Brave GNU World

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:29:09 -0500
 || Thomas Schwinge <tschwinge at gnu.org> wrote: 

 ts> What is the `web volunteers's' job?  Putting your (and others's)
 ts> translated articles online?

Yes, that was the setup.

Essentially the original setup was like this:

 1. [ETA - 4 weeks]

    I write the column in German and send it to bravegw-trans-de at gnu.org

 2. [ETA - 3.5 weeks]

    I translate the column to English and send it bravegw-trans-en at gnu.org

 3. [ETA - 1 week]

    Other translators pick up the column from one of the two and
    translate it to their language, running the versions through the
    bravegw-trans-XX at gnu.org lists for proofreading

 4. [ETA - 2 days]

    The web volunteers prepare the translations for relase, putting it
    online, but not yet making the links

 5. [ETA]

    Links are made, I create the announcement and mail it out.


 ts> Doesn't the GNU project / the FSF have people who would like to
 ts> contribute to the effort bringing in their
 ts> not-directly-coding-related skills?

Yes, there are people at the GNU Project.

About 6-8 of them got in touch with me, offering help. I told them the
drill, gave them access and gave them the material, but nothing ever
happened.

A major problem is that the site grew "organically" from a very small
project, and so all links are hand-maintained. This is a lot of work.

So some people asked whether they could redo it in some kind of CMS: I
told them to go ahead as long as it was all based entirely on Free
Software, but nothing ever came out of this, either.

This is essentially still the situation.

I am however very happy to see all the interest that people have shown
on this list and in private mail after I explained the
situation. Thanks a lot for that!

As the process has broken down entirely (except for step 1, which I
still do), it might make sense to actually rethink the technological
integration from the ground up in order to make it more resilient.

I have found myself thinking that a CMS (Drupal? Typo3?) or maybe a
Blogging Software (Wordpress?) with review and workgroup management
and authorisation capabilites, as well as the possibility to add
modules like automatically emailing certain language versions to
people who subscribed to them might be a good idea.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
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