Linguistic Team International Forum

Hi camaradas!! Here is a suggestion on simplifying and reducing the forum structure, which goes in the direction to make it a complement to the Members Portal, soon to be open. The new Portal will include a network of blogs and feeds to keep people informed in much simpler ways. The goals of this suggestion are to make the Help, How to Get Stated and the Language Teams sections more visible to newcomers and forum users in general, reducing and pushing to the bottom of the forum all the other areas that imply other levels of participation.

Ok. So here are the suggestions:

• From the Top Menu:

- Remove the Chat feature - no one seems to use it and removing it makes it one less distraction factor to what is important.
- Both the "Getting Started" and the "Wiki" links takes us to the same place - the Wiki Main Page. Can we put the Wiki link on the very top of the forum, besides the Login, Register and Facebook links? and improve the Getting Started page (more on this later)?
- The "Links" link with the globe is more distracting than helpful for newcomers, and so could be somewhere else in the bottom of he forum.
- It seems to be missing a link to a page that would explain what is the LTI.

• The Shout Box and the Recent Activity boxes seem to influence us in a nice way. The shoutbox invites us to integrate and say "Hi" or ask anything. The recent activity shows the forum alive and gives examples of what subjects are going on (what can the find if they dig deeper in the threads)

• The Help Desk has the Introduce Yourself sub-section inviting people to post as they arrive, and the Getting Started sub-section right after it is very important where it is; it just needs some improvements as it only includes a tutorial for Pootle. The rest of the Help Desk subsections of Questions & Answers, Error Report, The Glossary, and Transcriptions/Translations Requests, could be pushed to the International Lounge and, on its turn, this whole section could be pushed to the bottom of the forum, as those are things that are secondary to start translating, proofreading, transcribing and integrating into a team collaboration.

• That means that the Language Teams Playgrounds would be the next section, after the Help Desk, and to jump from the Getting Started to the Open For Translation or even to a language team sub-section would be just an eye focus further own or a short scroll without too much info on the way. The Order of sub-sections inside the Language Teams Playgrounds seems to help to see and think in accordance to the flow of projects: from the English Team to the Open for Translations and from there to all specific language teams sub-sections.

I have more suggestions to develop in this thread, but for now I would like the most of us to think about the above, as they are the more gross changes, I think. The details can be worked later if we agree with these first.
Just to advance a bit on what I have in mind fr later, the Getting Started forum section and wiki page would need to be simplified. I think they should point to 5 things and have less explanatory text. 1) English Transcriptions and Proofreading, 2) Translations on Pootle tutorial, 3) Translations on Dotsub tutorial, 4) Open For Translations section and 5) Communication in the specific Language Team sub-section. About the International Lounge, the Coordinators Hideout doesn't seem necessary. All threads and subjects can be put in the International Lounge itself and later be moved (in case they fitt in any of the temas) to the PR, Tech or Devs sections.

Have fun!

nomada It's fun to stay at the ...

Thanks for the updates on that Ray

Here is a suggestion to improve the Getting Started reference, until the Portal is open to public with the final version:

Where to begin?
Depending on what you wish to help with, there are different tools and communication platforms to consider. The areas in which most volunteers help with are Translation, Translation Proofreading, English Transcription, English Proofreading, Timestamp Adjustment, Multimedia (TechTeam Group), Software and App development (DevGroup), Promotion of Accomplishments and Needs (PR Group). In all these areas, the main communication platform is the Forum. Be sure you register and say "Hi" in the Introduce Yourself section, so we can help guide you from there ; )

FOR TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATION PROOFREADING:
* Pootle , for text based materials like Books, Websites, PDFs, etc. Click here for a tutorial on how to set you up in this tool.
* Dotsub , for video subtitles translation. Click here for a tutorial on how to use this tool.
* The Language Teams Playgrounds , in the forum, is where you can find the projects and communicate with other volunteers so we can collaborate and make the best out of our limited time without repeated efforts or stepping each others toes ; )

FOR ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION, ENGLISH PROOFREADING AND TIMESTAMP ADJUSTMENT
* The English Team works mostly with subtitle transcription and proofreading. We do our best to provide the most clear and accurate transcriptions for all the translations teams to base their translations upon. Therefore, dotsub is the platform of election, where you need to register. Give a look to the English Team forum section and post in the Tea & Cookies section so we can guide you from there ; )

TO HELP WITH MULTIMEDIA, WEB & SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OR PROMOTION/PUBLIC RELATIONS
...post in the respective forum sections for the area of focus you wish to help with. They are the Tech Team , the Dev Group and the PR Group . There are different projects in different times and they depend pretty much on the help of volunteers like you. You can also let us know what you think you can help with and we start from there : )

Feel free to reply to this thread and ask anything you need. Someone will show up to help you soon ; )
Have fun!


