Proposal towards a Localization-aware MDC
Atsushi Shimono
Hash: SHA512
Remarks:
* I'm cross-posting this message to dev-mdc, dev-l10n, dev-l10n-web, and governance,
and also setting replies to this message to go dev-mdc. (To reach more and more l10n
community members who are working for sumo, web but not only MDC itself.)
Again, please forward all comments and suggestions to dev-mdc.
* This is a brief summary of our full proposal. For the full proposal, please refer
"himorin's blog" which are divided into four related posts.
http://blog.himor.in/?p=326 : abstract for the proposal ('s blog post); including parts' description
http://blog.himor.in/?p=328 : statistical analyses and status statements
http://blog.himor.in/?p=330 : the main proposal (in this e-mail)
http://blog.himor.in/?p=331 : list issues related on localization work with the current wiki system
* We hope that we can have and awake greateful discussion toward the active MDC.
We are also thank everyone and many localization communities' members who gave
greatful suggestions during the preparation.
And also I am realy sorry that I cannot attend to the upcoming summit, that I
have another open source event (OSC; Open Source Conference in Kyoto Japan, up to
1300 attendee in two days) of which I am a key member of exco.
- ------- Proposal
* Motivations and the Backgrounds
After the system change from the MediaWiki to the DekiWiki, many localization
communities have some frustrations or irritations due to the un-usable wiki
system. And also, some localization communities have disappeared or destructed
after the wiki system change, which we were heavily aware on the last summit
at Whistler.
Here we present a series of proposal with four parts. In part 2 we show some
results of statistical analyses on MDC and the current status of some
localization communities. In part 3 we present our recommendations to MDC as
three proposals. In part 4 we list issues related on localization work with the
current wiki system.
(Remark: Due to the really long list, we dicided to post the full text to blog
and only brief summary to the lists. Please refer "himorin's blog" for full
proposal. http://blog.himor.in/?p=326 )
* Current status of each localization community
** French team
The French localization community, which counted as much as three to five very
active members and many occasional contributors just before the switch was also
heavily disrupted. Most of these contributors just walked away and don't want
to hear about MDC anymore. Other communities like the long-standing XULfr haven't
been able to provide an alternative. Nowadays, localizing MDC is mostly seen as
a joke to scare away willful new contributors, and few people are taking seriously
the idea to start working at it again. We’re beginning to receive complaints from
developers because most documentation pages are so out of date that they’d rather
prefer to get the english content. Worse, the obsolete pages are not marked as such
and developers have probably been misled about standards and what Gecko can do.
** Japanese team
Japanese localization community for MDC had marked current MDC system using the
DekiWiki as DEAD because of the hardness to translate or update the wiki contents.
And also they announced to do some of their localization work not on MDC but their
local community site ― modest, such as localizing contents of the mozilla hacks
site as well as some weekly or by-weekly newsletters like about:mozilla. Due to
the problems of the current MDC including the serious performance problems, they
are no longer able to force remaining contributors or the newbies to use or
translate in MDC, and are hesitated to announce widely to earn new contributors.
Of course, as well known in global MDC community, they did such translation
projects first on MDC, but with a such serious decision, they switched all of them,
which are not the contents of English MDC, to the other site.
* Proposal
As some localization community members posted to dev-mdc newsgroup, the current
Deki system has many and many system or feature regressions compared the past
MediaWiki based system. Of course, we know that the Deki system was advertized as
having some great features, such as a GUI interactive editor, or its highly
customizable template system. But it seems clear that these features will NEVER
been able to cover the regressions or the system difficulties. Only little
localization contributor needed or did not want some of them especially for a GUI
interactive editor.
So, we want to propose the following things to the heads or MDC-leads of the
Mozilla Corporation.
1. Have more and more discussions with localization communities before any
high-impact decision
Before the deki system change as well as for the switch over to the MDN, we
only have heard the final decision from MoCo. For the MDN, the project page had
'open' on wiki.mo, but no official announces or discussions to/with the
localization communities on such as dev-mdc newsgroup before such FINAL
announcement.
For example, while we all agree that there were a few problems with MediaWiki
related with the custom features, title-override and breadcrumbs. It should be
widely known that many localization communities had argued against the switch
to Deki, feeling in advance that it would only lead to more problems.
(Remark: breadcrumbs' feature had implemented to the MediaWiki after that.)
Also for MDN, to engage with the hacks, the AMO, the developer hub, we must
make clear the issues related on localizations before every work. It is hard to
catch-up or modify the built systems to be aware of the localization after the
lunch, also each localization community would have their own sites on similar
concepts to these which is better to be integrated to MDN.
2. Be aware of the localization communities
Many and many system requirements, most of whose are regressions, are proposed
from the communities, but it seems that they are really not taken as seriously as
they should be.
For example, the diff view is still not satisfactory more than two years after
the switch.
3. Build a better wiki system
SUMO Project are now discussing to build their system from scratch -- Kitsune,
and we might be able to do some discussion with them for the MDC itself. Or we
have another possibility -- MediaWiki.
For this purpose, we have made a short list of issues related on localization
work, and propose to make discussion among the localization communities for the
desired requirements' list to build and enlarge localization communities.
Co-Proponents or Co-sponsors of this proposal:
* himorin -- on behalf of MDC Japan Project
* potappo -- on behalf of MDC Japanese localization community
* Benoit -- on behalf of MDC French localization community
- --
Atsushi Shimono - shi...@bug-ja.org / Tel: +81-50-5539-5179
Mozilla Evangelist
Bugzilla Localization WG member; Bugzilla Users Group in Japan
skype:shimono_univ; http://blog.himor.in/; http://facebook.com/himorin
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