[17:00] <dholbach> #startmeeting Community Council meeting
[17:00] <meetingology> Meeting started Thu Dec 20 17:00:10 2012 UTC.  The chair is dholbach. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology.
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[17:00] <dholbach> Welcome everyone to the last CC meeting in 2012.
[17:00] <czajkowski> Aloha
[17:00] <Gwaihir> o/
[17:00] <cprofitt> hello
[17:00] <dholbach> Today we are going to catch up with the Forums Council and the Translations team. Do we have somebody from either of the two teams here?
[17:02] <dholbach> I got a reminder email from somebody in the translations team today, so they should be aware. I'll go and see who I can round up. Can somebody reach out to some FC folks?
[17:03] <cprofitt> pinged the forums irc channel
[17:03] <dholbach> thanks cprofitt
[17:03] <czajkowski> cool I was about to try and find folks via https://launchpad.net/~forum-council/+members#active
[17:04]  * dholbach lights the bat^WCC signal
[17:04] <cprofitt> looking at who is on in their irc channel I do not see anyone from the FC
[17:06] <dholbach> hey kelemengabor :)
[17:06] <dholbach> I'd say we start with the Translations team then. :-)
[17:06] <kelemengabor> hi dholbach, all
[17:06] <dholbach> #topic Catching up with the Translations team
[17:06] <dholbach> kelemengabor, how are you doing?
[17:07] <dholbach> thanks a lot for making a bit of time
[17:07] <czajkowski> kelemengabor: ello
[17:07] <cprofitt> hello kelemengabor
[17:07] <kelemengabor> well, not much ubuntu-wise, sadly. I was busy with other tasks :(
[17:08] <kelemengabor> btw, isn't dpm the translations team lead? :)
[17:08] <dholbach> We've been doing these catch-ups with various teams in the Ubuntu community for 2 cycles now and at UDS the suggestion to talk with the translations community as well was brought up and I mailed the team after UDS, it seems like this has fallen through the cracks, probably holiday-related, which is understandable
[17:09] <dholbach> kelemengabor, I pinged him, but he might be in a call just now
[17:09] <dholbach> kelemengabor, what was your gut feeling of the last release and how the translations community dealt with it?
[17:10]  * trijntje is on his way home and will read back
[17:11] <kelemengabor> last release... it was a little buggy to my taste (compared to Precise), also we are quite lacking dpm's leadership. without someone pushing things forward, things tend to not move forward...
[17:12] <czajkowski> nods
[17:12] <dholbach> kelemengabor, how do things generally work in the translations team? are there milestones? do teams get notified about missing translations?
[17:13] <dholbach> I must admit that I never dived too deep into translations work, but was always impressed that so many strings get translated every cycle and people sometimes just spontaneously pick things up
[17:13] <Gwaihir> kelemengabor, might be a good opportunity to open up a little bit the ubuntu-translation-coordinators team too, am also part of it, but have less less time lately, new people might help out
[17:14]  * cprofitt nods to Gwaihir 
[17:14] <czajkowski> Gwaihir: ah yes I'd like to see that happening also
[17:14] <teolemon> there's been a recent focus on tacking the Software Centre Descriptions
[17:15] <teolemon> aka the DDTP
[17:15] <kelemengabor> no, we don't have milestones. there are things that need to be done at certain times in the release cycle (opening up translations, setting up langpack export&build, cleaning the import queue) but these are not formalized
[17:15] <teolemon> tackling
[17:15] <dholbach> hello teolemon
[17:15] <teolemon> hello dholbach
[17:16] <Gwaihir> teolemon, on that front, is there also coordination with upstream/Debian? they have their own set-up to handle that...
[17:16] <kelemengabor> Gwaihir: sure. but without organization and mentoring, they'd be doomed :)
[17:16] <dholbach> I'm not quite sure I understand it yet, but is the problem you're seeing that these notifications (with specific related tasks) are missing?
[17:17] <teolemon> DDTP on Debian side was down for a couple of months
[17:17] <kelemengabor> dholbach: what do you mean by notifications?
