Hi all, second round of inline ranting... On 13/10/15 17:49, Richard Brown wrote:
On 13 October 2015 at 09:50, jcsl
wrote: From my point of view, the problem here is a communication problem. Things developed "secretly" (à la TTIP) without first asking and discussing the subject with the involved parts for the benefit of all. We are a community, aren't we? So transparency and communication are fundamental pillars.
While I wholeheartedly agree that the communication about Weblate could have been handled better, I think it's a stretch to go as far as a comparison to TTIP
Come on, "communication about Weblate could have been handled better" is pure BS. There has been no communication *AT ALL*, so everything is better than nothing.
The reality is that we're a community of technical people, and the psychology of technical people is sometimes a little hard to understand, but when you do, this current situation makes a lot of sense.
Translators are not required to be technical people, and their psychology can be different.
In my previous life as a Systems Manager, I used to quote this following article when i tried to explain some of the behaviours of my team Even though it talks about 'IT Pros', I find much of this logic applies to the way the vast majority of our contributors think and act, and therefore I think a lot of the information here is relevant to the situation with Weblate
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2527153/it-management/opinion--the-unsp...
But for those who don't want to read the full thing, here's a few extracts
"Few people notice this, but for IT groups respect is the currency of the realm. IT pros do not squander this currency"
"IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder, independent of the organizational chart."
"IT is a team sport, so being right or wrong impacts other members of the group in non-trivial ways"
"If you are dismissive of complaints, fail to recognize an illogical event or behave in deceptive ways, IT pros will likely stop complaining to you. You might mistake this as a behavioural improvement, when it's actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to, which leads to insubordination."
"Arbitrary or micro-management, illogical decisions, inconsistent policies, the creation of unnecessary work and exclusionary practices will elicit a quiet, subversive, almost vicious attitude from otherwise excellent IT staff Interestingly, IT groups don't fall apart in this mode. From the outside, nothing looks to be wrong and the work still gets done. But internally, the IT group, or portions of it, may cut themselves off almost entirely from the intended management structure. They may work on big projects or steer the group entirely from the shadows while diverting the attention of supervisors to lesser topics. They believe they are protecting the organization, as well as their own credibility -- and they are often correct."
I think it is fair to say that for quite some time there has been a growing perception that the translation team is resistant to change and a blocker to progress.
Again, the fault is on translators only. What has the dev group done to avoid this? No communication, no request for comments, no request for the translators' opinion. But obviously it is translators' fault. The only thing they did was: we develop something new that works for us, then we tell the translators that they have to use it. Does this affect their workflow? Does this make their work more difficult? Of course no, because we, the developers, know that it works better, even if we know very little about what happens on translator's side. This happened around 2 years ago when weblate was first proposed: it was announced with already a roadmap for having it in use in short time, with the underlying message: translators, either use this or just leave. Is it this a good approach for having new technologies adopted? Is it this a good example of fair cooperation for the best of the project?
I do not want to solely blame all of this on Carlos, but as a very vocal mailinglist and forum poster, there are countless examples of posts from him with help reinforce that perception.
He is vocal, but for sure he is not alone. I agree with him on several things, even if I don't express this by sending mails.
To cite an example, statements like "Factory can not be translated" are the kind of illogical statement that is downright wrong, resists the direction of travel the rest of the Project is already taking, and is going to lower the respect of the person uttering it.
Don't you even consider to try to think that this may be a signal that the overall behaviour of the project with respect to the translators' work has some problem? No, because the project is correct, the translators are wrong. I wonder why you have not cited the conclusions of your beloved article: "Finally, executives should have multiple in-points to the IT team. If the IT team is singing out of tune, it is worth investigating the reasons. But you'll never even know if that's the case if the only information you receive is from the CIO. Periodically, bring a few key IT brains to the boardroom to observe the problems of the organization at large, even about things outside of the IT world, if only to make use of their exquisitely refined BS detectors. A good IT pro is trained in how to accomplish work; their skills are not necessarily limited to computing. In fact, the best business decision-makers I know are IT people who aren't even managers." and "As I said at the very beginning, it's all about respect. If you can identify and cultivate those individuals and processes that earn genuine respect from IT pros, you'll have a great IT team. Taking an honest interest in helping your IT group help you is probably the smartest business move an organization can make. It also makes for happy, completely non-geek-like geeks." where "translators" play the role of "IT pros". Where is the respect for the translators? Or are only the translators expected to have respect for the others? There are lot of examples of the low level of respect for the translators' work: not providing them the updated files to translate, not using their translated files, make their work difficult by ignoring the "localization best practices" [1,2], just because this simplifies dev's work, play with their work so to have something to impose on them without telling them it will happen, don't tell them when translations are expected to be available, and so on and so forth.
It is also dismissive of those of us who feel Tumbleweed must be translated, because it's a major output of the openSUSE Project.
Nice, you feel TW must be translated, but you never asked translators what they think about translating TW, the problems they see in this and what may be needed to have it. But obviously their opinion is useless, it has been decided that TW has to be translated and, translators, you have to do it in the way the devs and decision-makers decide. This has been decided and so it must be. The mantra "those who do, decide" works again in one direction.
The very mindset of 'us' vs 'them', the history of bikeshedding over translations, and Weblate in particular, further feeds into that cycle of reduced respect and from that insubordination.
I want to remember you that the majority of the oS translators are volunteers, so there is no insubordination at all. This is another hint of how much you value translators: either they do what others decided, or there is insubordination.
It doesn't matter what the 'openSUSE organisation chart' says, whether or not there is an 'official' translation team or not
There has been and remain to be a group of dedicated contributors who believe Weblate is part of the fix for the solutions they perceive and who have felt their only option is to work quietly on it due to the resistance they have witnessed and directly faced.
So that after, once the solution is ready, it is imposed to the translators. Either accept, or go away. Some contributors are more contributors than others...
Now, at the earliest opportunity from their perspective, they are trying to bring their work out into the open because they do believe in concepts like openness and transparency, but up until this point, while not ideal, I totally understand how they have acted, in their shoes I could have seen myself doing the same.
No, "they are trying to bring their work out into the open" because their work has had side effects that have been noticed and that have puzzled the translators, that have seen their work disappear, then re-appear, and then disappear again (while breaking the work of other people), so the problem exploded. I really wonder when and how they would have announced the change if things would not have been noted, but I can not have such an answer.
In an ideal world, this route wouldn't have been taken. Mutual respect for all involved would have been present, and it would have been possible to work in an open and collaborative fashion from the get go.
Scenario: devs propose a new solution to translators that changes rather deeply the established workflow of the translators, with the already decided idea that the proposed solution is the one that will be used. Translators react to this heavy change by complaining about the changes in their workflow, the added difficulties, the lack of communication. It is clear that this is only translators' fault. Your ideal world: translators agree with everything devs propose. Devs don't need input from translators because they know what it is the best for devs (granted) and translators (not granted at all). This is a very fair ideal world, isn't it?
I'd rather see progress being made via this route however than the available alternative, which would mean preserving a translation approach that everyone accepts was dysfunctional and from a very practical perspective would mean Tumbleweed (and possibly also Leap) would be insufficiently translated
And hopefully from this point we can all learn how to get along a little better.. I can still hope :)
And I would still hope that devs and decision-makers show more respect for volunteer translators, but the hope is really low :-( Best, Andrea [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa291552%28v=vs.71%29.aspx [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localization/Localization_c... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-translation+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-translation+owner@opensuse.org