Recent discussions - trans - Fedora mailing-lists

24 Jun 2004


      Hi all,
I have to say that the past two or three days is the most exciting
period of this mailing list since Fedora Translation Project started :)
It's great to have so many people join the discussion and give their
opinions from different perspectives.
I'd like to explain a few things raised among the discussions.
1. About CVS access.
Someone mentioned that it was too easy to get a CVS account. True.
Currently anyone who has a valid email address can be granted CVS access
to the commit locale of his/her choice. It was because in the early
phase of the project we'd like to encourage people to participate and to
start forming teams. There is no way to know or qualify people - on what
basis should we give someone access to cvs while denying others? If the
person is a GNOME or KDE coordinator then he/she should be the default
coordinator for Fedora? There is no convincing formula. I believe by
adopting an open policy then close the loopholes and fixing problems as
they arise will maximise the community participation. (BTW, your cvs
account has very limited rights, so don't even think of misuse it ;) ).
It is easier to add features and put limitations on accounts than to
remove features/restrictions. In the future process development, we may
be able to have different level of cvs accounts. For example, a
proofreader's account may have more rights than a new translator's
account.
2. Coordinator's role
I believe a coordinator's role is not *to control* how things should be
but to stay *in control* of how things are. People participate one
project naturally form groups. Some are small - relatively easy to
coordinate and come to a resolution. Some groups are quite large with
hundreds of members - it's quite a task to keep things organised and
come to a consensus on discussions. For any languages that don't have a
separate mailing list yet, I'd like to see the translators of the same
language discover each other and form a group. If there are five or more
people in the group, just elect your own coordinator and send me an
email to request a separate mailing list.
3. Tools vs. Teamwork
Tools will never eliminate the need of teamwork. The new status page is
designed to ease the work involved in coordination. For smaller groups,
it may be very effective to notify through mailing list about the work
he/she is undertaking, but for groups with hundreds of members it's hard
to track who is doing what through mailing list notification. It may
seem cumbersome to have to go through take/release when you know you are
the only translator out there :) but it may not be the case tomorrow,
someone else may signed up to be a translator and want to help out.
There are lots of things tools cannot replace teamwork, such as quality
control, vocabulary consistency etc, but tools (or we hope to
develop/modify tools) could help with those activities. The status page
or any future enhancement is by no means a replacement for teamwork.
4. Red Hat people
Fedora project is Red Hat sponsored open source project, naturally you
will see plenty of people with "redhat.com" email address. That doesn't
mean anything said by anyone@redhat.com is official. Like everyone here,
he/she is also a participant/contributor. Fedora is a community project
and anyone participate the project should respect the community, Red Hat
people is no exception.
Last but not the least, I know it's pretty hard to stay cool in a heated
discussion but please keep in mind when you post to this mailing list
that everyone is entitled to his/her opinion and we may have different
approaches but we all have the same goal. All constructive suggestions,
debates, and criticisms are welcome in this list.
Sarah