What do you guys think? I used a part of the Wiki Main page as a starting point, but in the end I didn't took much from it; I went more straight to the categories/tasks that people can easily identify with and the tools and forum locations.
I also didn't mention the LTI contact page, since many language coordinators aren't always present and many volunteers never get to be in contact with all the support structures, global collaboration and improvements we develop in the forum if they stay isolated in language specific facebooks and other platforms. Many volunteers that offered to help in several languages never gave a sign of being alive and no signs of translations neither. Maybe a more global involvement and support in the forum can help integrate them more efficiently? That is the thinking behind it : )

Great feedback, Kassy!! : )
Really!! It is both interesting and important to know that some people come to the forum and don't look in the top menu.
The Getting Started is repeated, yes. I made the text to reform it and posted it here in this thread as a suggestion to change it, independently of it being in 1 or 2 locations. The less locations the better, I think. I find it best if it stays in the Help Desk as a forum thread that people can reply to.

Quoted from "kassy"

I must say that, not really knowing what the portal is and how it will work

Ray can explain this in a more complete way, don't know if succint though But from what I understood, all the info from the Wiki, with most relevance to the Projects table and Repository, will be in the member portal. Information on how to start, like this Getting Started, will also be there, in a way that will guide people to what they are looking for (because it is a website and not a forum, the possibilities are greater). It will also contain blogs, one for each team. And we can create Categories and Pages inside the categories and post them as in a blog in order to keep everyone informed and spread the info beyond the LTI platform (people can subscribe to the blogs feed and so receive info on which new projects are ready, news, etc). There will be a notification for meetings and many other stuff, all in one, much better than 'head and shoulders' shampoo+softener+dandruff remedy

Quoted from "kassy"

About the Help Desk... I agree with Ray that it should stay on top in order to be easier to find.

I agree too. I meant the International Lounge, which has sub-forums that, usually, only people that are a bit more into all of this participate. I find it most important that they realize there is a Help section, Getting Started, what there is as projects and the teams sections to contact and integrate. The rest is deeper involvement.

So, let me know what you guys think of this Getting Started alternative text, instead of the "old" model (still the one in course).

Quoted from "lizardman"

I like your suggested replacement for the text under "Where to begin?", Rod. It guides people towards the relevant sections in the forum, instructing them to introduce themselves.

No more feedbacks on this? Shall we change the text then?
It's this text: Forum Structure Simplification
oo replace the old one in the Portal and in these 2 wiki pages?:
http://wiki.linguisticteam.org/w/FirstTi…eral_Guidelines
http://wiki.linguisticteam.org/w/Main_Page

In the forum, we have several sections that don't respect directly to transcribing, translating and other objective tasks. We could maybe put it all in one more general section and so reduce the amount of info a newcomer has to filter in order to get to 'how to start translating/transcriing/proofreading' more easily. Inside that general section, the Coords Hideout and the Public Relations Task Force would be obsolete, since the subjects inside them can go inside that general category.

Anyone else has something to add on the suggestions made in this thread?

Yes, Jimmy, I think it is worthtrying something; there is no doubt the forum is complex for most newcomers.

As an alternative to reduce the International Lounge, I was wondering if there is a way to have it hidden as default and able to be opened (expanded from a tab) by those who wish to dive into it.

Could we do this new general subjects section, to substitute the International Lounge, as a 'Category' inside the only forum section above the Language Playgrounds - the only forum section above the Language Playgrounds would be the Help Desk) - just like the French team has one inside their language section? This would reduce the forum sections above the language playgrounds (Instead of Internat.Loung + Help Desk we would have only Help Desk) and so reduce the amount of info a newcomer has to see in order to get started (reach the projects and the language teams sections). The new general subjects section - with a different name that would better clarify what it contains and the understanding that it is for those who wish to get deeply involved in LTI tasks - would so become a subsection.
http://forum.linguisticteam.org/board2-l…rnational-team/

Ray made some changes in the forum a few hours ago, trying to make it easy for the newcomers to find the projects and language teams, which are inside the 'Language Teams Playgrounds'. The feedback from everyone could be really helpful in this issue. What do you think of the changes? [url]http://forum.linguisticteam.org[/url]


I am enthusiastic with the changes but I think we need to alter a few more stuff in order to simplify the forum part that first shows to a newcomer - because that is where we are loosing most of them, it seems; they register but never get to make a post or participate, as we can see here: [url='http://bit.ly/17emLTx']http://bit.ly/17emLTx[/url]

