I would like to invite you to join a chat about the relationship between the Wikimedia community and the Open Access movement in scientific publishing. This will explore issues of licensing, content sharing, technology, and hopefully result in mutual commitments to collaborate.
In a nutshell: December 17, 2006; irc.freenode.net; 21:00 UTC; #openaccess
Please see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Open_Access_chat
for more (including a link to a web interface for accessing the IRC channel). I would appreciate it if you would add yourself to the "I want to attend!" list on the page, so we have an idea how many people are coming.
Hi!
The fundraiser serial seems to be a never-ending story. Functions have now been "enhanced" (meaning they added a line in the ad and recycled an outdated video no-one but English speakers can make any use of). I think it's the old one, at least it really looks like that and no, I didn't bother to look at it. My target audience doesn't speak English, why should I care about the video?
Once again, translators had to know about the "new release" more or less casually (thank en-wikizine if you can exploit me for free once more), because as always NOBODY cared sending just a stupid mail to the admins to let them know that at a certain date their UIs were going to be changed from the angelic "federal top-layer" up there in the skies. This time the treasure hint was to be found in an annotation on a user page (see http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Cbrown1023/Donate ). Great! Louis Stevenson surely was a Wikimedia translator before writing about Long John Silver and the treasury maps... :))))))))))))) Next time I humbly suggest you encrypt the instructions in a jpg and upload it to commons, with a nice hint like "details to be found encrypted in a famous gothic bell-tower". No, don't say which one... the fun is all in searching, why should you spoil it?
You don't want to send mails, right? Then maybe you heard about a marvel called "newsletter". Not yet another list from which I will unsubscribe asap because it loads my mailbox with tons of flames I have no interest in reading. Just a SLIM thing telling me IN ADVANCE what's gonna happen. Hopefully in this fundraiser there will be money enough for that much revolutionary hi-tech gear.
As it turned out, the whole "enhanced text" is but a recooking of what already was there since long PLUS an endless number of repetitions of the very same strings, which make the job somewhat insulting for anyone who was supposing to deal with an IT tool. But that's the obvious part. Slaves aren't paid, so it doesn't matter how many hours they throw away, right? Why should programmers be told that when you have the same value repeating all over again you SHOULD make it centralized somewhere and ensure consistency while saving other people's time? That would be annoying, much better to have the slaves sweat for free. That's what slaves are for, after all.
Once again we had to repeat over and over again everything about tax deduction in the US to a public of people who cannot care less about it, with the only obvious result of giving the impression that you should NOT donate, unless you are American (as rules are obviously designed NOT for you)... Well, it *may* sound surprising to many a marketing genius, but localization actually means a bit more than writing "Big Mac and Cola" in another alphabet...
Forget it. The campaign is fantastic, whoever done it should be given the Nobel Prize. Just avoid making 666 more "brilliant new releases" within next week in order to change position to a couple of commas, okay? Consider it a New Year's present to translators. Just freeze the stupid thing.
Did I make the translation? Sure I did. It's uploaded somewhere in a small wiki, out there in cyberspace. I'll tell en wikizine where it is, just before next month's number. Seriously. :)))))))))))))
Happy New Year to you, too. Bèrto ‘d Sèra Skype: berto.d.sera Personagi dl’ann 2006 për l’arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
On 1/1/08, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
The fundraiser serial seems to be a never-ending story. Functions have now been "enhanced" (meaning they added a line in the ad and recycled an outdated video no-one but English speakers can make any use of).
The video is subtitled in many languages; the fundraising page represents a complete redesign of the old one, with substantial consideration to usability issues such as the critical question whether visitors are likely to leave the framework of the page or not. It's going to be our fundraising landing page for some time to come, so the transition was necessary & useful.
The new implementation also frees us from the Drupal CMS as the environment in which all fundraising-related content resides, which should make future translation & redesign work easier.
The translation process has been messy - but I'm glad progress is being made. FYI, mails were sent to fundcom-l and wmfcc-l (the Fundraising Committee and the Communications Committee) about all major changes. IMHO it is not tragic when, during the course of notice changes or redesigns, some languages go live later while others are switched immediately; the main important thing from the perspective of a reader e.g. of de.wikipedia or fr.wikipedia is that their internal experience of the site makes sense.
Best, Erik
On 04/01/2008, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The translation process has been messy - but I'm glad progress is being made. FYI, mails were sent to fundcom-l and wmfcc-l (the Fundraising Committee and the Communications Committee) about all major changes. IMHO it is not tragic when, during the course of notice changes or redesigns, some languages go live later while others are switched immediately; the main important thing from the perspective of a reader e.g. of de.wikipedia or fr.wikipedia is that their internal experience of the site makes sense.
You seem to miss Berto's point, which is how disrespectful to translators it is to throw things at them at the last minute. We could have guessed there would be matching donations and prepared a message beforehand. We could have guessed the fundraiser would end (!) and prepared a thankyou message beforehand.
If everyone is rushed and disorganised because of the office move, so be it, but a proper explanation might be in order.
What is the progress being made, precisely? What is the plan or resolution that is going to make next time different to this time?
regards Brianna
On 1/4/08, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
You seem to miss Berto's point, which is how disrespectful to translators it is to throw things at them at the last minute.
Is it necessarily so, though? If our understanding is that non-English versions will go up later than the English one, then that is not an unintended, but an intended outcome. I'm not saying that should be the case -- we probably want to aim for some general buffer time for translations -- but I'm pretty sure that there are always going to be situations where it _will_ be, because sometimes decisions are made at the last minute, and a last minute decision is often better than none (and so is a last minute translation).
That is not to say that the process could not have been handled much better -- but to be honest, getting the translations workflow figured out was not anyone's top priority in the last few weeks. Indeed, the relocation and reorganization is the highest one, and vis-a-vis the fundraiser, it's been items like the new site design, the various changes to the notice, the blog (which itself is appallingly monolingual), and (very importantly) countless efforts to target major donors and generate PR for the fundraiser. If things magically got translated, too, that was always awesome to behold. :-)
What is the preferred process right now? I assume notifying translators-l of any particular message that needs to be localized is sufficient?
Hoi, Many words have been used about translations and the associated workflow even before this fund raiser, at that stage the fund raiser itself was not given priority. The notion that the workflow is a surprise that has not yet been considered makes it plain why contributions from the non-English world are so low. It is exactly the notion that an English version can go life before all others that makes all other languages second class citizens. When this is as intended, it is no surprise at all why translators switch off and contributions are not as good as hoped for. Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 4, 2008 4:15 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 1/4/08, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
You seem to miss Berto's point, which is how disrespectful to translators it is to throw things at them at the last minute.
Is it necessarily so, though? If our understanding is that non-English versions will go up later than the English one, then that is not an unintended, but an intended outcome. I'm not saying that should be the case -- we probably want to aim for some general buffer time for translations -- but I'm pretty sure that there are always going to be situations where it _will_ be, because sometimes decisions are made at the last minute, and a last minute decision is often better than none (and so is a last minute translation).
That is not to say that the process could not have been handled much better -- but to be honest, getting the translations workflow figured out was not anyone's top priority in the last few weeks. Indeed, the relocation and reorganization is the highest one, and vis-a-vis the fundraiser, it's been items like the new site design, the various changes to the notice, the blog (which itself is appallingly monolingual), and (very importantly) countless efforts to target major donors and generate PR for the fundraiser. If things magically got translated, too, that was always awesome to behold. :-)
What is the preferred process right now? I assume notifying translators-l of any particular message that needs to be localized is sufficient? -- Erik Möller
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