About the new Status Pages

Bernd Groh bgroh at redhat.com
Tue Jul 6 05:03:55 UTC 2004


Christian,

Christian Rose schrieb:

>Thanks Bernd for taking the time to write this explanatory letter. It
>definately helps having the points summarized.
>
>There is a lot in your mail that I think everyone agrees with,
>especially the good intentions. But I believe some of your arguments
>you're making for the policy you appearantly have already decided upon
>are very skewed and not based on reality. More on that below.
>

As said, and that's why I am a little surprised by your email, I am 
actually in favour of not just giving anyone cvs access for a certain 
language, if 1) the group wants it, and 2) somebody makes 
herself/himself accountable for such decision. If a language group 
wouldn't want to restrict cvs access to "newcomers", nobody of that 
language group would actually be willing to be accountable for such 
decision, or there isn't any language team in place yet, I do not see 
why I should not give someone of that language group cvs access. What is 
wrong with that model? If 1) the group wants it, and 2) somebody makes 
herself/himself accountable for such decision, I do agree completely 
that cvs access should be restricted, and the group should decide 
when/if it is time to give a "newcomer" cvs access. I've said the 
exactly same before, and I say it here again, just in case it wasn't 
entirely clear where I stand, though it should be.

>tor 2004-07-01 klockan 03.13 skrev Bernd Groh:
>[ snip things about intentions that everyone agrees with ]
>  
>
>>First new thing is that a module can be assigned to a Translator and 
>>there is a [Take]/[Release] mechanism in place. What exactly is a 
>>Translator in this respect? A Translator is a person translating a file 
>>at a given time (thanks, Josep ). What's it for? Two things. First, so 
>>other people know who's currently doing what, and second, to minimise 
>>conflicts because two translators are working on the same file at the 
>>same time. You say that wouldn't happen if you'd have a group and one 
>>coordinator to coordinate all translations of the group? For a small 
>>group that might be feasible, but if you have one coordinator and 70+ 
>>translators, things can get quite difficult to manage this way. Also, we 
>>would require the coordinator to be available at all time, we'd require 
>>the coordinator  to make a decision, or we'd require 70 people to 
>>discuss about who's going to translate the file. Sometimes it is much 
>>easier if, given the translator can do a good translation of the file, 
>>whoever sees first that there is a file to be translated, that this 
>>translator just does the job. Sometimes, there can be too much talking 
>>about things, and it is, in fact, better to just do it. And there's 
>>nothing that says that that's not how the group wants to do things. Not 
>>all groups work in the same way. That might have an effect on 
>>consistency? If the group has already agreed on a certain terminology, 
>>and a person of that group simply does the job, without requiring too 
>>much talking about it, how? As said, different groups work differently, 
>>and I do not like the idea to build a system that is set to a certain 
>>way, I rather build a system that can accommodate a large range of 
>>behaviours of groups, or even of individuals. And yes, I am aware of the 
>>disadvantages of this system, but IMO, groups should form because groups 
>>want to form, and not because they have to form in order for the entire 
>>system to work, groups should form in the way they want to form, and not 
>>in one certain way, because that's the only way the system accommodates 
>>for it.
>>    
>>
>
>The first thing that struck me was the claim that there will be 70+
>translators for any single language. Believe me, the largest language
>translation teams I know of aren't more than, say, a dozen to twenty
>people for any project.
>

I can only go by how many people sign up to be a translator for a 
certain language, and we have language groups with well above 70 
translators.

> And then that's still an exceptionally huge
>team; almost all of them are much smaller, like one to five people. So
>giving an example of "70+ people" doesn't really look like it's even
>remotely connected to reality. It looks like the figure is intentionally
>blown out of proportion.
>

Well, it's not, and it certainly shouldn't look that way. My apologies 
if it appeared as if I'd intentionally blow things out of proportion, I 
simply did a count.

>Second, teams in practice usually annotate who is responsible for what
>themselves, sometimes only with a simple spoken agreement, sometimes
>with a list on a static web page, and sometimes even with more advanced
>systems, similar to the current Fedora status pages. It usually depends
>on the team's size and their structure what sort of method they want to
>use and feel comfortable with.
>

True.

>Thus, there's really not an argument to be made that just because the
>current Fedora status pages implement this, it's automatically superior
>to what a team does for assignment (who's working on what) control, or
>

Christian, please, you know as well as I, that I never called any system 
to be superior to another, neither I made an argument for it, I simply 
said that there are different ways of doing things.

>even that there is a benefit for larger teams, because larger teams
>usually already have this in place. This is not new. The reason you got
>requests for this is probably because you haven't had a team policy in
>the past, so team agreement didn't always apply. That's fine, but don't
>make it sound like evidence of team agreement not working.
>

Neither I said there is a benefit for larger teams, I simply said there 
could be, depending on how the team handles things. And yes, the reason 
for the requests might as well be because there wasn't a team policy in 
the past, however, even if, I cannot change the past, all I can do is to 
try and better things from how they are now.