[17:17] <teolemon> and we were told there was some sync with Debian
[17:17] <teolemon> could never check if it was true
[17:17] <Gwaihir> kelemengabor, true, the wiki also needs to be cleaned up a little bit... :-/
[17:17] <kelemengabor> probably we should have a blueprint to keep these in order, but we don't
[17:18] <kelemengabor> have any
[17:18] <dholbach> kelemengabor, the way I imagined things, I thought that all the individual translations teams would need a heads-up about what needs to be translated at which time, etc
[17:18] <teolemon> but we've started using a semi-automated approach using Google Translator Kit and crowdsourcing to tackle the sheer amount of work
[17:18] <kelemengabor> Gwaihir: yes, the wiki needs a lot of love
[17:19] <kelemengabor> dholbach: I see. no, these are team-internal tasks, that need to be done once for all the languages.
[17:19] <kelemengabor> as per notifying teams, we have some announcements, but only a few
[17:20] <kelemengabor> usually, they keep an eye on the statistics page
[17:20] <kelemengabor> that tells everything
[17:20] <kelemengabor> (or should :))
[17:20] <dholbach> ok, that sounds like a good start already :)
[17:20] <teolemon> same here
[17:20] <teolemon> the statistics page was a way to motivate everybody
[17:20] <teolemon> even if it listed upstream packages
[17:21] <dholbach> is there some team internal discussions and exchange between the teams about what works well for them?
[17:21] <teolemon> which led to beginners retranslating upstream
[17:21] <kelemengabor> dholbach: there were, in the precise cycle, bi-weekly calls
[17:21] <teolemon> we're starting to do so, as we discover issues
[17:21] <teolemon> for instance
[17:21] <kelemengabor> not anymore, though
[17:22] <teolemon> we share the same hatred for the infamous launchpad timeout bug :-)
[17:22] <dholbach> would irc meetings maybe work better?
[17:22] <kelemengabor> and those worked well, so it would be good to resurrect those
[17:22] <czajkowski> teolemon: many of those timeout bugs are being fixed
[17:22] <kelemengabor> dholbach: it's not about the medium
[17:22] <teolemon> yes
[17:22] <dholbach> but somebody setting them up?
[17:23] <kelemengabor> exactly. that was dpm.
[17:23] <kelemengabor> also these were UTC meetings, so not open for everyone
[17:23] <dholbach> that's an obvious speciality of the translations world
[17:24] <dholbach> maybe it'd make sense to have rotating times
[17:24] <dholbach> and there I think (especially if you have many people), IRC might work better
[17:24] <kelemengabor> we talked about setting up stuff, making translators life easier...
[17:24] <kelemengabor> https://trello.com/board/translations-team/4f621c87861db54230b9ca39
[17:24] <kelemengabor> like this
[17:25] <teolemon> also, if those meetings could include some person related to Launchpad Translations
[17:25] <dholbach> maybe it'd be worth bringing up the idea of regular meetings on the team mailing list again
[17:25] <teolemon> i think it would help to integrate translations closer into software
[17:26] <dholbach> yes, and invite external people who should be able to help
[17:26] <kelemengabor> teolemon: maybe, but I heard that there is no dedicated LP Translations dev team anymore.
[17:26] <czajkowski> kelemengabor: that is true there isn't
[17:26] <teolemon> :-/
[17:26] <czajkowski> LP doesn't have dedicated teams, it has squads that work on different projects
[17:26] <dholbach> still it should be possible to get a representative every now and then, I guess :)
[17:27] <dholbach> like if there's something pressing
[17:27] <czajkowski> and there is a maintenance squad currently working on critical bugs
[17:28] <Gwaihir> dholbach, possible, but the only people I know that were really working on LP Translations, and are still somewhat around are Danilo and Jeroen
[17:28] <teolemon> I guess translation isn't something that fails in a spectacular way
[17:29] <kelemengabor> dholbach: on the regular meetings: we had some open meetings on IRC a few years ago, like Lucid-time... those were okay too
[17:29] <czajkowski> perhaps like dholbach suggests having regular meetings again may help bring the team together and get more interest in
[17:30] <kelemengabor> teolemon: not yet. but have you heard about the langpack update for Quantal?
[17:30] <kelemengabor> me neither. and this is a problem.
[17:30] <dholbach> well that certainly was insightful to me so far, but maybe we should have another meeting where we discuss things and find out together what we can do, but yes, I agree an internal team meeting to collect some ideas might be a good start
[17:30] <teolemon> nope
[17:31] <kelemengabor> that may escalate quickly... :(
[17:31] <cprofitt> is there a regular blog post from the translations team to planet?
