Re: Request NOT to remove outdated translations from the website by removing files from CVS
Hi!
* Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@debian.org> [2010-08-08 05:00:28 CEST]:
> I would like to request that the taks that removes the 'outdated' translated web pages
> from CVS by removing them is stopped.
>
> Here's why:
>
> - We already have a mechanism to warn of outdated (or very out of date pages)
Which isn't that prominent (to not distract from the real content too
much) and thus easy to overlook.
> - The sites see many cosmetic changes that 'outdates' translation for no
> reason.
If there are no reasons a smartchange should have done and the
translations got bumped. People are very regularly reminded of doing
that to not annoy translators or request them for updates that are of no
need for translator interaction. This point thus isn't really relevant.
> - Users/Developers that do not see the site translated are not encouraged to
> help with translation, whileas users that see that pages *need* to be
> updated are encouraged to.
I'm not too sure about that. People that see pages translated and
others not rather are encouraged to help out to translate the missing
pages, while the outdated marker isn't that prominent.
> - Users (at least Spanish-speaking) prefer out of date content in a language
> that they can understand that updated content in a language they don't
> understand (i.e. English)
Even if that sounds like a reasonable claim I'm not really convinced
that this is universally true. But this is still not too much relevant
for the case here. 6 months is a half year and an extremely long time.
Actually I would consider that all of our translation teams have the
possibility to bring pages up to date at least half a year. Is that
really *that* unreasonable?
> What's worst, translators working in CVS do not have an easy way to recover
> removed/purged pages from CVS. It takes quite a lot of work (simplified only
> with shell access to cvs.debian.org) to review which CVS files have been
> moved to the Attic, and how outdated they were.
*This* seems to be the only convincing argument in your mail - and I'd
rather like to have this addressed from a different angle of enabling
the copypage tool to check for a version in the attic instead of blindly
copying the english page, and for maybe also another tool that adds a
list of pages moved to attic to the statistic overview. Because that
would actually *help* to get those pages current again. Not having them
removed for endlessly isn't the proper approach IMHO.
> Since many translators are not precisely 'fluent' with CVS, I've seen
> occasions in which a new member of a language team, eager to help out with
> the website, does a translation from the webpage from scratch *when there was
> an outdated (but removed) version available.
See, and this is what needs to get addressed, not the removal of
abandoned and not maintained anymore pages.
> In its current status the "purging" of outdated translations is really bad as
> it moves the files to the CVS Attic and there is no log whatsoever (as far as
> I know) that tracks which files where removed when. And no easy way to
> recover for those that do not know the ins and outs of CVS.
Oh, the log of course is there, even a removal of a file is accompanied
with a log message. I assume you haven't tried?
> What's worst, the list of "translations that are going to be removed" (i.e.
> http://people.debian.org/~peterk/outdated/ linked from
> http://www.debian.org/devel/website/uptodate) is not even current!
Then this also needs to get addressed, thanks for the information. Oh,
and btw., at the end of the page is linked "How to revive a deleted
translation" so the information about how to do that isn't that obscure
or hidden, you actually were able to find it. :)
> If this feature is really required (which I don't agree to) I would urge the
> website team to find a way to *not* compile the wml files if the translation
> is very out of date. But please DO NOT REMOVE the wml files with the out of
> date translations from CVS!
Again, is six months of timeframe from the update of the english file
*really* that so totally out of bounds? Do we *really* believe that
people can't be expected to check for outdated pages half a year?
I'm not convinced - and yes, I agree with the lack of tools, even if
they would consist only of a few lines of code. Am willing to pick up
that task after I finished my packages for squeeze.
Thanks,
Rhonda
--
"Lediglich 11 Prozent der Arbeitgeber sind der Meinung, dass jeder
Mensch auch ein Privatleben haben sollte."
-- http://www.karriere.at/artikel/884/
Reply to: