Re: Resolution of the Slovak Translation Team Issue (please ack)

[Marcel Telka <marcel telka sk>]

Hi Petr,

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 11:06:34AM +0200, Petr Kovar wrote:
> Hi Marcel,
> 
> On June 7th we had sent you an email discussing a possible resolution
> for the issues raised by members of the Slovak team. As we haven't
> heard back from you since then, we would like to kindly ask you to

Yes. I received the email.

> acknowledge receipt of our email and to provide us with your point of
> view on that matter.
> 
> The original message with the Resolution follows.
> 
> We thank you in advance for your reply.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> The GNOME Translation Project Coordination Team
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
> Dear Marcel,
> 
> For the last couple of weeks, the GNOME Translation Project Coordination
> Team has closely followed the discussion about the current state of the
> Slovak translation team. We have kept a very open mind and unbiased
> attitude as we followed all of the emails that were sent by members of the
> Slovak team as well as members of the GNOME community in general.
> 
> We, the members of the GNOME Translation Project Coordination Team, are
> very keen on getting everyone from the Slovak team back to doing their
> amazing work, so we took upon ourselves to derive a possible plan of action
> that may help iron things out. We can honestly say that every single
> comment was thoroughly considered and our team as a whole arrived at an
> unanimous, impartial proposal.
> 
> Even though you have been delivering great quality translations through the
> years, we feel that your approach at managing the Slovak team as a whole is
> a bit too rigid compared to other teams. The general consensus is that
> people should feel comfortable addressing anyone from the Slovak team
> without having to adhere to a standard format of expressing themselves or
> going through many layers of bureaucracy before getting the response
> they are after. Instead, we would prefer that a more open, format-free
> channel of communication be used. Both "old timers" as well as new
> collaborators should be able to exchange information in a worry free
> environment.

Recently, a new member joined our team (Juraj Kapsz). The scenario was
following:

1. Juraj joined our team at http://l10n.gnome.org/users/team_join/ (this
happened about 2 months ago).
2. Nothing else happened for few weeks.
3. On June 14th I sent an email to Juraj asking him to follow our
"joining rules" at our wiki page. You can see the email at
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-sk-list/2010-June/msg00036.html (at
the end of the page). Sorry the email is in Slovak language, but I am
sure you personally are able to understand it.
4. Juraj replied after few days and completed the team join steps:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-sk-list/2010-June/msg00031.html
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-sk-list/2010-June/msg00035.html
5. Now, Juraj is full member of our team.

This is an example how the "many layers of bureaucracy" works in real
life. I think Juraj had no problem with "to adhere to a standard format
of expressing themselves".

Maybe I misunderstood your feeling about "many layers of bureaucracy"
and "to adhere to a standard format of expressing themselves". If so,
please explain what is behind those words. Thanks.

> Also, we feel that having a single person responsible for committing the
> translations generated by the entire team creates a bottleneck.

I agree. OTOH, there are many teams with one commiter only (assuming the
coordinator is the commiter for a team), for example:

sq, am, en_AU, en_CA, an, hy, as, ast, az, az_IR, bal, my, eu, bem, bn,
be, bs, bg, ... and many others

> Translations should obviously be reviewed by an experienced translator, but
> one person should not block an entire team from pushing their work back to
> the upstream repository. So we would like for you to delegate some of the
> responsibility of final reviewing and committing translations with at least
> one other member of your team. This would not only help you with the
> massive load that you surely experience right before a GNOME release, but
> would also help other members become more involved, feel more motivated,

I agree this would help. Who is/are the best candidate(s) for this
delegated responsibility? Please help me to decide how to select such a
member(s). Thank you.

> and prepare them to one day lead the team, the day you decide to pass the
> torch, so to speak. Also, this surely could not block you doing post-commit
> reviews and changes, if you choose so.
> 
> We would highly appreciate if you could implement the aforementioned
> changes to the Slovak team work flow within four weeks, as we regard this
> time frame to be of reasonable duration.
> 
> Please note that it is our only purpose to improve the situation with the
> Slovak team and help you all get on the same page, so we would very much
> like to hear back from you with your comments as soon as possible. We
> would, of course, be alongside you for the upcoming weeks and months, to
> provide you with support and guidance until we feel that the team is ready
> to thread on its own, that no further intervening in the Slovak team is
> required, and that the experience for everyone is as pleasant as possible.
> 
> We thank you Marcel for the wonderful job you have done so far and are
> looking forward to working with you to resolve this situation once and
> for all.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> The GNOME Translation Project Coordination Team

-- 
+-------------------------------------------+
| Marcel Telka   e-mail:   marcel telka sk  |
|                homepage: http://telka.sk/ |
|                jabber:   marcel jabber sk |
+-------------------------------------------+