[17:31] <teolemon> i don't know if the point was raised already
[17:31] <czajkowski> can you elaborate on "langpack update for Quantal?
[17:31] <teolemon> but the fact that david was shifted to applications is also scaring me a little bit
[17:32] <kelemengabor> cprofitt: dpm does posts about translations to the planet, but rarely
[17:32] <dholbach> czajkowski, feed updated translations into the stable quantal release
[17:32] <czajkowski> ah thanks dholbach
[17:32] <teolemon> we had some import issues before the release of quantal
[17:33] <cprofitt> kelemengabor: it sounds like the internal meeting is important to identify areas of need... and that a little exposure (planet) could help attract some new folks...
[17:33] <teolemon> and loads of tiny issues that need really good attention and knowledge of the merge process and all that stuff
[17:33] <kelemengabor> czajkowski: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/OneiricOcelot/ReleaseSchedule - we had this for Oneiric, but not for Precise or Quantal
[17:34] <kelemengabor> cprofitt: absolutely
[17:34] <teolemon> indeed
[17:35] <dholbach> to me it looks, like we should have another catch-up with the translations team, maybe after some internal discussion - what do you think? :)
[17:35] <kelemengabor> and we have this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Translations/LanguagePackUpdatesQA/LanguagePackUpdateScheduleTemplate
[17:35] <teolemon> listing all the bugs and pain points
[17:35] <kelemengabor> this is a well designed machinery, but it would need an operator
[17:35] <cprofitt> +1 dholbach
[17:35] <czajkowski> ah
[17:35] <teolemon> and ranking them by time lost
[17:35] <dholbach> kelemengabor, or a team of operators :)
[17:36] <czajkowski> so I do know for Precise there was some issues opening up Precise for translations which may have had an affect to the schedule
[17:36] <czajkowski> https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/211651  this is now waiting for be ack'd as far as I can see for raring
[17:36] <kelemengabor> dholbach: sure. preferably of the kind that does not graduate or marry in a year :)
[17:37] <dholbach> there's always this thing called life around all the Ubuntu stuff :)
[17:37] <czajkowski> heh indeed
[17:38] <dholbach> I'll take an action to mail the translations team again about a new date in 2013
[17:38] <dholbach> we have no word back from the Forums Council, so we might have to reschedule them as well
[17:38] <cprofitt> yes, we should reschedule with them
[17:38] <kelemengabor> czajkowski: yep, that's it. assigned to dpm, but seems he does not have time...
[17:38] <teolemon> there's no intend to replace David's full time as translation coordinator/developper, right ?
[17:38] <czajkowski> kelemengabor: we/me can reassign it to another person to open up the raring translations
[17:39] <czajkowski> but we've not been asked to do so
[17:39] <trijntje> hi, just dropping in, I'd have to agree that we are a bit at a loss without dpm ;)
[17:39] <dholbach> I feel there's always going to be times like this, where you have a transition and you need to figure out what can be done to keep the train rolling.
[17:39] <czajkowski> nods
[17:39] <cprofitt> +1 dholbach
[17:40] <czajkowski> well was it explained what was happening so that a transition could be put in place?
[17:40] <dholbach> but a few of the things which were mentioned earlier could be done by a team of translators as well - like posting on planet for example
[17:40] <czajkowski> nods
[17:40] <dholbach> in fact it'd make things a bit more lively if there's posts from multiple people and teams rather than just one guy
[17:40] <czajkowski> dholbach: +1
[17:41] <dholbach> or organising a meeting
[17:41] <cprofitt> yes, it is good to see multiple people from teams...
[17:41] <dholbach> but I appreciate that losing a dedicated full-time person can be a shock
[17:41] <kelemengabor> czajkowski: can you reassign to the ubuntu-translations-coordinators team?
