en-CA in MediaWiki? Rethinking our method of handling translation bugs?

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Daniel Friesen

11 Nov 2011 11 Nov '11

8:18 a.m.

A few months ago I opened a bug asking for en-CA support in MediaWiki: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31016 For reference en-CA is neither strictly en-US or en-GB. en-CA uses some spellings en-GB use and in other cases some spellings that en-US use, and there are a slight few en-CA specifics as well. Examples of the differences: en-CA and en-GB uses 'colour' while en-US uses 'color'; en-CA and en-US use 'Uncategorized' while en-GB may use 'Uncategorised'; en-US and en-CA use 'program' while en-GB use 'programme'; And I believe the CA/GB/AU grammar idiom where 'the' may end up omitted on some cases applies to 'in process of' instead of en-US' 'in the process of'. Extension wise; We use "Expiry date" rather than "Expiration date", I'm not sure what en-GB uses other than "Use by" but "Expiry" seams to be en-CA specific. Moving on. That bug was closed as INVALID and I was told I could start translating the language at translatewiki. I signed up at TWN and asked for translation permissions. A day or so later I got them and started translating en-CA. After finishing translating en-CA for MediaWiki and being halted part way through translating extensions after realizing that one extension had several hundred messages that were almost entirely the same and I had to translate a single word in all of them... Siebrand deleted every en-CA translation from TWN with the comment "en-ca not needed in MediaWiki". https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&u… I've poked Siebrand about en-CA on his talkpage, and several times in irc when he's recently been active. But it seams he's simply ignoring what I say about en-CA. I would like to get en-CA support into MediaWiki though it looks like that's been shot dead in the water. I'm noticing a related trend lately in regards to TWN: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31229 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32264 Whenever someone reports a bug asking for a translation change, we seem to mark it as INVALID, and then tell the reporter to go to translatewiki, go through the process of getting translator permission, and then translate it themselves. To me that's like marking a bug with a patch as INVALID and saying that the reporter should get svn commit access and commit it themselves Rather than closing bugs as INVALID and shoving off people reporting bugs to another site IMHO when we see a translation bug we should try to fix it inside the translation, mark the bug as FIXED, and remind the reporter that if they have more translations to be fixed they should sign up at TWN and help out with the translations. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

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Roan Kattouw

11 Nov 11 Nov

10:09 a.m.

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Daniel Friesen <lists(a)nadir-seen-fire.com> wrote:

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Rather than closing bugs as INVALID and shoving off people reporting bugs to another site IMHO when we see a translation bug we should try to fix it inside the translation, mark the bug as FIXED, and remind the reporter that if they have more translations to be fixed they should sign up at TWN and help out with the translations.

That would be practical if the people responding to such bugs actually had TWN translator access. There's not actually that much overlap between developers and people with translator rights. It's not zero, but it's also not like every developer has translator rights, far from it. Roan

Platonides

7:15 p.m.

MediaWiki<->TWN relationship is an interesting topic. We are basically outsourcing translations to translatewiki. We take any translations/languages they provide. So your problem could be reformulated to "How can I add a new language to translatewiki?" Translatewiki is a tool quite good for translating languages but I don't know where are such topics dealt with. In some kind of Village Pump, I suppose. Does it have a *community*? Or is it just people translating a few messages and leaving? I recently had the opposite problem (wanted to remove a language translation) but didn't find out the proper way, either. Some translators asked about one of my tools translation and I didn't notice until after I got an email for a different thread on that page (I didn't know I should be watching it!). Roan notes that not every MediaWiki developer has translator rights. The full steps for adding a message/project seem to be known just by a few folks. So I think there are some communication problems regarding translatewiki. They may just need a few explanation pages, or need a more work, but it's sane to discuss it.

Raimond Spekking

9:29 p.m.

On 11.11.2011 19:15, Platonides wrote:

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Siebrand added en-ca today with https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/102773

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Translatewiki is a tool quite good for translating languages but I don't know where are such topics dealt with. In some kind of Village Pump, I suppose. Does it have a *community*? Or is it just people translating a few messages and leaving?

Requests for new languages can be added to http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support and translatewiki.net staff like Siebrand, Niklas or me will add it.

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I recently had the opposite problem (wanted to remove a language translation) but didn't find out the proper way, either.

Either fix the translation in translatewiki.net or delete the messages there. Deleting in SVN only does not help because the export script that I run on a daily base will export them again. If you need admin rights pls ping me.

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Roan notes that not every MediaWiki developer has translator rights. The full steps for adding a message/project seem to be known just by a few folks.

...

So I think there are some communication problems regarding translatewiki. They may just need a few explanation pages, or need a more work, but it's sane to discuss it.

