Re: Can we measure Fedora users by language?

<snip>
> 
> 21.08.2018 08:51 Jean-Baptiste <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Le 17 août 2018 22:06:54 GMT+02:00, Rafal Luzynski
>> <[email protected]> a écrit :
>>> * do the translations increase the number of Fedora users?
>>> * are there languages not really used by Fedora users?
>>
>> The fact that we are asking the first question publicly without raising any
>> comment worries me.
> 
> I think I have formulated the question incorrectly. I should not ask
> whether the translations increase the number of Fedora users but
> how much do they increase. Or maybe better: how much adding more
> languages is helpful. This may be formulated in an optimistic manner:
> maybe we have already included all languages people were interested
> in and other languages are not interesting for any actual users?
> 
>> While the answer and collected data will be interesting, the way it is written
>> really sounds like business oriented to me.

I felt the same worry, first I read this thread. Now I think I 
understand the point.

>>
>> When I read it, I wonder: do the Fedora community really don't know about the
>> value of translated content to users?
> 
> Well, actually... yes, the Fedora community really does not know.
> This question is ambiguous so it needs two answers: of course,
> translations are helpful and nobody doubts it. But we don't know
> how much are they helpful. Maybe you and me are the only people
> interested in high quality translations? Too many times when I asked
> people from different countries about their experience with translations
> of Fedora and other operating systems, the answer was like "I don't know,
> I use English".

As long as You and Me are happy to keep contributing the translation, I 
think that is fine and that is the opensource, isn't? Unless a 
maintainer refuses to add in his package.

HOWEVER, one scenario comes up in my mind.
What if specific small language team leaves FLP after working say half 
year? That language stays in the system, even no one to work. The cost 
of system maintenance is waste. This can be main reason for a maintainer 
to refuse.

Four years back, when we have moved to Zanata.
Upon request from Zanata team, I coordinated to create final language 
list to add in Zanata. Only language teams who responded have been 
added, and in result, a number of language teams I cut off due to no 
response. Obvious, no respond no one to work, no point to add.
Repeating this process may help?

> 
>> I'm confused, because this doesn't reflect the discussion we had in the past.
>> Either with our or other i18n contributors.
>>
>> The research for measuring is something I started and talked about in Boston:
>> https://jibecfed.fedorapeople.org/pr%c3%a9sentations/2017-08-31%20Flock%20L10N%20Talk.pdf
> 
> I can see your statistics of the countries where Fedora users
> are located and statistics of the translations we provide. That's
> useful. But this does not have a chance to measure small minority
> languages. Can we measure Upper/Lower Sorbian users in Germany?
> Occitan, Corsican, and Basque in France? Hundreds of languages spoken
> in India, Russia, and indigenous people of America?
> 
>> There is almost no way to measure "needs" and bias are enormous, but there is
>> some ways about "results" measurements.
>>
>> I'm unsure we should go in the direction of user tracking like companies, and
>> go with conviction, as the floss contributor we are.
> 
> I'm really far from the idea of tracking the users. But as you can
> see this decision has its consequences. It looks like currently we
> can't have any way to tell the exact number of languages used by Fedora.

Fedora, afaik, will be used by downstreams. Some contributors may work 
for this purpose. Are those distributions' users to be included in the 
count as well?

noriko

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rafal
> 
> 
> [1] https://pagure.io/system-config-language/issue/3
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Sorbian_language
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