Annoucement: New translation status page is installed

[Bernd Groh]

Hi Keld,

Keld Jørn Simonsen schrieb:

>Hi,
>
>I dont get this new arrangement. I understand that with the new setup
>other people can steal the ownership of the translation files that I
>have done, if there are a few translations that have not been done for
>some days. That is not very desirable.
>

We haven't really changed all that much. Previously, everyone could 
commit at any time. As such, everyone could "steal" anyones translations 
at all time, and worse, nobody even knew about it. I, personally, found 
that not to be very desireable. We are now in the process of making 
things more desireable. As a first step, we've added a layer of 
visibility to how things are. So, even though somebody else might have 
taken modules you've translated before, and you didn't know about it, 
what has changed is that now, you do know about it, since everyone can 
see who's currently doing what.

> I have maintained fedora7redhat
>translations for Danish for a couple of years now, and they have always
>been fully translated for each release. For the sake of the users it is
>better that there is an experienced translator that can assure
>consistency of the translations, than to get somebody afresh to do
>occational translations. 
>

Completely agree. That's why we've also introduced a Maintainer. A 
Translator doesn't really "own" a file, the Maintainer does. If you've 
been translating, in fact, maintaining a certain module in the past, 
we'd make you the Maintainer of that module. This gives you an even 
greater visibility into who's currently working on the file, since 
you'll be notified if someone takes the module or commits the file. As 
Maintainer, you are allowed to step in at any time, and release the 
module from the current translator, and either let somebody else take 
it, or take it yourself. Previously, there was no way for you to keep 
another translator from committing a file you've been working on, and 
worse, you wouldn't even have known about it.

>It also breaks tradition in the open source community that one person
>"owns" maintenance of a file/project until it is given up, or a longer
>period of bad maintenance has occurred.
>

That is the same with a Maintainer in our case. But, even though only 
one person "owns" a file, several other people can "contribute" to the 
file. In order to reduce conflicts, we allow only one other person to 
contribute at any given time, and we allow the Maintainer to cancel 
someones contributions at any time.

There's still a lot we need to do, but that's how we've started.

Best Regards,
Bernd


>Best regards
>keld
>
>
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>  
>


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Dr. Bernd R. Groh                       Phone : +61 7 3514 8114
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