Re: [gentoo-doc-fi] Status of the Mailing List

[Flammie Pirinen]

Xavier Neys wrote:
>Flammie Pirinen wrote:
>> (I apologize handmade quotation, sylpheed-claws seems to dislike the original message so much that I can't reply to it directly)

Re-apologies, but a non-broken version should be compiling now.

>No problem at all, luckily I use a /modern/ emailer ;-) and quoted bits are
>clearly identified.

Actually it's my crappy distro which is at fault. They've added some weird ssp magic to the packages which breaks everything ;-)

I had previously been using Thunderbird as well, but, apart from it sucking all the resources, it was unable to add inline attachments or reply to mailing list without unnecessary cc's, I chose a more sane user agent. 

>*Disccussing* the translations is exactly what the ML is for. Howewer, it is
>not meant to receive full docs. Please remember that third-parties archive our ML.
>forums.g.o is for all Gentoo users to talk in Finnish about Gentoo and other
>topics if they want to. It is a 100% user-based community. Discussions about
>translations have very little added value for users. What they want is the
>result under /doc/fi/ ;-)

I'm very sceptic that there will ever be enough talk about translation as to constitute a mailing list, which would require extraneous leaps for everyone wishing to participate anyways. IRC and forums and private mail are more than sufficient for contextless talk on various generic and specific aspects of translations.

>[Finnish] is even more explicit and is OK if you don't mind typing it.

Well, isn't that why there is possiblity to create and save bug report templates in bugzilla?

>I think that 1 (one) translator posting 1 (one) message to let fellow
>translators know about 1 (one) submitted translation when he feels extra QA is
>required is more user-friendly than everyone having to poll bugs.g.o just in
>case there is anything that might interest them.

Well, it is possible to use this list as -announce, it won't really be more useful than keeping web pages up to date tho'.

>You haven't missed it. It should be properly documented indeed. I'll see to
>it. Thanks for making me notice.

It'd also help if originals had, albeit unnecessarily, lang="en" in them (or even better, mark lang #REQUIRED in dtd, as it clearly is such).

>That's hardly any spam at all. This is what bugs.g.o is for.
>This is what I believe should be the shortest path to process a translation:

>1) Translator decides to translate a doc and notifies others via the ML
>2) Translator posts translation to bugs.g.o
>3) Lead Translator reviews, edits and commits the translation

>At step 2), translator may want to notify others via ML e.g. to request more
>QA. Committing the translation does not stop the QA process nor any possible
>discussions, it simply means the Lead Translator thinks the translation is
>good enough to go public.

Humm, seems fair enough. I'll just reformulate the process to correspond this, but I still retain wider QA as required, one person checking docs is never enough, even if the person is me ;-)

>The ML is used whenever a translator has difficulties translating parts of a
>document, needs any kind of help or wants to share any useful bit of
>information about the translations. It is also used by the Lead & Follow-Up
>translators to notify translators of any changes, to ask for help, to announce
>a vacation...

Nah, IRC is way more useful for discussing about problematic parts IMHO. 

>In short, files & patches go to bugs.g.o and discussions of all kinds go to
>the ML.

Yay.

>Sorry about the different usages not being explicit enough.
>Feel free to comment/send feedback/complain/ask questions...

Ah, my mistake. I had became accustomed to the way how Finnish Gnome, KDE, Mandrake, Debian and Translation Project localisation teams handle the things with their mailing lists it had not even occurred to me it wouldn't fit in the Gentoo's way of doing things. But now that I think of it, they do also handle their own mailing lists and archives on their own servers.


-- 
Flammie, Gentoo Linux Documentation's Finnish head translator.