User talk:Kgdrenefort

Translate your own user page, maybe…?

Silly idea I just have. Why not translate my own user page ?

Figured out I could maybe add:

And of course now it has to be marked as translatable.

It also means, even if someone does, each time I would have to wait before translating it ?

Er, probably better to manually set a copy of my page and translate it myself without the MediaWiki's plugins ?

Cheers, Kévin GASPARD DE RENEFORT (talk) 12:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

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My ideas, that need further thinking or research, before talking them out to other contributors

Speeding up translation process

I understand that we should not allow everyone to do the following, but after some times around, being trusted a bit, maybe a numerous amount of edition (or all of that) we should really allow a quicker validation process for the unmarked edition.

The problem (in my opinion)

I take an example I'm on currently:

I translate the KDE page, I'm happy ! Then, some devil add an edition (damn you 23.0 !) and suddenly, my translation is outdated. Fine.

I take a look, I'm now blocked to update the translation (which is, very easy and quick to do nonetheless), but this awful wall block me: Translate this page; This page contains changes which are not marked for translation.

Oh no, I can't update it. After some talks, I learned the few ways to fix it:

1/ Talk about it on #gentoo-wiki@libera.chat, wait for answer from peoples in charge.

2/ Add it (the request) to the talk page.

Both way are slow, sadly: Peoples are doing that freely, so of course I can't expect this to be done as fast as I would want.

Why ? Why blocking me to update the translation in a few clicks ?

My concerns about this workflow is the following:

It's slow, since weeks I wait for some page to be translated, despite having talked about it a few times I think as opened a discussion in the talk page (please, again I do not say that for anyone to feel bad about it, I'm pretty aware of the block and respect deeply the free (as freedom, but free beer too !) work here !)
It decrease wiki's quality regarding translation. If a native english-speaker is reading this, maybe it's not obvious to you but as a non-native myself, believe me that is really frustrating to have to force yourself to English while French translation exist but… it's out-dated. It's even leading you to awful problem too, when you are lacking experience you find out after hours of reading and trying to apply a solution out dated and then, you are angry. Not against peoples, but the situation.
That is probably true for every language that is not English: It is common to guide peoples to read English version because for the first reason that is a good one, second is a bad one: 1/ It's mostly the source, generally it has less errors and 2/ It's 100% up to date, translation are mostly not.
Why having translation then ? If they are left to rot or worst, be forgot in the oblivion for ever ? That is frustrating for me, this is a very personal feeling and again I have no real and deep problem about it (but I would love this improvement), I feel like these non-uptodate translation as a waste of my free time. It's fun, but it's more fun if peoples actually use it. Otherwise, I could simply enhance English page and don't bother translation, but that means that peoples not having a good enough skill or worst, merely what they need to understand, to feel discouraged. While it could simply help them to achieve what they want, choosing how their English level should be. That is a bit sad, in my humble opinion.
If there is non-used pages… that is a waste of resource, simple as that, as storage but bandwidth too (even if no humans look at it, bots will do, and humans can misclik or worst, think there is a translation and… nope sorry, it's out dated). As making look the wiki deeply confuse with unused links at the top of most page for languages that are, anyway, less read that they should and could because it's a general saying to admit to follow the English (more up to date, less error prone) but then… why translation ?

My suggestions to get over that (theses are ideas, I do not say it's easy or possible):

The bad one: Remove that step in the process, on the idea that peoples won't have problem without it.
A better one: Allow peoples to do it themself, if they are trusted (which could be manually be done, after a request from the contributors or on peoples in charge initiative) because they have made enough works to be trusted, or / and because they are here since a reasonable amount of time. By the way, if someone (me or anyone) is always doing goofy stuff and get pointed at it all the time, I would understand it's not a trusty one enough.
Another not-that-bad: Adding peoples in charge for this step of the workflow. If there is more peoples to allow minor change (let's say modify a profile name from 17.1 to 23.0…, or typo, some new links…) it could be way quicker. At the same time, it should be managed it a way to keep the main decision from the peoples in charge at the origin, it's their duty I guess and it's an important factor in quality and security. If at least minor edit (if properly used) allowed that, it could speed-up things. That is my opinion, again.

