Meta talk:Internationalization guidelines

General notice

At the top of the page, there's a General notice: "When translations have been already done, please avoid performing any edit which would make them obsolete, even if tagging does not follow these guidelines."

This is too broad, and as far as I can see, it was ever discussed. For what it's worth, this talk page is empty.

It's too broad because it goes against the general wiki idea of "anyone can edit"—if there is something to fix, it should be fixed without too many limitations. Outdated translations are clearly marked as outdated, and they can be updated.

I can see some logic in a narrower guideline, for example: "Updating the source page of a translatable page is OK, but please avoid making minor changes that invalidate existing translations unless it's truly necessary."

Also, this should be in the text body, and not in a notice box right at the top of the page.

Tagging @Pols12, who wrote the original page, for thoughts. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:01, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

No opposition to rephrase it. Of course “please avoid” does not mean “please don’t”. It is just a reminder that the goal of these guidelines is to make translation easier and to minimize translator workload. If you invalidate translations, you increase translator workload, so the edit is counterproductive. But of course, if the content needs to be updated, it will be. Please edit the sentence if it not enough clear.

However, I think this should remain a general notice (at least keep it in bold) because I have already seen some kinds of stupid edit wars for internationalization purpose; actually the practices are not consistent through wikis (Meta-Wiki, Commons, MediaWiki.org). -- Pols12 (talk) 13:35, 3 July 2022 (UTC)