Monday, September 05, 2011

A log fit for reading by its public

Auspicious occasions on #Wikipedia are logged; a new user or moving or deleting an article for instance. The log entries are human readable and consequently they are a combination of unique data and fixed texts.

That is in and off itself a problem; the fixed texts can be replaced by different fixed texts to function as a translation but this does not necessarily make the resulting string a proper sentence. A sentence can be different when Jane does it in stead of Joe and, when she does it twice it can be different again.

It is best practice to address Jane as a female and, acknowledge how much gets done. This means that the logging system, needs to be aware of the gender of the actors and the number of actions. Implementing the necessary changes for this is under way. First the required mechanisms will be build into the logging system. Once this is done, each and every log will be internationalised. This will result in new messages in translatewiki.net and once they are localised, there will be a log fit for reading by its public.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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