What is the point of this step in the workflow ?

I do not understand yet, but if I try to think about it: The person in charge for the page, for quality and security control, will have to check it before allowing it. The page, in English, would still be touched because someone would have to check it anyway, but at least it's not spread as fast (or not at all) to translation. A terrible scenario would be someone untrusty and with bad intention is adding dangerous stuff (which is probably why not everyone can edit some protected page, as the handbook !) because "lololol" or allow to redirect on some fake mirror of Gentoo and make a security issue in a few click by uploading nasty file…

Again, this is not a rant discussion, no bad feelings here, but that literally turned me a bit down while translating. At some points, it's like an itch. You know it's here, but you can't scratch it. Let's allow us the scratching please ! :)

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Cheers, Kévin GASPARD DE RENEFORT (talk) 12:27, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current process is a bit silly and doesn't scale well considering the small amount of admins on the wiki and how many other responsibilities they have.

I can't vouch for solution #2 because I'm not familiar enough with the system to know if that's a good solution or not.

As for solution #3, it would probably require a significant amount of work (and possibly staff — a chicken-and-egg situation), so this would be down to how highly this issue is prioritized upstairs. But I probably shouldn't speak for them. In fact, I've probably already said too much in this paragraph.

— Waldo Lemmer 13:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

That is why I have so many stuff that hold me back to say #3 is a good workaround. It could be a loop-problem: Adding a new roles but nobody is taking care of it as it should to make it good and efficient. #1 is obviously kind of silly as I explained above.

Solution #2, at least, don't add extra-roles and merely add a new task to the translator: validating it, himself, if one is trusted to do so.

Another solution (let's call it #4), could be to send an automatic message on #gentoo-wiki@libera.chat with the use of a bot (but that is adding a slight layer in the process) when this is needed, but I'm afraid it'll start to be a floody-bot fest on the channel.

EDIT: While reviewing my own answer, I add a slighty different idea, limiting the flood: Having a #gentoo-wiki-mc (mc stands for Marked Change), and will be on this channel peoples having as a task to validate it. No floody-bot-fest-message, cleaner, adding kind of a notification to anyone interested in. Still need works with a bot, tho.

Yet (it's #5) another solution, which is a fork of the #2: Not allowing one to validate any marked change, but a few contributors. Let's say it would need at least 3 non-people-in-charge (as nowadays, I mean) to validate the marked change, adding 2 persons in the process, still peoples of trust of course, and could quicker the process if the peoples in charge on an article are not around for a while, to busy or simple too tired these days to take care of it.

Hell, yet another one (#6) could be to fork the first solution, but with an improvement: The validation is removed from the process while a marked change is pending for validation, but a message at the top of the article would say: "Take these information with caution because a marked change is pending and was not still validated". Keeping the "people in charge" task to validate it, but allowing quicker change to be apply while warning anyone that it was not still 100% trusty. It could also redirect you on a page showing what was not, or even showing a small warning near the part that was still not validated.

Last (#6) seems some extra-works, after writing it's kind of silly, I guess :).

In all case, if it's needed, I would be happy to take action myself to help validating stuff, specially if it allows some to unload some boring works to another one. As we say in France, «giving the hot potato», I do not fear burns. If I'm not sure, I'll seek contact with the persons in charge. If I'm trusted, of course, for these matter. Beyond trust about «is this person having bad-intention», it's also a problem about how works the wiki and you all know that I'm not the hottest pan in the kitchen ;). Saying that, I am motivated to help, since it'll also helps myself to quickly update stuff in French translation !

Regards, Kévin GASPARD DE RENEFORT (talk) 10:21, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi,

As reported on #gentoo-wiki@libera.chat as the discussion page, I found a ~2 years old back request for translation: https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=SELinux/Tutorials&diff=1073885.

That's a bit sad IMHO. Just reporting it here too as a demonstration of what I fear: asking for validate the marked change and no validation in years.

I'm eager to find a work around this slow step in the workflow :) !

Regards, Kévin GASPARD DE RENEFORT (talk) 06:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)