Review how translations are ranked when they have the same number of votes

[jbarrett]

via email:

"I just noticed that on the translation system if a user submits his own translation, then that overwrites the previous translation done by another user. The result is that for each token there's max 1 proposed translation, killing the purpose of voting the best one. I don't know if it involves also old tokens, I experienced this only with the ones released in the past few weeks."

[jbarrett]

It looks like if a translation has 0 votes, it will be overrwritten by a new translation.

Marvellous,

[severuscold]

"It looks like if a translation has 0 votes, it will be overrwritten by a new translation." If the old translation was made by a Translation Manager or a higher status, could a normal user overwrite it?

[jbarrett]

Yes, I tested this with an admin user's contributions being overwritten by a non-privileged user.

[severuscold]

Could there be in the future, some kind of a warning/notification when a privileged user's translation was overwritten? My section of the translations (PT-PT) are commonly translated by PT-BR people, which often lead to bad translations. Adding that heads up could be helpful one day, if they overwrite our final "call".

[claell]

I suggest to simply prevent translations from being overwritten and add new translations as alternatives. To decide, which translation is used for DDG one could use the date of submission, if the both have no votes.

[severuscold]

You mean the first that was submitted, or the most recent translation?

[jbarrett]

There should be no overwriting at all, I think.

[claell]

@severuscold I do not know. I meant the first submitted one, but there might also be arguments to use the most recent one. @jbarrett I agree.

[jbarrett]

Sorry, misread. Yeah, it looks like 0-voted translations are overwritten to support decision making when publishing.

I think going with the oldest is the way to go really, since it would have had more opportunity to be reviewed. If a newer translation turns out to be better, the hope is it would gather some up-votes quickly so wouldn't be at the bottom of the prefs list forever.

Happy to hear arguments for and against this approach.

[jbarrett]

https://github.com/duckduckgo/community-platform/blob/master/lib/DDGC/DB/Result/Token/Language.pm#L242

I might be wrong, but there appears to be no particular date ordering currently enforced.

[claell]

I am not so much into it, but I think your argumentation on choosing the first one seems good. An argumentation for choosing the latest one would be that new translations are mostly added when the current translation needs improvement, but that is not always the case.

[jbarrett]

Yeah, unfortunately we get incorrect translations - someone was looking at the wrong language or the issue @severuscold pointed out with contributions for an inappropriate locale / dialect. Usually stuff that's very wrong is rooted out pretty quickly.

So, alongside technical issues here, it does seem we have a separate issue with voting and review coverage it good translations are stuck with 0 votes over a significant period.

Are there things we could be doing to encourage greater participation in voting and review?

[claell]

Maybe one could add a (maybe quickvote?) box with translations that need voting somewhere in the members/translation area to get more members to vote.

[severuscold]

Are there things we could be doing to encourage greater participation in voting and review?

-User rankings(like levels, making one more "trusting") is a nice way to encourage people to vote/translate or even help on the forum.

-The ones that help the most/are most active, get a special title

-Get free stickers at the end of each translation node. (does node mean a whole page?) (who doesn't love free stickers)

-Get e-mailed with a printable certificate, with ones name on it, saying you helped duckduckgo translate its pages. (everyone loves having certificates to show off)

Probably these ideas sound too childish, but, I'm really out of ideas right now.

[severuscold]

And you idea is also good @claell

[jbarrett]

Thanks for the comments everyone, some good ideas here.

[preemeijer]

This is still an issue. Weasel reported it again in the mailinglist for the TM's with the next added comment:

This bug still occurs: if only a single translation is available and somebody else suggests a new translation, the last translation suggested overwrites the previous one. (the first translation must have 0 votes, if I remember correctly)

[zekiel]

Thanks, @preemeijer

[jbarrett]

The core bug has been resolved (I think) but there is a related discussion to flesh out about ranking and rating translations