Re: Complaint of the Slovak coordinator

[Jiri Eischmann <jiri eischmann centrum cz>]

______________________________________________________________
> Od: "Tomas Kuliavas" <tokul users sourceforge net>
> Komu: gnome-i18n gnome org
> Datum: 13.05.2010 19:21
> Předmět: Re: Complaint of the Slovak coordinator
>You want to run your translation in cathedral style, but you don't have
>enough resources for that. Bazaar wins against cathedral in long term.
>Initial bazaar translation quality is worse, but it improves over time and
>allows larger number of contributors. Your single translation quality
>might be better, but when translation team success depends on your free
>time, you and your translation team lose.
>
>Your team loses like X11 lost n years ago.

We have been discussing here for almost a day and you came and described the situation in one paragraph :)
It's as you say at least in my opinion. That's why I provided a comparison with the Czech team because the Czech team works as a bazaar. When I started translating for GNOME I picked up gedit. No one wanted me to prove any skills or considered me unskilled. My first translation was commited quickly. It didn't have to be a great translation. But in the next version, I went through it again and when I had to give up the module and others took it and I'm pretty sure they improved it again.
The bazaar way is more vulnerable to short-term bugs, but in a long term, it works well. I think the Czech translations of GNOME is a good proof. They didn't have to be great in the past, but they definitely get better over time although the rules are very free. And it's viable. In the Czech team, translators come and go, but statistics and quality go up.
The cathedral style they are using in the Slovak team is not viable. It's not actually a secret. Everyone can see it on statistics. It's not a problem of the last year as Marcel is trying to imply. There has been dissatisfaction for at least two years. Just the intensity is getting higher. Incremental changes has apparently no (significant) results. And because Marcel is not willing to do any fundamental changes it's not a surprise that others brought up a change on the coordinator position.

BTW I would not bring up Launchpad as an example of the bazaar way. Launchpad is an extreme. While Vertimus is only for translators Lauchpad is multifunctional. People come there to file bugs, write wishes etc. and they are just few clicks from translating single strings. Anyway, we don't have any problems with quality on Launchpad in Czech as far as I know.

Jiri