New User Portal for the Wiki

[PascalDragon]

Good to know that I'm helpful to you here and then.

We don't agree very often but, there is always much to appreciate about someone knowledgeable and, do me a favor, don't argue with me about that.

Don't worry, I have other things to argue about

[trev]

The idea would be that I could translate the page from Italian into Esperanto. Once the page is finished I could present it to the international Esperanto community. In this way we can ask for advice for translations into the various national languages spoken by users of the Esperanto community.

By doing this we could help spread both FPC/Lazarus and Esperanto. In the worst case Otto, my digital Avatar name, would make a further gaffe (bad impression), also because I know little about Esperanto.

It might seem like a crazy idea, but it could also work. What is your opinion about it?

I suspect it would suffer from the same issues from which the current translations suffer. I'm also not sure what's in it for the non-native Esperanto speakers to translate what is largely somewhat technical computer language information into their own languages.

The problem that translations become outdated over time may not be something which can be solved.  It is even more unfortunate that there are many English language pages which are also out of date. It is a sad fact that while there are many Forum contributors, there are substantially fewer Wiki contributors.

The new Wiki main page may encourage more contributors because of the highlighting of the Portals, most of which could sure do with more, and up-to-date, content. I'm not overly optimistic though. If people are looking for content ideas, they just need to browse these forums.

[Otto]

Hello trev.

I suspect it would suffer from the same issues from which the current translations suffer. I'm also not sure what's in it for the non-native Esperanto speakers to translate what is largely somewhat technical computer language information into their own languages.

In fact, the probability of finding expert translators, who also know the technical language of computer science, would be too low.
My idea (probably a bad idea) originated in the fact that it used a language with a few exceptions and rather static, in the sense that it is not inclined to change the grammatical rules. Esperanto would have been a suitable language, in it can be added terms from other languages without altering the grammatical structure. I know it's a synthetic and little-used language, but we could try to use it as a kind of interlanguage* to experiment with new ideas in the wiki. 

*I'm not sure it's the right term.

The problem that translations become outdated over time may not be something which can be solved.  It is even more unfortunate that there are many English language pages which are also out of date. It is a sad fact that while there are many Forum contributors, there are substantially fewer Wiki contributors.

You are absolutely right on this point.

The new Wiki main page may encourage more contributors because of the highlighting of the Portals, most of which could sure do with more, and up-to-date, content. I'm not overly optimistic though. If people are looking for content ideas, they just need to browse these forums.

In my opinion, the excellent graphic design, which you have implemented on the new Wiki main page, could already be an important incentive. Having a good presentation, especially on the internet, is essential to attract new users and new contributors. As you rightly said, the Wiki and the Forum should work in synergy. For this reason, I had previously proposed the introduction of a banner (or something) that referred to the Wiki. Ads (e.g. translation requests) could also be added to this banner; obviously mine is just a suggestion.

Adiaŭ

Otto.

[Otto]

Hello everyone.

During the translation and adaptation of the links of the "Main Page" Portal in Italian, I noticed that all links of the "mailing lists" of FPC are directed to the same web page "https://www.freepascal.org/maillist.html".
Is it preferable to maintain this feature even in translation?
(In the draft I prepared I temporarily inserted a single link to the page: “Free Pascal mailing list”).
I would like to add a video tutorial that explains how to edit mediawiki pages.
This <How to Edit a Wikipedia Article> for wikipedia, I think it's suitable.
It's not too long.
The female narrative voice is very clear.
It's step-by-step.

Although it is specific to Wikipedia, the essential points are analogous to those used in the Lazarus wiki.

This other: <Cómo editar en Wikipedia>  seems very simple and clear to me and is also more complete, unfortunately it doesn't have the narration and it's a little too long.

Unfortunately not all users, for different reasons, have the opportunity to access the site <youtube>; (but, fortunately, there would be several solutions to address this problem).

If you knew some better videos it would be a great help.

Thank you for your attention.

Otto.

[zoltanleo]

Hi Otto

Look here.
https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Main_Page/ru
 I fixed it

[Martin_fr]

During the translation and adaptation of the links of the "Main Page" Portal in Italian, I noticed that all links of the "mailing lists" of FPC are directed to the same web page "https://www.freepascal.org/maillist.html".
Is it preferable to maintain this feature even in translation?

IMHO, listing all available mail lists is a good point (it helps people to quickly identify if there is a suitable mail list.

If needs must, it could be a single link, followed by a none linking enumeration. But I see no advantage.

The 2 CCR lists have been combined. But that is because they both have hardly any traffic at all.

I would like to add a video tutorial that explains how to edit mediawiki pages.
This <How to Edit a Wikipedia Article> for wikipedia, I think it's suitable.

If we add more links, I think they should go to a new page. I.e., we would have - on our wiki - our own page "how to edit the wiki", and from there any link could be added (this can be a link collection, or have added content, such as common templates used on our wiki).

On the main page, external links (to pages not by fpc/laz) should be kept as few as possible. They can change, be outdated, blocked .... While that applies too if the link is on any other wiki page, the main page should avoid the danger of "dead links".

Especially as we do not know how maintenance will work in future (as we know, in the past, the page was not updated for a long time / and ended up with quite a few dead links). This is especially true for the English main page, which due to being protected, will only be updated by few people.

[minesadorada]

We can expect a lot of new Lazarus/FPC users during the crisis whilst folk are locked down.

