Community, with the new openSUSE Wiki at wiki.opensuse.org fast approaching and just around the corner, we're going to put additional workforce on it to hold the target launch date of June 1st 2010, which is prior to the release of openSUSE 11.3. In addition to the English Wiki, we'd love to launch the new german wiki at the same time in order to honor the significant reviewing contributions that had been done in the german wiki by a dedicated group of german contributors. We also see that the german openSUSE user community is relatively large and important for the project and distribution. In order to achieve this, I'd like to propose both a strategy for the german wiki as well as a realignment of our current multi-language concept for localized Wikis documented at http://wiki.opensuse.org/Help:Translation 1) German Wiki The German Community already adopted the wiki reviewing process of existing content and actually outperformed the English efforts. To be able to adopt the new structure concept we're currently creating at wiki.opensuse.org I herewith request a new temporary instance de.wiki.opensuse.org. We want to parallelize the transition efforts of reviewed content into the new instance at de.wiki.opensuse.org. We'd like to build the new German Wiki in parallel to the new English Wiki to be able to switch both DNS entries at the same time and provide the openSUSE Community with the appreciated outcome of both reviewing efforts. 2) Multi-Language Concept In order to provide localized openSUSE documentation resources, i.e. wikis to our user community, we currently follow the Wiki Translation Process outlined at http://wiki.opensuse.org/Help:Translation. Time has shown that this concept has several drawbacks both from a initiating and a maintaining perspective. Thus I herewith propose the following changes (the rest will be kept as is): a) The initial creation of Mandatory pages, so far, has been done within the English Master Wiki and this is suboptimal because it fills up the master wiki. Thus I propose to create a new languages-server languages.opensuse.org serving as a temporary instance for initial translation efforts. That way, translators have a dedicated sandbox-server to build their localized Wiki prior requesting their own localized instance <languagecode>.opensuse.org. b) I propose to introduce more strict commitment requirements for the maintenance of localized Wikis. Time has shown that initially created localized Wikis remain in an outdated/obsolete state and we need to avoid such a situation. I recommend to introduce a monthly meeting of Wiki maintainers at #opensuse-wiki to discuss needed requirements such as adoption of pages to new releases and syncing of content. The latter aspect is IMO very important: The language-specific instances aren't 1:1 copies of the english master wiki but vital communities by itself providing openSUSE documentation for a their target group. This is valuable content initially created in localized wikis and communication between maintainers is needed in order to sync (two-way direction) content for the profit of both the English master and the other localized Wikis. Also syncing between several localized Wikis should be improved. c) We should encourage localized (existing) communities to adopt the new structure scheme of the english wiki at wiki.opensuse.org. Furthermore we value the adoption of our reviewing processes for localized (existing) communities from a long-term perspective. Experiences with the german wiki have shown that, an engaged contributor community assumed, this is achievable. The maintainer meeting proposed in paragraph b) should support these efforts. d) We need to avoid "non-starters" and/or un-maintained Wikis. That means that granting a <languagecode>.opensuse.org DNS isn't a lifetime guarantee. Committed maintainers should provide hand-over candidates before they decide to move on (this certainly may happen) and instruct them to achieve daily business. If a localized community isn't maintained any longer for more than half a year and engagements to revive commitment for the localized instance fail, we're going to shutdown the localized wiki. Due to the current state of the Wiki concept implementation with a target launch date of June 1st 2010 for both the english and the german wikis, I'd like to encourage everyone interested in the discussion to focus on show-stopping aspects within the presented concept. Please step up within one week from now on (until Sun, the 18th of April) with objections. Time is pressing and there's still lots to do, but we're highly committed to push these efforts with additional workforce. The goal is to generate even more fuzz for the openSUSE project with the 11.3 release together with new sexy instances for both the english and german wiki. I'm looking forward to your comments and suggestions, R -- Rupert Horstkötter, open-slx gmbh openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Community Assistant http://en.opensuse.org/User:Rhorstkoetter Email: rhorstkoetter@opensuse.org Jabber: ruperthorstkoetter@googlemail.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-wiki+help@opensuse.org