further discussion they should replace what we have put on WikipediaNL ourselves. We have been working on our current versions for 3.5 years. That might be a sign that they are not very bad in most cases.
Hoi, There is indeed a project to maintain the localisation of the MediaWiki software. The great thing of this project is that it ensures that the messages are maintained when changes to the software happens. When things change, the messages are updated. It is my understanding that when the message was already updated locally it will not update the message.
It might be that one project thinks they are doing so well, it could not be done better. In the past we had to update the messages for every project individually. With the maintenance of the MediaWiki centrally, we update the localisation of the user interface for ALL projects. This is much better than one project doing adequately well and all the others being left with an incomplete localisation.
As to the quality of the localisation in Dutch, it has been based on work done by Galwaygirl done for her Kennisnet projects and it has been expanded by many Dutch Wikimedians. This standard localisation is done in such a way that it can be used on any project not just nl.wikipedia. Concluding I would say, keep up the good work and keep on top of it, that way messages will not be overwritten by messages that fit the latest and greatest version of the MediaWiki software.
Thanks, GerardM
2006/7/9, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
There is indeed a project to maintain the localisation of the MediaWiki software. The great thing of this project is that it ensures that the messages are maintained when changes to the software happens. When things change, the messages are updated. It is my understanding that when the message was already updated locally it will not update the message.
I apologize for my message; I should have kept this internal tot the Dutch Wikipedia, since, as you write, it does not seem to be part of general policy to remove local translations. Rather, this was something of a single-person action. I am now therefore starting a procedure to de-admin this specific person on nl:.
Andre Engels wrote:
2006/7/9, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
There is indeed a project to maintain the localisation of the MediaWiki software. The great thing of this project is that it ensures that the messages are maintained when changes to the software happens. When things change, the messages are updated. It is my understanding that when the message was already updated locally it will not update the message.
I apologize for my message; I should have kept this internal tot the Dutch Wikipedia, since, as you write, it does not seem to be part of general policy to remove local translations. Rather, this was something of a single-person action. I am now therefore starting a procedure to de-admin this specific person on nl:.
That's a bit harsh. Wouldn't it be easier to inform and educate them about their mistake and co-ordinate future translation efforts?
2006/7/9, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
That's a bit harsh. Wouldn't it be easier to inform and educate them about their mistake and co-ordinate future translation efforts?
This user has deleted hundreds of pages without even notifying anyone that he did so. Several people have made comments about this; he still does not seem to be of the opinion that what he did was wrong. How do you educate someone who doesn't want to be educated?
Andre Engels wrote:
2006/7/9, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
That's a bit harsh. Wouldn't it be easier to inform and educate them about their mistake and co-ordinate future translation efforts?
This user has deleted hundreds of pages without even notifying anyone that he did so. Several people have made comments about this; he still does not seem to be of the opinion that what he did was wrong. How do you educate someone who doesn't want to be educated?
Hoi, When a message has nothing specific about the nl.wikipedia, and both messages are good. It makes absolute sense to remove the local messages because this allows for upgrades when they happen for a message. I do not agree that he necessarily did wrong, quite to the contrary, I see ample room for it having been a great piece of work. Now, what does it take for people to first learn about the why, what and how WITHOUT feeling this need to start "educating"? Please assume that things are done in good faith.
The fact that several people comment does not necessarily imply that something is wrong.
Thanks, GerardM
2006/7/9, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, When a message has nothing specific about the nl.wikipedia, and both messages are good. It makes absolute sense to remove the local messages because this allows for upgrades when they happen for a message. I do not agree that he necessarily did wrong, quite to the contrary, I see ample room for it having been a great piece of work. Now, what does it take for people to first learn about the why, what and how WITHOUT feeling this need to start "educating"? Please assume that things are done in good faith.
