GENERAL PROPOSAL:
Make Guidelines & Rules More Accessible to New Members
- Part 1: Clarify Ambiguous (outdated) Baka-Tsuki guidelines.
- Part 2: Migrate all the Wiki rules from the Forums, and archive the old rules.
- Part 3: Create comprehensive Help Pages to improve the experience of brand-new members.
Why Do This?
- The learning curve for joining Baka-Tsuki is currently extremely high. Rules and guidelines are in sporadic and non-intuitive locations. The forums are a mess, and it's extremely difficult to extract relevant and up-to-date information amidst all the noise. How is a new translator supposed to know the "New Project Petition Guidelines" is on the forums when there isn't even a link from wiki to it?
In short, it's a confusing experience for new members.
Why? Because new members who want to find information have to spend hours attempting to find guidelines and rules, some of which are outdated and provide misleading information. I know a lot of us complain about the stupid questions that get asked on the forums and Facebook, but honestly, with such poor documentation, we can't blame them for not knowing when the lack of clarity in our rules/guidelines is our own shortcoming.
Spoiler! :
- Goal 1: Remove unreasonable rules.
- Goal 2: Simplify rules to reflect our practical workflow.
- Goal 3: Clarify the language to get the points across. Cut out the fluff.
Stress Point #1: One Week Pending Project Deadline and the ATP Tag
All Projects Startup Guidelines wrote:Publish ONE TRANSLATED CHAPTER within ONE WEEK on the wiki complete with a Main Page and a Registration Page.
- By popular demand, this ONE WEEK deadline to translate your first chapter should be removed. It isn't even enforced. All it does is terrify new translators when they hear their translation might be deleted if they don't finish their first chapter within a week.
Instead of this rule, we can say that Project Pages with no translation (not even a teaser) uploaded to them will be deleted within a week.
ATP template wrote:
- What's wrong with this? This tag is written like a warning. Why is a new project that is following the rules and placing the {{ATP}} on their own page... giving themselves a warning?
The pending tag should not be a warning/threat tag, especially since the translator is placing the tag there himself/herself. How could you not panic if you saw a warning saying your translation will be deleted because you failed to follow the rules? This is an issue, because according to Oni's rules, {{ATP}} (applied to all pending projects) is not supposed to be removed until the project is recognized as a full project.
- There's a lot of confusion with regards to the proper workflow with Project Creation. I recommend re-writing our official process.
Most of the confusion stems from the fact that there are currently no rules governing the creation of Teaser projects. According to Oni's rules, new pending projects should be tagged with {{ATP}} and the {{ATP}} tag shouldn't be removed until it is approved as a "Full Project". However, people seem to think Teasers are a parallel process to Project Creation, so the {{ATP}} is not required on new teaser pages. Evidence: of the 67 English teasers in the teaser category, only 2 have {{ATP}} tagged.
Here's a practical fact: Nowadays, all of our new projects go through the Teaser Project pathway. Regardless of whether a new project really should be classified as a teaser, virtually all translators tag their new project pages with the Teaser tag. This, combined with the above citation, has generated confusion about the proper workflow for new project creation.
What could be done to solve this:
- Consider whether it's really necessary to differentiate between a "Teaser" and a "Pending Project". Nowadays, Teasers Projects don't mean what they used to. In fact, nowadays, a Teaser is pretty much the same thing as a Pending Project.
- At the very least, generate and clarify rules for the creation of teaser projects.
- There are numerous instances in our rules that require individuals to contact a supervisor, but it's extremely difficult for new members to locate contact information.
- In short, it's a bad idea to recommend users to attempt contacting supervisors through Email or PM (new members can't send PMs until 5 posts).
Supervisor responsiveness and coordination among supervisors is also an issue.
- Fact: A new member doesn't know which supervisor to contact (there's a massive list).
- Fact: A number of the listed supervisors are inactive (or not particularly active).
- Implies: Hence, when a member translator contacts a single supervisor, there's a high probability their request doesn't get looked at for weeks, and in a worse-case scenario, it never get looks at.
- Implies: In many instances, the contacted supervisor can't do anything about the request, because Oni/DarkoNeko/Vaelis are effectively the only ones who can "approve" projects. This supervisor can only forward the request.
- Result: Administration response time is terrible. It typically takes at least a month to get a new Baka-Tsuki project approved and added to the sidebar. The exception is if you have a personal connection with Oni and are capable of bothering him on facebook/twitter.
Furthermore, because BT staff does not coordinate information, it's extremely easy for a rule-breaker to create a new project without ever contacting a single Baka-Tsuki supervisor. How is a supervisor to know if that translator got approval for the project from Oni, larethian, zzhk, or someone else? All we can do is assume that they followed the rules (when they really didn't). It's a vulnerability in our rules that is easily exploited.
What could be done to solve this:
- Create a single location on the Wiki where administrative requests can be made. This should be at location that all sysops/supervisors monitor. This way, if Oni is busy one week and is unable to check the Wiki (and his own talk page), Vaelis or DarkoNeko can see there are projects waiting to be added to the sidebar and do it themselves.