>Third, you make it sound like who's in charge of what usually changes
>every day.
>

How? By introducing a Maintainer and stating that a maintainer should be 
a "permanent" entity?

> In fact, it's usually quite a static thing. When a person
>starts to translate a module, he usually keeps maintaining it, unless
>some unforeseen issue arises. Of course people do sometimes exchange
>modules, but that's almost always the exception. If you study teams
>empirically you'll find that almost all translators keep maintaining the
>same modules they've done previously. So requests for changing module
>maintainership is usually a rare thing.
>

That's how it should be, and that's why I've said a Maintainer should be 
something "permanent". However, in our current reality, we do have to 
deal with more than one person working on one and the same module at the 
same time. Simply saying that it shouldn't be that way doesn't make it 
go away. Saying that it's because there aren't any teams and we 
shouldn't have done a, b, and c in the past, doesn't make it go away 
either. As said, I cannot change the past, all I can do is to try and 
better things from how they are now. All we did was adding visibility to 
what's going on, what was so wrong about that?

>Fourth, you claim that all members of the team would fight for
>translating a new module, thus making the life of the coordinator
>difficult.
>

No, I don't. I can kind of see how you could get there, given I've said: 
"or we'd require 70 people to discuss about who's going to translate the 
file", but with this, I did not intend to say that members of a team 
would actually fight for translations, neither I was making any kind of 
claim, I simply meant to illustrate the responsibility a coordinator 
has, and the difficulties s/he could, in addition, face in a large team. 
All that was part of me making the point that, even though we'd like to 
have coordinators for every team, we'd like such role to be entirely 
voluntary, and not mandatory in order for the entire system to work. 
That's all. Again, I didn't mean to say the coordinator model doesn't 
work, neither that our model is better, not even that we do not want to 
have coordinators, all I meant is that I do not wish to build a system 
that is dependent on a coordinator or a team of a certain structure 
being in place, but supports it iff that should be the case.

> This is almost never the case. It's difficult to get
>volunteers, and every volunteer can usually get all what they want in
>terms of getting their hands dirty without stepping on someone else's
>toes.
>

I'd say this depends on the language and the people involved in that 
particular language, in general, I'd tend to agree with you, though.

> The problem is almost always the opposite -- to get volunteers to
>work on a new module at all. Hence, the situation you describe with all
>members of a team fighting for a particular module isn't the common case
>at all.
>

Christian, in fact, I do agree with you that it is hard to get good 
people taking on certain responsibilities, and this isn't just limited 
to translations, but even more so to maintaining modules and 
coordinating a language, or would you now disagree? Do you believe it is 
hard to get people working on a module, but actually easy to find 
maintainers, or even coordinators? I actually do agree with you, that, 
in general, it is hard to find either, and that exactly is why I don't 
want to build a system that is dependent on it. Why would you build a 
system that is dependent on something that, apparently, is hard to 
find?  Why not simply support it if a given structure is in place or 
forms naturally, and voluntarily? Maybe it is just my opinion, but if 
nobody wants to be the coordinator of an entire language, I don't think 
the language should have one, though I'd hope it would be the case. 
Maybe I am wrong, but that's simply how I see things.

>Fifth, you make it sound like saying "I will be working on this
>translation" in advance to the team would be as difficult as ending
>world hunger or something like that.
>

And you're telling me I blow things out of proportion?

> Trust me, it really isn't. Most
>translators seem to be happy with and familiar enough to email
>communication to be able to send short mails in their native tounge for
>this to be a total non-issue. And, the assignments are almost always
>

We do have quite active mailing lists for some languages, and yes, with 
70+ subscribers (just to stick with that number, I could easily blow it 
even more out of proportion), and I doubt communicating via email in 
large and active mailing lists is an ideal situation. Again, I don't say 
it can't be done this way, neither I say our way is superior, I simply 
say that I prefer our way for mere reasons of scalability. That may as 
well be a non-issue, but not one I'd like to count on.

>non-controversial, so there is rarely the big discussions you try to
>make a point of. Almost all this communication is a two-piece, really
>short one: "I will translate XYZ" and the reply "OK, noted". Again, you
>blow the issue out of proportion, and the argument doesn't seem to be
>based on reality.
>

In my experience, it's a short email "I will translate abc", "I will 
translate bcd", no "Noted" then replies "is anyone translating def"? or 
"who is translating bgr", maybe "I have translated xrt", then "sorry, 
xrt is finished now", maybe "what is available?", "what can I 
translate?", and just scale that out a bit now, and make a good argument 
of why I should use email communication to manage who's doing what? You 
say this is not based on reality? Sorry, but this is the reality I am 
facing. Yes, true, assignment is most of the time non-controversial, and 
if you read what I wrote, you'll see that I never said otherwise. Given 
everyone knows what everyone else is doing, why translate what someone 
else is translating already? But, if I don't know, I don't know, and an 
email is easily missed too, especially if you get many. Of course, that 
is all blown out of proportion and not based on reality, right? Or is 
your reality the only reality and every other "reality" is just made up 
and blown out of proportion?

