Fancy team terminologies (Was: Re: [Draft] Request for translation updates in Debian packages)
On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 07:42:49AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > I had exactly this "Debian I18N Task Force" in mind when I wrote the
> > initial mail. I know that Christian used this term often but I never
> > (really!) understood what team he referred to! I know about the NMU
> > process initiated by him and assumed that he refers to a special group
> > of people helping with it, but I never found (or remember) a definition
>
> I perfectly understand that this may be a little more difficult for
> people who didn't participate in such events to define themselves
> with regards of what seems to be a self-appointed group of persons. I
> guess this is what's behind your words (and partly those of MJ Ray who
Yes, partly. But mainly I suggest to avoid fancy group names which are
not useful at all and to describe it ("contributors to X", where X is a
well known project). If you really want to use such terminology you have
to ensure that you document it, create corresponding mailing lists and
to announce it for a sufficient large time until really everyone is able
to find information about it, how to join, ...
Why to add such a barrier? There is no reason for this! What do you
gain?
> seems to not support the concept of an i18n team in favor of a more
> generic and vague terms of "contributors").
Right.
<important>
Using such fancy team names just doesn't address all people who might be
interested in the work! This is not what you want, right?
</important>
If you write to all members of the "Debian I18N Task Force" many people
just ignore it because they never heard from this group. If you omit it
and just write about todo items you will get also patches from other
persons, promised!
> And, just to be clear about it, I would of course define you guys
> (Jens, MJ, Holger, many others I forget here) as part of the i18n
> team...just because you participate here in the list and you already
> contributed significantly to the i18n/l10n efforts in Debian.
Yep, "i18n" is more or less a well known word. But if you would wrote
about "as part of the 'Blue Panther' team" (or any other fictive name)
I would just ask "hey?".
> Anyway, for what is worth, I've personnaly felt like being part of the
> D-I "team" even before meeting up with Joey and the other guys for the
> first time back in 2004. Indeed, as soon as I began working with the
> other D-I people I would then define myself as part of that team even
> though we never ran any formal process for this. I bet that my friend
> Frans would say the same for his own contribution to D-I.
I have seen changelog entries as "as discussed by the d-i i18n team"
where there was no public discussion. You even wrote once that some
decisions where made by Frans only. In this case I *strongly* suggest to
avoid such useless "team" terms, use names in changelogs or better URLs, ...
Especially if the team consists of one or two persons only it's
useless to add just another abstraction layer. People reading such texts
a few years later associate such groups which the current members and do
not know whether a decision is probably no longer correct, just because
the old team members resigned.
Is it really so obscure to ask for transparency?
Jens
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