The fact that those new categories that Ray created, so that we can have the possibility of clicking the + or - and so expand or close a whole section, show expanded by default until you click to close them for the first time (then they stay closed even if you go out of the forum and come back in), will make that a new volunteer will have his eyes going through the whole thing before it reaches the projects and language teams ('Language Teams Playgrounds' board). The amount of info that is before that board is, from the top of the forum:
- The Edit Profile, Private Messages and all other links on the top
- The 'Forum', 'Getting Started', 'ToDo List', 'Calendar', etc menu. Until here is enough to get lost because the Getting Started tab leads to a Wiki page, a different platform that is outdated. There, we still suggest newcomers to contact their language coordinator on the list of contacts and we know by experience that this strategy is very limitative in connection of the volunteers with the rest of the LTI support structures besides that many 'coords' are not necessarily available. The role doesn't make the event happen. It is actually a concept that distorts the thinking and blocks many people from taking initiative because they are not the 'coordinator'. So maybe the Getting Started menu tab could take them to the a better Getting Started page, maybe a forum section in the Language Teams Playgrounds (they would be already where they need to get started)?
- The 'Do You Know?' box comes after, and it is a little content but almost surely will have no interest to the newcomer. It will be about a technical specific thing that will just occupy his brain and distract from finding the projects and language sections. Maybe this board can be moved further down?
- The 'Important Linguistic Team Resources' is the small board that comes after, but all the links in it are about info that is not directed to start transcribing, translating or proofreading, except for the English Guidelines but those should be introduced in the English section, after we give our hand to the new volunteer. All links there lead to pages that are way too complicated and they are in a different platform - wiki - which doesn't help the newcomers to not get lost. The 1st link is to the coords contact list, too, which is something that we really should quit as we see that it separates more people from the relevant information and from each others as the whole of LTI when the contact channel becomes limited to 1 to 1 chats, emails or even the use of other platforms than this forum. It is a huge expenditure of energy to make sure everyone is informed when we are on different platforms. It is a technical fault for anyone or any group who is looking for 'collaborating'. The volunteers in the LTI that are most present and having initiatives to manage or improve any of the things we do are the ones who are better connected through the LTI forum and facebook; because they are better informed and connected with the whole. Sometimes I mention these volunteers as 'those who seem to be everywhere' We need to create the environment that creates more of this successes of integration and development. Or else, they will continue scarce.
- The Recent Activity board is very useful to me. I think that for anyone that comes to the forum 1 or more times per day. But otherwise, it will likely not show you all the new threads you haven't seen yet and they will most surely not be about anything related to what you came to do in the forum. So I find it more important to have the Language Teams Playgrounds closer to their sight than this R.A. board.
- The Help Desk and the Global Support boards could be merged into one board, where by creating 3 levels of sub-forum, we could put most topics (Error Reporting, Glossary, Tech Team, etc) in the 3rd level, or in other words to help understand, as a sub-sub-forum. These sub-sub-forums only show up after we click to go inside the board or forum that contains them, and they never show on the front page of the forum. Those who found the projects and language sections, got started, communicated and are sharing the global collaboration effort feeling, will dive into these sub-sections as they have extra time and are better informed, and that is the only time they need to show up in front of them.
Adding to the above, The Public Relations Task Force section is obsolete and its contents can be put inside the LTI Coordination, and the Getting Started sub-forum could be improved and moved to the Language Teams Playgrounds.
Another thing that could help is to move these boards below the Language Teams Playgrounds and improve the way people can find them. For example, on the forum menu on the top, we can have, instead of 'forum', 'getting started', 'todo list', 'calendar,'... we could give priority to help people find these sections and have the menu with 'Getting Started' (leading to an intro section in the Lang.TeamsPlaygrounds), 'Global Support' (the other board with everything else), and I don't know what would be the 3rd one most important but the Wiki link doesn't help any specific goal there, the calendar is not being updated and the announcement of meetings could use another strategy. With all of this considered, the initial menu would be simplified and guide them to do what is most likely they came here to do (transcribe, translate,proofread), and help them find out that there is more besides Language specific efforts to all of this. I find it still important that besides adding the new guidance strategies, it is equally important to 'hide' all the extras that can become 'noise' for anyone getting started. 'Removing' most extra info that is 'between' the volunteers and the Playgrounds section will make more sure they will get there. The technical aspect that I am not sure is possible is to link menu tabs to different boards in the forum.

I hope I described all this in a sufficient way. Let me know. I can try to clarify any aspect that I didn't explain so well