>And last but not least, you fail to answer the question why you think
>translation is different enough from other forms of contributions, like
>software patches, where this anarchistic, no-prior-review-needed policy
>is definately not used. If you believe a mandated review and cooperation
>policy is bad for contributions, then why does every other form of
>significant contribution to a project require this?
>

Well, naturally, the most important thing is that the system is stable 
and works properly, and not reviewing software patches couldn't ensure 
that. Of course, it is most important that the systems works, and be it 
only in english. Or would you rather have a swedish system that crashes 
regularly, than an english one that works properly? I am not the only 
one who would agree that the software working properly is more important 
than the translation being perfect, or do you really want to say that 
this isn't so in reality?

Now, I don't really believe a mandated review and cooperation policy is 
bad for contributions, I merely think that nobody should have to be a 
maintainer or coordinator for a language if nobody really wants to. I do 
think that review and coorporation is good, I simply don't think anyone 
should be made to do it.

>Given all of this, it sounds like you're making up arguments out of thin
>air to defend your policy, instead of arguments based on experience. I'm
>sorry to say that, but nevertheless that is the impression I get.
>

Well, maybe you simply got the wrong impression, but I don't know why? :(
I've made it clear where we want to head to, but it seems like you're 
still more concerned with what we've done before. But as said, I cannot 
change the past. We haven't changed or introduced any new policy, we've 
simply added a layer of visibility to how things are. I still fail to 
see what was so incredibly bad about this step, and that is a question 
you haven't answered yet.

>Granted, you're willing to change minor details in how the translation
>system works according to feedback, but the most fundamental and
>pressing issue that almost all experienced translators complain about is
>the one you appearantly simply don't want to consider.
>

First, how can I know that almost all experienced translators complain? 
It was only a handful of people who said anything on this list. If 
people don't speak up on this list, what am I supposed to do? Secondly, 
what fundamental issue am I not willing to consider?

> Instead you make up fictive arguments to defend your stance, unwilling to take note of
>the massive complaints, or even the fact that one of the most wellknown
>volunteer translator groups have recently left the project because of
>this.
>

First, it was the same handful of people who complained, and given the 
number of subscriptions, I can hardly call it massive. Secondly, I still 
don't know what stance you are talking about? What exactly is that 
stance of mine that is so massively criticised? All I did was adding a 
layer of visibility to our current system, and I still think it was an 
improvement to how things were. On a side note, the translator group you 
are referring to had their very own reasons for leaving. But, since 
we're at it, what am I supposed to do? Let's say, you, and you alone, 
take on all swedish modules. You do a good job, but now I have 11 
translators signed up, of 2 I don't hear anything and the 8 others are 
complaining about you? Do you want me to just go, yes, he did all of the 
translations so far, and everyone else should just deal with it? What 
kind of policy is that? Yes, this is an exaggeration, simply to 
illustrate the problem of where to draw the line. Out of the arabic 
language group I had more people not in support of that group taking 
over maintainership than I had in favour. Tell me, what am I supposed to 
do? IMO, it is not up to me to make policy, the individuals of that 
language group should just come up with a solution by themselves, I 
cannot possibly be the judge, especially not given I don't speak the 
language.

>[snip] Appearantly it doesn't, but you decide that the Fedora translation
>project should continue full steam ahead with an anarchistic policy that
>no other major translation project uses, unwilling to consider why this
>is the case, and a policy for which no good defensive arguments based on
>conditions in reality can be made.
>

What exactly are you talking about? Are you sure you didn't simply 
misunderstand the situation?

>I would urge you to stop and reconsider before more teams lose their
>faith in the reasonability of mankind, and decide to leave the sinking
>ship.
>

Christian, I don't know what to say? I do listen to what the community 
is saying, and I do consider everything coming to my eyes or ears, the 
only problem I have is that I haven't got unlimited ressources. I don't 
know why you'd think otherwise, but as it seems, there is nothing I can 
do about it, and that's a shame.

Regards,
Bernd

>Christian
>
>
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>  
>


-- 
Dr. Bernd R. Groh                       Phone : +61 7 3514 8114
Software Engineer (Localization)        Fax   : +61 7 3514 8199
Red Hat Asia-Pacific                    Mobile: +61 403 851 269
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