This initiative is timely indeed.

[Otto]

@zoltanleo

Hi zoltanleo.

I've updated the links.

Спасибо

Otto.

[Otto]

@Martin_fr

Thank you Martin_fr for your answer.
Adding a mediawiki editing page seems like a good idea for me.

Greetings

Otto.

[Otto]

Hello everyone

Please ensure image changes go to any translated version too. (The German main page is up to date / others are still in the old format)

I was aware that the German and Russian new translated main pages were updated or I would have done it myself the next day.

For text changes, I am not sure how best to ensure that they will find their way into translations.

Indeed, it is unfortunate that many of the translations of many Wiki pages are out of date. My only suggestion for that would be to abolish them and rely on Google Translate, but I'm not sure how well that works out in practice as I only know a little German and a little French. I generally try to write non-colloquial, simple English in the Wiki to aid in understanding by those for whom English is not their first language and for possible translation. I may not always succeed and I sometimes forget to do so.

@trev
I thought of another alternative for your proposal to abolish the main portal pages, written in languages other than English, that report outdated content. You might move out-of-date pages to a new page that can be reached with a "More Languages" link (or more appropriate terminology). In doing so, the content of the old pages would not be lost, if new translators were proposed, they could reuse their content to make their work easier.

I think that it is appropriate to have a single reference language (English), in which to report all the material. Of course, anyone could continue to write new pages in the languages they prefer; but it would be appropriate for him or someone else to translate the content into English as soon as possible.
I noticed that "Microsoft Translator" produces more correct translations than google, at least for the tests I did.

Otto.

[Martin_fr]

@trev
I thought of another alternative for your proposal to abolish the main portal pages, written in languages other than English, that report outdated content. You might move out-of-date pages to a new page that can be reached with a "More Languages" link (or more appropriate terminology). In doing so, the content of the old pages would not be lost, if new translators were proposed, they could reuse their content to make their work easier.

I haven't followed all the ideas...
I think generally translations are good. If indeed they become to outdated, then not sure what to do.

As for referring old translations => one can always have a link to a page version from the history.
Here is a direct link to the old main page: https://wiki.freepascal.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=133838
In the same way, a newer partially translated page, could have a link to one of its old versions.

[Otto]

Hello Martin_fr.

I also believe that in general translations are done well.

I was thinking of some possibilities to make the most of the work that trev is doing in improving the wiki. I would say that they are only suggestions and may not be effective, but usable ideas could be obtained from the discussion.

The general idea would be to make sure that as many wiki pages as they have the same graphics layout and that they are as up-to-date as possible. Obviously this would be a huge job, given the very high number of pages and the many languages used. In addition, the number of wiki maintainers is limited. As far as I can understand, Trev's proposal to reduce languages to the maximum, by reintroducing them later, is intended to speed up the updating and adjustment of the pages. The creation of thematic portals has already highlighted its effectiveness in improving the organization of the wiki.
Always in case I understand correctly; trev proposed: the total deletion of pages, which have not yet been updated in the non-English language, in order to prevent direct access by the user. To read the content in their own language, the user could then use an automatic translator.

Deleting the contents of the pages, instead of the total deletion of the pages, could be just as good. However, it should be considered that this way the user would continue to see the page in their own blank language. For this reason I proposed the alternative of creating a temporary storage page.

Otto.

[Martin_fr]

IMHO, it would be better to mark outdated translations.

1) So the translators can find them.
2) The users can see what changed in the English page

Assuming that I have a page, that currently has all translations updated, then it could be something like:

This page is the translation of the outdated version <link with old id>. The following update were since made <link to diff>.

Yet that does put a burden on the person who updates the English page.
Better would be, if this would work as a macro.
If the macro would know the version of the original page, and then calculate the rest. Then each translator could put that macro on top of the page. I do not know if such a macro is possible....

[Bi0T1N]

I'm not sure if it's already used or not but I found this: Translate extension.

If you have ever tried to translate content in MediaWiki without any tools, you know it does not scale. The translated versions get out of date and there is no way to track changes to the master page, so there are many half-translated and outdated translations without a clear overview of the overall status. Translators often feel discouraged when they cannot work with small manageable pieces of text. Translators don't find what to work on or what needs updating. The users also get confused by outdated information.

This is all solved with the Translate extension and its page translation feature.

It shows the percentage of translated content, shows outdated translations and also untranslated parts.

[trev]

IMHO, it would be better to mark outdated translations.

1) So the translators can find them.
2) The users can see what changed in the English page

That is an excellent suggestion if, and only if, there are translators who are prepared to do the translating. I'd be happy to devote the time to checking all the translated pages (restricted to Latin character sets) to categorise those which appear significantly out of date, but only if there was a reason (ie that the out of date translations would be addressed). From my recent fixing of syntax highlighting throughout the Wiki, it appeared to me that the majority ofl the translated pages were out of date - they appeared to have been translated once shortly after the English page appeared and that was it. The only exception was a fair number of German language pages which had no English equivalent (which I've generally remedied at the time by creating English translations).

My original suggestion to delete non-English pages (for those that were out of date) was on the basis that distributing/publishing incorrect information was not only not helpful, but misleading. Your suggestion to simply categorise those pages along the lines of "Translation out of date" would certainly help to address that to the extent that it flags the issue with readers.