Absolutly. Documentation can be improved.. Bug 1? *hides* Raymond.

Platonides

12 Nov 12 Nov

1:39 a.m.

On 11/11/11 21:29, Raimond Spekking wrote:

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Requests for new languages can be added to http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support and translatewiki.net staff like Siebrand, Niklas or me will add it.

I added it to the FAQ http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=FAQ&diff=3418808&oldid=34188…

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I recently had the opposite problem (wanted to remove a language translation) but didn't find out the proper way, either.

I would have expected this reply on CR, without need of the previous mail. :( Good to know anyway. I guess that the deletions should be normally requested at [[Support]]? I no longer have admin rights there, were removed in 2008. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special%3ALog&page=user%3APlato…

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So I think there are some communication problems regarding translatewiki. They may just need a few explanation pages, or need a more work, but it's sane to discuss it.

Absolutly. Documentation can be improved.. Bug 1? *hides*

I agree. Especially since I ended up asking if TWN had a FAQ, because I didn't find a link to it... o_O

Niklas Laxström

12:41 p.m.

On 12 November 2011 02:39, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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I recently had the opposite problem (wanted to remove a language translation) but didn't find out the proper way, either.

I would have expected this reply on CR, without need of the previous mail. :( Good to know anyway. I guess that the deletions should be normally requested at [[Support]]?

I gave you a reply on CR (my second comment): http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/102166#code-comments

...

So I think there are some communication problems regarding translatewiki. They may just need a few explanation pages, or need a more work, but it's sane to discuss it.

Absolutly. Documentation can be improved.. Bug 1? *hides*

I agree. Especially since I ended up asking if TWN had a FAQ, because I didn't find a link to it... o_O

We are constantly looking for help, as mentioned in the translatewiki.net front page. In the past I've been server administrator, programer, software designer, software documentation writer, translator, marketer, usability engineer, interaction designer, performance engineer, security expert, legal expert, wiki documentation writer, artist, visual designer, user support person, project support person, translation importer&exporter, i18n consultant, new project integration support, website statistics analyzer and what else for translatewiki.net. The fact is that this is a collaborative project and I suck at most of the things I just mentioned ;). So even though we have many great persons working for twn, there are areas that are not getting attention. If you have ever wanted to help us, there sure are ways to do it. I'm very surprised to hear that there are a communication problems (leaving Daniel's case out for now, which has different origins). The administrators (and even translators) of translatewiki.net are almost 100% also part of the MediaWiki community. We are active on code review, we hang out on IRC, we visit conferences and other events and usually responds to any questions quickly. There should be plenty of opportunities to reach us, ask questions and interact with us. Or is the problem that people prefer written documentation to the extend that if it is not there they don't even bother to ask? I refuse to believe we are too scary to be asked (see image on [1] :). [1] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Nike -Niklas -- Niklas Laxström

Platonides

13 Nov 13 Nov

1:27 a.m.

On 12/11/11 12:41, Niklas Laxström wrote:

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I would have expected this reply on CR, without need of the previous mail. :( Good to know anyway. I guess that the deletions should be normally requested at [[Support]]?

I gave you a reply on CR (my second comment): http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/102166#code-comments

I had missed your second comment. You indeed explained it there. Call me a fool.

...

Absolutly. Documentation can be improved.. Bug 1? *hides*

I agree. Especially since I ended up asking if TWN had a FAQ, because I didn't find a link to it... o_O

My main problem is that I don't understand it, translatewiki grew to be quite complex (probably with reason), so I need to ask. :) I may try to find out things for myself (eg. grep for UILANGCODE in trunk/extensions), and you'll notice that I indeed got to #mediawiki-i18n when I get a doubt about it. I may be lucky and get an answer from someone which is there and already knows, or nobody may be active at that time. So when reaching a dead end I may not be taking a fully optimal path. :) Note that although unusual, CodeReview is also asking. I may proceed to http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support in the future. Things like having the FAQ at the sidebar might help. I find extrange that the first sidebar link requires me to login (too used to that being Main Page? Maybe I'm unconsciously expecting it to be an explanation text linking to Special:FirstSteps as a wizard). Most links on the Main Page also give permission errors, which doesn't help self-documenting. Best regards

Niklas Laxström

9:33 a.m.

On 13 November 2011 02:27, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Most links on the Main Page also give permission errors, which doesn't help self-documenting.

ARGH! Why didn't anybody tell us. It has been broken a week due to r102187. -Niklas -- Niklas Laxström

Platonides

14 Nov 14 Nov

12:56 a.m.