Bad things can be done in good faith. A person who makes changes to hundreds of system messages at once, should in my opinion first consult the community to ask whether this is wanted. In this case the community was not even *informed* in advance. If messages have been changed on NL-Wikipedia, this might well have a good reason. And even if it is not, then at least some discussion before doing things like this on a large scale rather than on a few pages requires discussion first.
WikipediaNL, like the great majority of non-English Wikipedias, has strong feelings about its independence. Whether that's right or not, forcing things onto a local wiki is not the way things should work within Wikimedia.
The fact that several people comment does not necessarily imply that something is wrong.
The fact that one person does it does not necessarily imply that it is right either.
On 7/9/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
This user has deleted hundreds of pages without even notifying anyone that he did so.
Perhaps because he thought that deleting these duplicated system messages that were identical to the centralised, standard MediaWiki messages was not harmful in any way - indeed, from the user experience point-of-view, absolutely nothing seems to have been changed. He probably was under the impression that it was self-evidently, obviously mistaken to have local versions that did not differ from the defaults.
It sounds like an opportunity for discussion and gentle reminder of the benefits of warnings even in such "obvious" cases, since no actual harm to the project was done.
Since this had to have been done by someone already an administrator on nl:, I think the paranoia about things being 'forced upon' a project by those outside sounds a little overblown to me - and saying more about the complainers than the complained-about.
-Matt
2006/7/9, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com:
Perhaps because he thought that deleting these duplicated system messages that were identical to the centralised, standard MediaWiki messages was not harmful in any way - indeed, from the user experience point-of-view, absolutely nothing seems to have been changed. He probably was under the impression that it was self-evidently, obviously mistaken to have local versions that did not differ from the defaults.
I have no indication that he kept himself to those that had not changed. Although I have found no case where this did not happen, he has not said that he did, whereas there would have been ample chance to do so (for example, to the proposal to "replace the messages and then adapt those on which we agree to the new translation" he did not react with "None have changed in this new translation", but with "Great! Do it all again!"
It sounds like an opportunity for discussion and gentle reminder of the benefits of warnings even in such "obvious" cases, since no actual harm to the project was done.
He has been reminded of that, to which his reaction was: "I really am not going to discuss 1400 times about 1400 messages that change in minuscule of larger amount."
Since this had to have been done by someone already an administrator on nl:, I think the paranoia about things being 'forced upon' a project by those outside sounds a little overblown to me - and saying more about the complainers than the complained-about.
As far as I'm concerned, he won't be an administrator for long.
2006/7/9, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
I apologize for my message; I should have kept this internal tot the Dutch Wikipedia, since, as you write, it does not seem to be part of general policy to remove local translations. Rather, this was something of a single-person action. I am now therefore starting a procedure to de-admin this specific person on nl:.
That's a bit harsh. Wouldn't it be easier to inform and educate them about their mistake and co-ordinate future translation efforts?
How do you educate someone who does not want to be educated? He is of the opinion that he has done nothing wrong, GerardM agrees with him. A number of other Dutch Wikipedians who have spoken out about this issue have not.
You are right when you say I may have been too rash in starting the procedure; however I feel fully in my right to continue it. All it would have taken for me to stop the procedure was for him to say "Sorry, it would have been better to first discuss it. I will try to do better from now on." His only reaction to that is, "I have done nothing to be ashamed of."
Andre Engels wrote:
2006/7/9, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com:
I apologize for my message; I should have kept this internal tot the Dutch Wikipedia, since, as you write, it does not seem to be part of general policy to remove local translations. Rather, this was something of a single-person action. I am now therefore starting a procedure to de-admin this specific person on nl:.
That's a bit harsh. Wouldn't it be easier to inform and educate them about their mistake and co-ordinate future translation efforts?
How do you educate someone who does not want to be educated? He is of the opinion that he has done nothing wrong, GerardM agrees with him. A number of other Dutch Wikipedians who have spoken out about this issue have not.
