User:Contraexemplo/Outreachy

This page is dedicated to the records of my internship period at Wikimedia. Here you will find things I've written and done throughout December, 2017 to March, 2018. My findings and conclusions will be condensed and made available on a report to be written from the end of February to the beginning of March. If there's something you think it's good for me to know or some way you can help me out, feel free to contact me.

How to become a volunteer?
The first question that needs to be asked when we talk about recruiting more volunters should be: is the process of becoming a volunteer clear? One of the things I noticed as I read all the documentation available for translators is that it doesn't state how to create an account and get a translator permission to begin contributing.


 * meta:Meta:Babylon/Translations is an excellent page to introduce new people to the process of translation on Wikimedia. But even though it's arguably less confusing than the Extension:Translate page, it doesn't include that valuable information (and this is going to be addressed and corrected soon). However, this situation is just a symptomatic indication of a bigger problem: the uncertainty of the profile of those who read the documentation. From what I saw and read, wikimedians will deal with the current state of documentation with ease while non-wikimedians will get lost.

In a way, being a person not so familiar with the way Wikimedia functions works in my favor: while Johan and Benoît have years of experience under their belt, I have the perspective of someone who is confused with the complexity of the projects. This makes me easily perceive what is missing to understand clearly the path I need to make to become a contributor and to make outstanding contributions.

By the way, about the documentation...
MediaWiki.org already has a Documentation Style Guide describing best practices when writing and formatting documentation. However, I think its presentation could be done better and more information can be added. Take, for instance, Atlassian's Style Guide. It's brief, but presents information in such a way the reader doesn't need to think much: it has tables comparing bad and good practices and explanations about why they chose do adopt certain patterns. This is an excellent way to set a quality standart to everything that needs to be written: it's a clear, quick and effective read.

Today I was also reading (and honestly admiring) the documentation written by and aimed for the localization team of Mozilla. This one, for example, is aimed for Brazilian Portuguese translators. Take a look into how welcoming and organized the page is. It presents all meaningful information that is needed to become a translator and introduces the community involved directly with this task at the same time. Well, what in this documentation makes it so well written?
 * 1) Its landing page is brief. The objective of it is to gather all information that may be useful to those who want to begin contributing: where to contact the team responsible for this kind of work, how to join it, what are they doing, how to start contributing and what resources are relevant.
 * 2) Their glossary has an interesting structure. In Portuguese, words have gender. Not only they provide the appropriate translation to a word but they also give the reader an example of the context it is used and its gender. This normalizes the translation, making it more cohesive. I'd go further and provide a list of synonyms that can be used on longer texts (for instance, espaços de nomes and espaços nominais refer to the same thing [namespaces] without losing the real meaning in the translation). (There is a task on Phabricator to make something similar to the Transvision Glossary used by Mozilla, by the way!)
 * 3) They have facilitators to help newcomers to settle down. This is important for two reasons: one, it helps people to perceive that nothing happens by magic. Things are build by the effort of thousands of volunteers and citing them makes this crystal clear. Two, it creates a bond with the existing community and motivates newcomers to stay because of this bond. I may love the tools, the projects, the software, but I stay because I feel welcomed and belonging. This is exactly what community identification is about.

How to attract new people?
If that answer was obvious I probably wouldn't be here.

I was talking about some of the results of a preliminar survey I made before being selected to the internship on the meeting today when Benoît pointed out the New Editor Experiences page. Their findings resonate with a lot of my hypotheses and this is really reassuring. The problem, though, is that it's more easy to point out what is wrong than to find out how to solve it. And finding some of the answers is exactly what my work is about.

Questions to think about tomorrow

 * How can I help improve the documentation? I need to gather resources concerning content and presentation. For that, I'll contact people who are used to work with it and keep reading other FOSS projects' documentation.
 * How can I build bridges between people who are already wikimedians and newcomers? It was quite difficult to find my local community so I think this is something I need to put some effort on. There are also some ways to talk with only wikimedians who deal with translation but are they universally accessible and easy to find?

"How to start" page
After some searching I finally found a page talking about how get started to become a translator at the adequate wiki: translatewiki:Translating:How to start. However, it still feels... incomplete? There's a lot of "do this", "do that" but good resources to empower translations are missing and it still presumes you are familiar with the whole process of contributing. And once again, I feel like valuable information is all over the place. But as I said yesterday, meta:Meta:Babylon/Translations is a good immediate solution to this. I need to find ways to improve it and make it even more suitable to newcomers.

Path to become a translator

 * 1) You go to translatewiki.net and make an account stating the languages you know, choosing an username, password and e-mail to register.
 * 2) You need to make some translations to complete your registration. You click in "Translate" and is redirected to page designated to teach you how to use the tools. I made an account for testing and I had to reach the limit of 20 translations until the page stated it was enough. Now I need to wait to have my translations verified and be granted a translator permission. (It was 10:28 AM here in Brazil when I completed the training, let's see how much time is needed for that).

Core problems
I'm getting to the conclusion that whatever I read will have the same core problems: So I think I'm finally beginning to find out what needs to be my focus throughout the internship. I'm aware those three things are related to the way Wikimedia was built and by now they are part of its culture, but there has to be a way to mitigate its consequences with immediate solutions and long-term care.
 * 1) Information is too fragmented.
 * 2) There is a lot of assumptions and the most troubling one is presuming you are familiar with the way Wikimedia works.
 * 3) Good resources to establish a quality standard are missing.