On 13/11/11 09:33, Niklas Laxström wrote:

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On 13 November 2011 02:27, Platonides<Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Most links on the Main Page also give permission errors, which doesn't help self-documenting.

ARGH! Why didn't anybody tell us. It has been broken a week due to r102187. -Niklas

Which leaves me wondering why would read permission be restricted. I told you I didn't understand the way TWN works xD

Sumana Harihareswara

11:58 a.m.

On 11/12/2011 06:41 AM, Niklas Laxström wrote:

...

I'm very surprised to hear that there are a communication problems (leaving Daniel's case out for now, which has different origins). The administrators (and even translators) of translatewiki.net are almost 100% also part of the MediaWiki community. We are active on code review, we hang out on IRC, we visit conferences and other events and usually responds to any questions quickly. There should be plenty of opportunities to reach us, ask questions and interact with us. Or is the problem that people prefer written documentation to the extend that if it is not there they don't even bother to ask? I refuse to believe we are too scary to be asked (see image on [1] :). [1] http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:Nike -Niklas

Niklas, I freely admit that I don't know how extensive or thorough translatewiki's documentation is, because I am not a translator and haven't tried to use TWN to translate. But to answer your question in general, yes, people prefer written documentation and if it's not there they won't go the extra step of finding humans to ask. If I have a question about a piece of software, I look up written documentation via built-in help pages and I Google some key phrases, and if I don't find my answer, then I generally just work around the problem or give up and do something else. That is what normal people do, unless they are especially, unusually motivated to solve the problem. Experienced FLOSS users and developers are less apt to give up if there's no documentation on what they want to do, but it's still going to happen. In general, people don't read help pages unless and until they want help, but when they want help, they assume that help pages will have all the information they need to use a piece of software. And good help pages scale better than people do (and are available 24/7 in all timezones). -- Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation

Brion Vibber

7:23 p.m.

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Daniel Friesen <lists(a)nadir-seen-fire.com>wrote;wrote:

...

Whenever someone reports a bug asking for a translation change, we seem to mark it as INVALID, and then tell the reporter to go to translatewiki, go through the process of getting translator permission, and then translate it themselves. To me that's like marking a bug with a patch as INVALID and saying that the reporter should get svn commit access and commit it themselves Rather than closing bugs as INVALID and shoving off people reporting bugs to another site IMHO when we see a translation bug we should try to fix it inside the translation, mark the bug as FIXED, and remind the reporter that if they have more translations to be fixed they should sign up at TWN and help out with the translations.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is similar to "upstream bugs" and Gadget/site JavaScript/template issues: the right response is often not to mark it 'INVALID' but to make sure that it's directed to people who can help actually fix it, and delay the resolution of the bug entry until the issue itself is resolved. Sometimes that means walking the reporter through the process or pointing them in the right direction; sometimes it means fixing it for them; sometimes it means bumping an issue to another web site; but either way the point of an issue tracker is to make sure that issues get .... tracked.... until they are resolved. :) -- brion

Jay Ashworth

8:51 p.m.

----- Original Message -----

...

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

...

Sometimes that means walking the reporter through the process or pointing them in the right direction; sometimes it means fixing it for them; sometimes it means bumping an issue to another web site; but either way the point of an issue tracker is to make sure that issues get .... tracked.... until they are resolved. :)

And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that issue to one specific person. Do we have that person? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Brion Vibber

8:56 p.m.

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

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----- Original Message -----

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that issue to one specific person. Do we have that person?

Depends on the issue. Are you asking about a particular one from this thread? (i18n/l10n issues should probably start by being assigned to Siebrand Mazeland if there's no specific candidate you know of offhand.) https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Localisation_team -- brion

Strainu

9:04 p.m.

2011/11/14 Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com>om>:

...

And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that issue to one specific person. Do we have that person?

Would it be worth it to have a special product for translation/components for each language? That way bugs could be assigned to a translation mailing list or directly to a translator. On the downside, it might become the favourite way of posting a translation bug and could increase the number of bugs in bugzilla. Strainu

Jay Ashworth

10:58 p.m.

----- Original Message -----

...

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> > wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > >

...

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

> > > > > Sometimes that means walking the reporter through the process or > > > pointing > > > them in the right direction; sometimes it means fixing it for > > > them; > > > sometimes it means bumping an issue to another web site; but > > > either > > > way the point of an issue tracker is to make sure that issues get > > > .... > > > tracked.... until they are resolved. :) > > > > And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that > > issue to one specific person. Do we have that person? > > Depends on the issue. Are you asking about a particular one from this > thread? (i18n/l10n issues should probably start by being assigned to > Siebrand Mazeland if there's no specific candidate you know of > offhand.) No, I meant more "one specific person whose situational awareness scope specifically includes the collective status of tickets, software or operations" (probably one of each, depending on the size of the problem). Cheers, - jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Brion Vibber

15 Nov 15 Nov

12:10 a.m.