You are right when you say I may have been too rash in starting the procedure; however I feel fully in my right to continue it. All it would have taken for me to stop the procedure was for him to say "Sorry, it would have been better to first discuss it. I will try to do better from now on." His only reaction to that is, "I have done nothing to be ashamed of."
Hoi, It would have been nice if there was ONE reason given why this is not a good idea. The only arguments that have been given are hostile; who are you to do such a thing. It has been argued that the action deleted messages that are similar in content, because with them being removed, this will allow for an update when the message is changed. It has been argued that all project specific messages are kept....
Andre asked why this process was started, he forgets to mention that he is not even an admin so he is not even part of those who maintain the localisation on the nl.wikipedia. The Dutch wikipedia has become increasingly intolerant; the number of de-sysop procedures have increased dramatically. I think it is appalling that people first start to threaten with de-sysop and expect some grovelling in order to take away this threat. Nothing was done to be ashamed of. There are good arguments why it has been done, the deletions WERE reverted and it is still not enough to satisfy this lust for blood.
I do not recognise myself in the Dutch Wikipedia I am sad to say.
Thanks, GerardM
2006/7/10, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
It would have been nice if there was ONE reason given why this is not a good idea.
It is never a good idea to make large changes without discussing or at least announcing them in advance.
The only arguments that have been given are hostile; who are you to do such a thing.
The action itself was hostile. On Wikipedia we work with consensus, not one person doing something and the rest being given a fait accompli.
It has been argued that the action deleted messages that are similar in content, because with them being removed, this will allow for an update when the message is changed. It has been argued that all project specific messages are kept....
It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision of what are project specific messages. It has been argued that others want to know what is going to happen. It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision on which message of two similar ones is the better one.
Andre asked why this process was started, he forgets to mention that he is not even an admin so he is not even part of those who maintain the localisation on the nl.wikipedia.
So? I am not the only one who feels that something wrong has happened. As you will find out when the desysop procedure is actually started.
The Dutch wikipedia has become increasingly intolerant; the number of de-sysop procedures have increased dramatically. I think it is appalling that people first start to threaten with de-sysop and expect some grovelling in order to take away this threat. Nothing was done to be ashamed of.
That's your opinion. Mine is that there was. It would have been better to discuss this in advance.
There are good arguments why it has been done, the deletions WERE reverted and it is still not enough to satisfy this lust for blood.
No. Being a sysop is a position of trust. Someone who makes wholesale changes without discussing in advance shakes this trust. Someone who does that and afterward does not realize that it's a bad idea, breaks it.
I do not recognise myself in the Dutch Wikipedia I am sad to say.
Neither do I. But I would recognise myself even less if this kind of actions were to be considered correct.
Andre Engels, your position is: changes to interface should get consensus before. So, when a new extension is added, or changed, and there're several new (renamed) messages, should i kindly ask permission for translating it from english? Don't be ridiculous! I translate them, and if i make mistakes or something is wrong, another one will change it. It's a wiki, do you remember? Changing outdated messages is fine to me. And if the other version is equivalent, there's no 'large change'.
The action itself was hostile. On Wikipedia we work with consensus, not one person doing something and the rest being given a fait accompli.
We also [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith|]]. Asking a poll on every change would [[Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point|disrupt Wikipedia]]
It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision of what are project specific messages. It has been argued that others want to know what is going to happen. It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision on which message of two similar ones is the better one.
*Then*, it should be argued, but only after it was asked.
That's your opinion. Mine is that there was. It would have been better to discuss this in advance.
And teh sysop's opinion that it wasn't :D
Someone who does that and afterward does not realize that it's a bad idea, breaks it.
He doesn't need to realize that "it is a bad idea". There isn't even consensus about if it was a good idea or not! You can simply make policy saying: "Noone can change more than 5 mediawiki messages in a month without having asked the community". Then you can claim bad faith (or ignorance...). Anyway, i'm sure this user wil think twice and five times before changing a MediaWiki messsage.
