AnneW's world

In June 2011 the Translate extension came to TechBase. Since then 51 people
have registered to translate pages, and 47 pages have been translated within
the new system.

Why the emphasis on the new system?

The old system relied on contributors manually monitoring pages in their language. There was no tool to make it easy for them to know when changes were necessary, so maintaining the pages was difficult if not impossible. The key to all this is, as Niklas and Claus said at Akademy, “Don’t waste Translators’ time!”.

Two months ago I gave warning that we would start to move things on after the
end of June. Now it’s time to ask your help in getting a leaner and meaner
TechBase, one where the information presented is correct to date, and easy to
maintain in as many languages as possible. To start the process, all the old language bars have been removed from their pages, but are, for now, available lined from http://techbase.kde.org/OldLinks

Don’t Panic!
No pages have been deleted – you can still access them

All old translated pages are still available, using the old-style address, i.e. …/Welcome_to_KDE_TechBase_(lang.code). I need you to tell me whether those pages are current and correct. This is how I propose we proceed:

1. Identify pages which should be archived – projects now discontinued,including KDE 3 projects, whose pages are not actively used now, but should bekept for historical reasons. These will not be deleted – they will still be available by searching. They will simply have the name Archive:OldFilename.
2. Identify pages which are so out of date and misleading, where it would be easier to delete and start afresh. If a re-write is needed, please indicate ifyou are willing to help in that.
3. Identify pages which are good and should be translated, but do not yet have any new-style translation bar or “Translate this page” link. With such a list we can prepare those pages for translation.

To help organise this, I have created two new pages – Pages for Deletion and Pages for Translation.

With your help we can make Techbase a better place for new contributors to visit.

What happens to the old Language Bars?

Using the OldLinks pages, we can monitor how far we have got in updating the translations. Once a page’s i18n bar shows nothing but redlinks, it can be removed. It has no further purpose.

For the rest, with existing translations, any pages that are seen to have a newer translation can be deleted as obsolete. Where no newer translations currently exist, feedback on whether someone is willing to fix the translation, or even on whether the old translation is close to the current English page, would be very helpful.

Eventually we will decide that we can do no more with those old pages, and they will be deleted. This will not happen before the end of August, to give all contributors time to make decisions.

Now it’s over to you.  Let’s make TechBase the great resource it really can be.