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

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On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that issue to one specific person. Do we have that person?

No, I meant more "one specific person whose situational awareness scope specifically includes the collective status of tickets, software or operations" (probably one of each, depending on the size of the problem).

As a general escalation path one should start with the bugmeister (that's hexmode / Mark Hershberger), whose job it is to prioritize issues and distribute them to folks who can work on them. Since figuring out just which part of what goes where sometimes is much easier with more historical context, old-timers like me can also help direct these to the right people (or be the right person). Don't be afraid of being unsure who to send it to at first; we're much more likely to *get* it to the right person if the communication channels are open, even if our first response is a "what the heck is this????". :) An example of a site JS issue; just today I wandered across < https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32366> which on inspection turned out to be a continuance of an earlier incompatibility between site JS on als.wikipedia.org and the newer, jQuery-oriented MediaWiki front-end code <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29595>. One developer had made an attempt at helping out and fixing the site JS back in July, but it turned out to be an incomplete fix and caused additional scripts to break, so got reverted by the locals (as the things it broke were more important than the things it fixed). That thread of conversation unfortunately dropped off, and the rest of the fixes didn't get completed in July... The followup bug in November got a slightly snippy initial reply from the first person to check it out, but since it came back on the radar I was able to pull up the earlier fixes and figure out what was wrong (additional scripts didn't get updated to match the new MediaWiki:Common.js) and fix them -- it seems to now be resolved. So that shows us doing some things right (investigating and helping out with the site JS problems when a problem shows up, especially in concert with changes to MediaWiki itself such as jQuery coming in) and some things wrong (an in-progress fix & test cycle got disrupted and wasn't continued for a few months; some sub-ideal responses). -- brion

Jay Ashworth

1:02 a.m.

----- Original Message -----

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From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

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Yeah, but you're not answering the question I'm asking, Brion. The issue, as I understood it, was "how did this bug (which was not Jay's :-) get lost in the shuffle?" My followup question was: "is there someone's whose job is to keep track of that?" Mark's job, as you describe it, is triage, not followup. Is it *also* followup? Or has that task not been assigned? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Brion Vibber

6:43 p.m.

Triage without followup is worthless, so as far as I know they are both components of that job. -- brion On Nov 14, 2011 4:02 PM, "Jay Ashworth" <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

...

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com>

As a general escalation path one should start with the bugmeister (that's hexmode / Mark Hershberger), whose job it is to prioritize

issues and

distribute them to folks who can work on them. Since figuring out just which part of what goes where sometimes is much easier with more historical context, old-timers like me can also help direct these to the

right

people (or be the right person). Don't be afraid of being unsure who to send it to at first; we're much

likely to *get* it to the right person if the communication channels are open, even if our first response is a "what the heck is this????". :)

mhershberger＠wikimedia.org

8:47 p.m.

New subject: The bugmeister: Triage and followup (was Re: en-CA in MediaWiki? Rethinking our method of handling translation bugs?)

Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> writes:

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On Nov 14, 2011 4:02 PM, "Jay Ashworth" <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote: > > My followup question was: "is there someone's whose job is to keep > track of that?" Mark's job, as you describe it, is triage, not > followup. Is it *also* followup? Or has that task not been > assigned?

...

Triage without followup is worthless, so as far as I know they are both components of that job.

Just for the record, this particular issue (en-CA) hasn't gotten a lot of attention from me because, to be honest, en-CA speakers seem happy with en-US and en-GB. And, further, the first bar has been crossed. People with an en-CA preference can make-do with en-US and en-GB. Are either of those tailored to them exactly? No. But compared with the situation we see amongst, say, Indic scripts, that sort of tailoring seems like a non-issue. But back to the main point. Brion is right: Triage without followup is worthless. In my experience, Brion has a good feel for this sort of thing and he's been gracious enough to prod me gently when he sees something that needs a bit more follow up when I've missed it. So, if you see that I'm not following something up, feel free to prod me. Since I dislike prodding, I'll be working hard to avoid it and make sure that I am following up on the bugs that have a higher priority. If you think something should have a higher priority, let me know. Mark.

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participants (11)

Brion Vibber
Brion Vibber
Daniel Friesen
Jay Ashworth
mhershberger＠wikimedia.org
Niklas Laxström
Platonides
Raimond Spekking
Roan Kattouw
Strainu
Sumana Harihareswara