Re: Coordinators guidelines?

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

mån 2003-12-22 klockan 19.03 skrev Roozbeh Pournader:
> Is there a guideline for coordinators anywhere on the website? I'm sick
> of not having a reference to check my behavior with, or refer to it when
> I think i'm doing the right thing. Say some guy says I'm a
> blood-drinking tyrant as a coordinator. How can i know if it's true?

Check if there are traces of blood left in your drinking glass. ;-)

I actually had the plans for writing such a document once, but I haven't
had the time. So if someone else wants to do it, be my guest. I could
help with some suggestions for content, but it should be fairly
straight-forward.
How to look up the language's country code, how to announce the team,
how to set up a mailing list and a simple team web page, where to send
finished translations, some useful hints on how to attract new
volunteers and get them motivated, the most important tasks of being a
coordinator (being a contact person, helping new volunteers get started,
and coordinating the translation work), how to apply for cvs accounts
once individuals have contributed some stuff, how to get started with a
glossary, and some useful policy suggestions, etc, is all useful stuff
to have in such a document.


[...]
> For example, when someone sends a translation to me for check-in that
> has problems, I let the person know about the problems and ask her/him
> to fix it and resend, instead of doing the fix myself. Am I right in
> doing so?

Absolutely, IMHO. Being a coordinator shouldn't mean automatically
fixing also other people's contributions, but rather to help them to
later help them themselves with the fixing. To train people in always
checking the validity of their translations and fix potential errors
before passing on the translation is very important, and it certainly
helps the day these contributors get cvs accounts of their own -- if
people commit broken po files into cvs, it's *bad*(tm). It simply
shouldn't happen, and it's always the responsibility of the committer to
check that the stuff is correct. So training people in always checking
their stuff themselves is highly useful in that respect. But of course,
help in getting started with doing so is also important.


Christian