Brice,
I forgot to say thanks for bringing this up and many thanks for
wanting to contribute documentation (this is not often that it
happens and it's great you're stepping up! :)).
This is a topic we've mentioned several times in the past but we've
never really tackled it so this is a good opportunity to discuss it
all together.
Once more I don't want my previous email to be viewed negatively. I'd
also really like to have XWiki doc be translated into lots of
languages. I'm just warning about the side effects... :)
Thanks again
-Vincent
On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:58 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi Brice and everyone,
My current thinking:
* English should always be the default
*
XWiki.org web site has to be of good quality. Our old
old.xwiki.org wasn't good enough and contained lots of half
finished stuff. It wasn't "professional" enough and was giving a
bad "reputation" to XWiki. As
XWiki.org is the official web site
for XWiki we need it to be of professional quality. This has to be
re-conciliated with the fact that any registered user can edit/add
documentation to it. Not an easy task but one I've dedicated myself
to by checking daily what gets added,etc and steering the
community. However I *know* I won't have the bandwidth for keep
track of xwiki.org's content in several languages and keep the same
quality in all languages.
* My initial thinking was: everything should be in English so that
all efforts can be mutualized and efforts are not lost in
divergences. I still believe this is the case because frankly seen
the number of edits we have I don't think there are enough
documentation contributors to allow several language translations
to be done and to live on. Brice, you're comparing it to Wikipedia
but do you know how many people are contributing daily there? :-) I
wish we had that number...
* I think we should provide a space for users who want to translate
XWiki documentation in different languages but I don't think these
translations should be "endorsed" by the XWiki development team as
we won't be able to guarantee the quality. I think they should be
maintained by contributors only. As a consequence I think the best
is to create a translation web site on the
XWiki.com farm for
people who are interested in translating the xwiki documentation
(we could even possibly provide such a site on
xwiki.org, as
<language>.xwiki.org (and
xwiki.org/<language> would redirect to
it using URL rewriting). We would need a big disclaimer on these
sites saying that:
1) this is work done by contributors and not by the XWiki
development team
2) that the official site is
http://xwiki.org
* It's a pity we don't use the XWiki internationalization feature
for this but I don't see how to reconcile the points above with it
and I'd rather we not use this feature than risk disappointing
users if they see incomplete or low level documentation in some
language.
* To be honest I'm personally really skeptical that such
translations will work. As the creator of Jakarta Cactus, I have
experienced such kind of translations and it has never really
worked. Translations are always months and even years behind the
official translations, you get emails on the project mailing list
asking for support because they're looking at an outdated
documentation, and the solution is on the english documentation page.
<more thinking...>
* Hmm... I guess we could turn on internationalization for
xwiki.org but:
1) we would need to find a way to put the disclaimers I mentioned
on *each* translated page as a header for example
2) we would need one translation champion for each language. That
person would be dedicating himself/herself to drive the
contributions for that language, to organize them, guarantee a good
quality level, remove wiki vandalism as they happen (this happens
daily but to a small degree)
WDYT?
Before answering, please bear in mind that today I am doing 90% of
the work for
xwiki.org so it may sound easy but it's a lot of sweat
and hard work and it doesn't happen automagically :-)
Thanks
-Vincent
On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:21 PM, lopensource-cestbien(a)yahoo.fr wrote:
hello,
I m new user of XWiki, and i want to help the xwiki "community"
translating the documentation (ie. in french). I was starting
doing it on
xwiki.com on the "Admin guide" some days before but
without any permission. So today, i asked you here how must we
process ?
I got a mail from Vincent Massol and so, some questions are :
- how can't we be sure that the french version of the
documentation will be an updated version ?
- how prevent new information(s) on the french version that
wouldn't appear on the english one ?
- what will be the interact(s) between a french and an english
version ?
This is my opinion, but of course we must discuss about this :
If we see the wikipedia contribution process, then there is one
wiki instance for each language. The only interact is an interlang
link between article(s).
Differents versions could be, and (often) are different !
I think we must do the same for xwiki documentation.
Got a dirty version of the documentation is better than nothing!
Vincent was talking to me about starting a french instance of
xwiki website. I think : maybe not, this is a good idea !
For me, french and english community of xwiki can progress on 2
distinct ways without any problem. Sure, there will be some people
to make bridge..
What are you thinking about this ? please give us your opinion.
Best regards
Boly38
NB: Vincent Massol, please correct me if i do some mistake :)
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