Problems with the French team

["Christian Rose" <menthos gnome org>]

Anyone interested in the French translations should read this.

It has come to our attention that there are some problems within the
current French team. This has been witnessed on this list
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2005-October/msg00146.html)
as well as testified in complaints by numerous French-speaking
contributors on IRC and in private mails.

To summarize, the current official coordinator for the French team,
Christophe Merlet (RedFox), has been doing a tremendous amount of
contribution in the past, and owns a lot of credit for that.
However, for a longer period of time, people have been complaining
that he has been unable to perform his duties as a coordinator in a
satisfactory fashion. The complaints range from everything from the
official coordinator being a bottleneck in the review process and
translations as a consequence not being committed in time for
releases, to the coordinator simply not being involved much in the
translation team's efforts nowadays.
At the same time, Benoît Dejean appears to be functioning as some sort
of unofficial coordinator for the French team, and has been doing so
for several months. According to trustworthy sources, Benoît owns a
lot of the credit for any recent activities in the current French
team. At the same time, as I understand it, there appears to have been
disagreements between the current team of contributors and the
unofficial coordinator on one hand, and the official coordinator on
the other hand, and the official coordinator has let us know that he
has no intentions of resigning.

This is a big problem, because from the official GNOME Translation
Project side of things, we always only officially recognize the
official coordinator that is registered with the project. But since
the current French team lead by the unofficial coordinator has now
been asking for resources (translator accounts) that we only allow the
official coordinator to grant, and the official coordinator has denied
those, this is very much a problem on the highest level.
Normally we would ask the team to resolve such issues by themselves,
but in this case, that appears to not have given any results, so we
are forced to do something about it, even if we do not like it and
would want it not to have happened. Hence this mail.

Clearly, this is a problem with coordinatorship -- we only allow one
coordinator for any team, so that we and all other GNOME contributors
know who is responsible and who we can talk to about any issues with
the translations, and who's word will be final in any disagreements in
the team. However, it seems the team are unable to solve this
themselves, and we cannot continue having one official coordinator
who's reportedly not very much involved any longer, and one unofficial
coordinator who is very much involved but not recognized officially.

If this cannot be solved in any other way, we might be forced to
replace the current official coordinator with a new one, even against
his will. Obviously, we'd very much like to avoid that, but the above
situation (given that the complaints are true) doesn't help anyone and
should not continue. However, as long as we do not have a better
alternative, in other words a person willing to be the new (better)
official coordinator for the French team, status quo will remain for
sure.

So, what should we do?

A) First of all, I'd like anyone who knows about the situation in this
case to respond to this thread and testify (on the list, please). Is
this summary true? Or are the complaints inaccurate?

B) I'd like the current coordinator to respond to those comments (on
the list, please). I'm especially interested in hearing about why the
coordinatorship has not voluntarily been handed over to someone else
if personal lack of time has been a problem.

C) I'd like someone to step up volunteering for being a new
coordinator for the French team (on the list, please). I'd like that
person to give a summary of contributions and his or her current role
in the French team, and a short explanation of why this person would
be a better coordinator. Remember that if noone offers to be a new
coordinator, a coordinator change will simply not be possible.

After this, I'd expect that we (the GTP spokespersons; me and Danilo)
will be able to make some official decision regarding the
coordinatorship for the French team, if the issue hasn't already been
resolved by then.


Christian