[17:41] <teolemon> especially on the technical side
[17:42] <teolemon> i'm not a developper
[17:42] <cprofitt> posting on the planet. I think it helps give people perspective and allows people to identify the effort as a true team effort... gives them more people to contact if they are interested too
[17:43] <dholbach> Do you feel that there's anything the CC could do to help? Apart from cloning David? :-)
[17:43] <teolemon> and implementing fuzzy in lp, fixing the timeout, opening raring early, making sure the upstream translations are imported quickly to avoid duplication and stuff like that requires technical mojo
[17:43] <dholbach> it's great we're having this discussion right now as I haven't heard much about the translations community in the last time and feel like I learned a lot
[17:44] <kelemengabor> teolemon: I think Santa is not here right now... :P
[17:44] <teolemon> lol
[17:44] <teolemon> :-)
[17:44] <czajkowski> kelemengabor: I can if that is what is the best thing to do
[17:44] <dholbach> haha
[17:45] <kelemengabor> dholbach: good question. I can't think of anything right now, maybe later. until then, please clone David :).
[17:45]  * cprofitt looks for cloning instructions
[17:45] <czajkowski> teolemon: we;ve down to 170 critical bugs so hopefully they will be done soon in the new year
[17:45] <dholbach> haha, I'll make sure to get into the lab later on
[17:45] <teolemon> also wanted to point this out
[17:45] <teolemon> http://lite.framapad.org/p/ddtpUbuntu
[17:45] <teolemon> we've been starting this
[17:46] <teolemon> because we noticed people value translated descriptions better
[17:46] <dholbach> cool
[17:46] <teolemon> translations add a polished look
[17:47] <teolemon> and increase the perceived value of ubuntu
[17:47] <teolemon> both on the app side
[17:47] <teolemon> as well as on the doc side
[17:47] <teolemon> where normalized doc
[17:47] <teolemon> when translated
[17:47] <trijntje> also on the ddtp front: soon all packages will be sorted based on popcon, so translators can work on the descriptions of the most popular packages first without external tools
[17:47] <teolemon> saves a lot of time and ressources
[17:48] <czajkowski> I've changed the asignee of https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/211651  to ~ubuntu-translations-coordinators
[17:48] <dholbach> Would it be OK for you to maybe have a think as a team and we get back together in the new year to spend some time brainstorming about what can be done and where the priorities should lie? That's at least something the CC could offer in terms of help.
[17:49] <trijntje> that would be nice
[17:49] <dholbach> all right, I'll take an action to mail the translations team and the forums council about a new date
[17:50] <teolemon> kelemengabor, trijntje: http://lite.framapad.org/p/ubuntutranslationscoordination
[17:50] <kelemengabor> dholbach: sure, we can have an IRC meeting to discuss what should/can be done and who is interested
[17:50] <teolemon> let's start right now ;-)
[17:50] <dholbach> kelemengabor, cool - I think that'd help lots - also to get a feel for priorities
[17:50] <dholbach> cprofitt, czajkowski, any more questions from you?
[17:51] <czajkowski> no I think it'll be good to hear from the team post xmas and maybe once thye've had a chance to think about things and how we can help
[17:51] <czajkowski> thanks for coming
[17:51] <dholbach> trijntje, teolemon, kelemengabor: thanks a lot for joining us here
[17:52] <dholbach> #topic Any other business?
[17:52] <trijntje> dholbach: sure, thanks for your time, happy holidays
[17:52] <dholbach> and the same to you :)
[17:52] <cprofitt> thanks to all for coming.
[17:52] <trijntje> (barring the end of the world ofc)
[17:52] <teolemon> thanks a lot
[17:53] <dholbach> I don't have any other business - our Trello looks in shape and there's nothing on the agenda page
[17:53] <dholbach> anyone else?
[17:53] <czajkowski> narp
[17:54] <czajkowski> Have a lovely Christmas folks :)
[17:54] <dholbach> all right, that's it then :)
[17:54] <dholbach> enjoy the holidays, have a great start into 2013
[17:54] <dholbach> and thanks for all the great work you all put into Ubuntu!
[17:54] <dholbach> big hugs!
[17:54] <dholbach> thanks everyone
[17:54] <dholbach> #endmeeting
[17:54] <meetingology> Meeting ended Thu Dec 20 17:54:44 2012 UTC.
[17:54] <meetingology> Minutes (wiki):        http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2012/ubuntu-meeting.2012-12-20-17.00.moin.txt
[17:54] <meetingology> Minutes (html):        http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2012/ubuntu-meeting.2012-12-20-17.00.html