- This page would be used for members to say they've created a new project/teaser, requests for adding projects to sidebars, protecting pages, etc.
- Assign an individual to clean that page of off-topic and resolved material. (I'll even volunteer myself if no one wants to do it).
- If necessary, it would be nice to have one more active sysop. IMO, it's starting to get hard for Oni to handle all the English projects himself. We're approaching 200 English projects now, you know?
- A number of topics simply don't have a published rules or guidelines that exist. They need to be written. For example:
- General Behavior Rules for the Wiki - There are behavioral rules for forum and fb, but none for the Wiki... Just have to keep the same existing ones.
- A rule clarifying that the Project Supervisor has the power customize all rules for their project (needs to be explicitly stated)
- A rule that clearly states that editors (and TLC-checkers) are required to defer to the opinion of the original translator.
- Rules describing the promotion of Project Supervisors - It's generally self-nomination, but this isn't explicitly said anywhere. That Supervisor/Admin forum thread isn't always being used.
- Rules governing project supervisors and at what point of inactivity they lose their position - So Project Supervisors don't overstep their bounds and start banning members... and also what happens when a Project Supervisor becomes inactive.
- Rules for hosted projects.
- Protocol for how Original Light Novels can be started up.
Note: This may or may not be as relevant anymore, since DarkoNeko plans to remove the Wiki sidebar in its entirety.
- This proposal was brought up several times in the past. The main forum topic for it exists here. To summarize:
- Increase the 1-chapter translation requirement for full project approval (to one full volume, or half a volume, etc).
- Why? Because we have too many stalled "full projects" that only have 1 or 1.5 chapters translated and take up space on the sidebar.
- Remove the requirement of "has an active translator willing to continue translating", but simply use the stricter-metric objectively.
- Everything else can just be considered a "Teaser".
It's kind of bizarre to consider 1 chapter of stalled translations a "Full Project" when there are many teaser projects that have more material already translated. Many new translators tend to vanish after they translate one chapter and apply for full project recognition. At the very least, one chapter is not a good metric for whether a translator will really continue with the series.
- Goal 1: Wiki rules should be on the Wiki. Not Forums.
- Goal 2: Place rules and guidelines in an visible and accessible place.
- Goal 3: Create an index for all of our rules and guidelines.
Goal 4: Organize and Beautify the presentation of rules so it is short, succinct, and to-the-point.
Why should Wiki rules be on the Wiki?
- Because a new member doesn't know to check the Forums for rules pertaining to the Wiki.
Furthermore, the forum rules aren't consolidated. For example, some procedural and guideline revisions are made in announcements or later threads, but the original post isn't always updated. The forums (or Facebook) simply aren't the best place for managing and handling rules.
- A link on the sidebar (first section) that says, "Rules and Guidelines", would be fantastic. This should link to an index of rules.
Why Cosmetic Changes to the rules?
- A successful set of rules is short, succinct, and to-the-point. A reader should be able to find the rules they want to find, and nothing in the excess.
An example of a digression in the existing forum rules D:< wrote:Obviously, any content that Baka-Tsuki lists is not banned as there would be no site if it was; even though unlicensed Light Novels are technically illegal (they are in breach of Japanese copyright law). This position may appear illogical and even hypocritical especially given that Raws are forbidden. However, we rationalise the rule by the relative ethical acceptability; we simply consider unlicensed Light Novels to be ethically more acceptable than other "pirated" media
For example, formatting rules and tips on how to upload images should not be in the same document as guidelines for translator behavior (*cough* the Format Guideline).Rules should be free of typos and grammatical errors D:< wrote:In both cases you you must publish at leased ONE TRANSLATED CHAPTER in the respected language you wish to use.
- It's generally a bad idea to have two copies of the same rules in two locations. Once the Wiki rules are generated, the corresponding forum rules should be deleted (or linked/archived).
Also, don't forget to protect the rules pages so only supervisors can edit them (similarly to how the Main Page is protected).
- Goal 1: Provide a step-by-step walk-through for specific roles (translator, editor, etc).
- Goal 2: Anticipate questions a reader or new member might ask. (ie: What is Baka-Tsuki? Where can I find a list of updates?)
- Goal 3: Make Baka-Tsuki approachable and friendly to a new member that is considering joining us.
- Goal 4: Possibly include resources for individuals who want to improve their translating/editing skills.
Why should tutorials and help pages be separated from the rules?
- Currently, the Format Guideline is a mixture of advice, rules, and formatting regulations.
For succinctness, rules (which should be short and concise) should be separated from tutorials (for users who want more information).
The help pages are meant to assist those who want to learn more about a specific topic (like how to use the Furigana template), without intruding on the members who don't want to see the additional information mixed in with the rules.
- I have already written a number of help pages on the Wiki, but it's by no means a personal project! I'm really hoping that more members will pitch in and help write more help pages. Special acknowledgements to KuroiHikari, Misogi, DarkoNeko, Cautr, Hiro Hayase, Zzhk, Ctaeth, and many other Baka-Tsuki members for contributing content and giving opinions.
Click here to see the current state of the Wiki Help pages.
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