Request to become administrator of Welsh Translation team

Further to my post above I am happy to say that I fully understand the responsibilities of a Translation team leader, and can comply fully with any legislation that is enforced.

Unfortunately because both of the two Welsh translators in the team are inactive, they can't back up Mark in his effort but instead I, the Point of Contact of the Welsh LoCo team, Ubuntu Cymru can verify that he has a good skill in translations. He has helped with translating out website (which is currently in beta and not uploaded to our main site) and has a good attitude towards others especially communities and teams.

Sorry mistake, "our website" not "out website"

apologies, this problem has yet to be resolved

Hi all,

So we are talking about https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-l10n-cy and the owner is Dafydd Harries an Ubuntu and Debian member ... and also Canonical employ.

Have you tried to contact him via private email and he did not respond?

From my point of view, to solve this problem we should contact him and ask him to change the team owner to one of you guys.

Cheers,
Adi

Yes, Numerous attempts by Chris and myself to contact Dafydd have failed, and having spoken to David Planella he advised this course of action.

I see... not looking good at all.

I will try to contact the team owner and he will not answer I think we should raise this issue in the community council.

Cheers,

Adi

I have two email correspondence between Dafydd and I listed below:

Ar 14/05/2009 am 09:37, ysgrifennodd Christopher Swift:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hello Dafydd, I notice that you have been inactive translating in
> launchpad since May 2006 for the Welsh team. It has also come to my
> attention that you are the admin of the team and as such would be
> responsible for accepting new members onbaord the team. I can see that
> you've done many great efforts in translating into Welsh in the past
> however the cy translation group has been stale since you have gone
> inactive on launchpad. If possible can you accept some of the users
> requesting membership or pass-on the administrative title to another
> translator?
>
> On a lighter note, you may or may not have heard that Wales is in the
> process of setting up a LoCo team, our wiki is available at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WelshTeam and of course we are looking for
> people who share an interest or passion of Ubuntu in Wales. I really
> would like to welcome you to our IRC channel #ubuntu-cym on
> irc.freenode.net, there are instructions on the wiki on how to join the
> channel using an array of IRC clients
> [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WelshTeam/IRC]. I'm looking forward to your
> response so we can help sort out the mess in launchpad regarding our
> translators, official or not.

Heia Chris,

Dydw i heb fod yn darllen e-byst o Launchpad, felly doeddwn i ddim yn
ymwybodol fod pobl yn ceisio ymuno a'r tîm. Does gen i ddim amser i gyfrannu
a'r cyfieithiad ar hyn o bryd, ond rydw i'n hapus I rhoi'r cyfrifoldeb o
arwain y tîm i rhywun arall. Y prif broblem yw gwybod pwy ddylai'r arweinydd
newydd fod, oherwydd dydw i ddim yn adnabod enwai'r rhai sydd a diddordeb.
Unrhyw syniadau?

========================
What Dafydd had said is translatable as the text below:
Hello Chris,

I do not read the Launchpad emails so I didn't know about the requests to join the team. I have no time to contribute to translations at the moment but I am happy to give responsibility of the team to someone else. The main problem is that I don't know who the new leader should be because I do not know anyone who is interested.
Any ideas?
=========================

Ar 14/05/2009 am 10:58, ysgrifennodd Christopher Swift:
> I've forwarded this email to a Welsh GNOME translator, I hope that you
> do not mind that. He may email you back or me directly with further details.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris.

Sure, no worries.

Daf

Unfortunately in my first try of reviving the team, my GNOME translation friend did not respond to me about it and I did not feel that it was right to be so involved in LoCo management and then take over as admin of another Welsh Ubuntu team. So when Mark told me he wanted to volunteer, we emailed Dafydd again some two weeks ago but he hasn't responded to us so we've raised the issue with dpm and have since posted it as a question here in launchpad.

Sorry for such a huge post,
Chris.

This is a copy of the email I sent to Dafydd on the 16th August 2009:

English (Translation)
My name is Mark Jones, and i have an interest in translating Welsh, I would like to become the administrator of the group 'Ubuntu Welsh Translators' as there are not many members in the group and I will be able to add members. I am also starting a Welsh Degree at Bangor University.

Yours Sincerely
(signature)

Welsh (original)
Fy enw i yw Mark Jones, a mae gen i ddidordeb i cyfiethu Cymraeg, rydw i yn eisio gweinyddu'r grwp 'Ubuntu Welsh Translators" achos does dim llawer o pobl yn y grwp a ni fyddwn i yn gallu cael mwy o pobol yn y grwp i cyfieithu, hefyd dwi'n dechrau gradd Cymraeg yn Prifysgol Bangor.

Yr Eiddwch yn gywir
Mark Jones
https://launchpad.net/~mark-welshdragon

As has been mentioned above I have had no reply from Dafydd.

I don't know what to say.

I am happy to see that Dafydd is willing to transfer the ownership.
On the other side I think that Christopher should email him again and recommend the new coordinator.
You should try to email all his emails listed on the LP page.

Christopher, even thou you don't have time to coordinate the localization team, I think that you should be an admin of the localization team, and in this way we can prevent "the single point of failure".

Maybe Dafydd is in holiday now.

Cheers,
Adi

We've just been talking about this in today's Ubuntu Translations meeting with Mark and Christopher.

We've agreed on the following:

1) Christopher, as the current Welsh LoCo contact will be made the owner of the team.
2) As such, he will be able to add new members and appoint them as administrators. If he then wishes to do so, he can make Mark administrator and effectively the team lead.
3) They will notify Dafydd (the current owner) about this arrangement.

My only concern was that Mark does not currently have any experience in translating Ubuntu (0 karma points), nor has he ever translated upstream (0 translations imported). This is not about experience in using Launchpad Translations as a tool, but rather about experience in open source translations and in understanding the workflow of Ubuntu translations and the relationship with upstream.

However, due to the current situation of inactivity of the team, the current team's owner wish to hand over ownership and the involvement of Christopher as the LoCo contact, I'm confident this is the way to go.

Mark: if you wish to become the translation team lead, you should be aware of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/KnowledgeBase/PoliciesBrainstorming#Policy%20on%20starting%20a%20new%20team (note that these guidelines are still work in progress). You should also consider creating translation guidelines for your team (Adi Roiban explains this at length in a blog post here -> http://adi.roiban.ro/2009/03/20/localization-guidelines-in-launchpad-towards-improving-quality/)

Most importantly: subscribe to the ubuntu-translators mailing list to be kept up to date about the latest news and developments around Ubuntu translations, and feel free to ask for any question or doubt you might have.

I would also recommend you to introduce yourself at the ubuntu-translators mailing list. You'll find that the translations community is a very welcoming one :-)

Note: as mentioned in the meeting, the change of ownership might take a few days.

One last note: after speaking to Danilo, I'd suggest to proceed in the following way for point 1) (change of ownership):

* Try to contact Dafydd again and let him do the change of ownership himself (assigning it to Christopher)
* If he is still not responsive, we can then look at letting a Launchpad admin to do the change

I think it might make sense to try to do the change in a smooth way, if possible.

I've now sent an email today explaining to Dafydd the process and asking if he would be kind enough to transfer the ownership across. I hope that he can respond to this email that I've sent him, dated 3rd Sept 2009.

It seems Dafydd has added me and the other pending translators to the Welsh Team, but i haven't had an email back from Dafydd about becoming the administrator.

Thanks Dafydd Harries, that solved my question.