My 2 cents: if this is a matter only for nl.wiki, then it should be dealt with by the nl.wiki community and the nl.wiki mailing list. The other (more important) thing is: how big were the changes? If it is only a change from "something" to "Something" or from "Something, something else" to "Something and something else", I don't think there's any need to discuss. If the changes were more substantial, maybe telling in advance could have been useful, but anyway being bold is always a good thing. I just hope the goal of this thread is not just making a point. Marco/Cruccone
On 7/10/06, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Andre Engels, your position is: changes to interface should get consensus before. So, when a new extension is added, or changed, and there're several new (renamed) messages, should i kindly ask permission for translating it from english? Don't be ridiculous! I translate them, and if i make mistakes or something is wrong, another one will change it. It's a wiki, do you remember? Changing outdated messages is fine to me. And if the other version is equivalent, there's no 'large change'.
The action itself was hostile. On Wikipedia we work with consensus, not one person doing something and the rest being given a fait accompli.
We also [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith|]]. Asking a poll on every change would [[Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point|disrupt Wikipedia]]
It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision of what are project specific messages. It has been argued that others want to know what is going to happen. It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision on which message of two similar ones is the better one.
*Then*, it should be argued, but only after it was asked.
That's your opinion. Mine is that there was. It would have been better to discuss this in advance.
And teh sysop's opinion that it wasn't :D
Someone who does that and afterward does not realize that it's a bad
idea,
breaks it.
He doesn't need to realize that "it is a bad idea". There isn't even consensus about if it was a good idea or not! You can simply make policy saying: "Noone can change more than 5 mediawiki messages in a month without having asked the community". Then you can claim bad faith (or ignorance...). Anyway, i'm sure this user wil think twice and five times before changing a MediaWiki messsage.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2006/7/10, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com:
Andre Engels, your position is: changes to interface should get consensus before. So, when a new extension is added, or changed, and there're several new (renamed) messages, should i kindly ask permission for translating it from english? Don't be ridiculous! I translate them, and if i make mistakes or something is wrong, another one will change it. It's a wiki, do you remember? Changing outdated messages is fine to me. And if the other version is equivalent, there's no 'large change'.
There's nothing outdated about the messages, and changing numerous existing translations is quite different from translating them afresh.
The action itself was hostile. On Wikipedia we work with consensus, not one person doing something and the rest being given a fait accompli.
We also [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith|]]. Asking a poll on every change would [[Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point|disrupt Wikipedia]]
I'm not saying there should be a poll. I'm saying there should be given an opportunity to discuss. No objections? Fine, go ahead. Objections? Fine too, the thing can only get better from that. It sure beats giving people a fait accompli.
It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision of what are project specific messages. It has been argued that others want to know what is going to happen. It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision on which message of two similar ones is the better one.
*Then*, it should be argued, but only after it was asked.
After what was asked?
"Andre Engels" wrote:
It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision of what are project specific messages. It has been argued that others want to know what is going to happen. It has been argued that others want to be part of the decision on which message of two similar ones is the better one.
*Then*, it should be argued, but only after it was asked.
After what was asked?
After someone said that they thought it a large change.
On 7/9/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
Recently, one person deleted a lot of MediaWiki pages on nl: because there was now a general translation. Apparently doing the same thing that others do is more important than doing the thing we ourselves think is best. I very much OPPOSE what is being done here, and would ask anyone to STOP FORCING US TRANSLATIONS WE DO NOT WANT!!!!!
WikipediaNL has had MediaWiki software for over 3.5 years now, and we have changed things with good reasons. Don't undo that without good reasons yourself!!!
As far as I know what has happened is the following: 1) The dutch translation wich comes with mediawiki has been initialised from the translations made at nl.wikipedia 2) The translation has been finished and references specific to wikipedia have been removed 3) on the Dutch wikipedia messages wich where the same as the standard translated messages have been removed
Finne/henna
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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