[Localization] [translate-pootle] Pootle feature request - date of the last change

[Samuel Murray (Groenkloof)]

Bastien wrote:

> On the project page this would be great to have a column with the date
> of the last change.  Even the name of the user would be nice, but this
> is not as critical.

I think you have a need, and you realise that there is very little 
change of you getting it fulfilled, so you reduce your need to something 
which wouldn't really fulfil it in all cases but which could be useful 
for fulfilling it in some cases, in the hopes that the reduced statement 
of need will attract a greater number of developers owing to it being a 
small RFE instead of a large one.

The real need is the need to see who translated what, who translated 
when, and who translated.  As far as I know, "who translated what" is 
currently not logged, but "who translated when" certainly is... it is 
logged in the server's HTTP logs.  I think all users should have access 
to the information contained in those logs.

Some might say... what about privacy?  Well, I think that it is up to 
whoever runs the Pootle server to decide what information can be made 
public.  The following information, I think, can be made public with 
little or no privacy issues:

1. Some kind of identification each translator (the user name, or part 
of the e-mail address, or a unique but randomly generated nickname for 
each user; this is not a privacy issue because GPL requires attribution)
2. The number of strings translated by each translator...
  2.1 since the start of the translation on Pootle
  2.2 in the past month
  2.3 in the past week
  2.4 in the past day
3. The user names of the translator who edited a file last
4. The users names of translators who edited a file after the current 
user's last edit
5. The number of edits for each translator in #4 above (I mean, their 
numbers of edits after the current user's last login)

The quickest way to implement something like this (I suspect) would be 
if the unit parsing the server logs don't need to have access to user 
information in Pootle itself.

Ideally (in a very ideal world), users should be able to select how much 
of their private details may be revealed, and this would affect what 
information is given in the above type of stats.  For example:

a. Reveal my user name (or part of my e-mail address, if user names are 
not logged (I'm not sure right now which is logged and which isn't))
b. Reveal my total translations (tickboxes for all/month/week/day)
c. Reveal any time information about my movements
d. Reveal only recent time information about my movements

Alternatively, the Pootle server's owner can decide how to handle it (eg 
by using unique, numbered nicknames instead of user names as an extra 
precaution to maintain privacy), and then users signing up for that 
Pootle server must accept the privacy conditions before they sign up.

To recap:  Making the date of the last edit known (or the date and name 
of the last edit(or)) will solve only one problem and only in certain 
circumstances.  A better solution is to provide more comprehensive 
information that can be more useful in more circumstances.

Samuel


-- 
Samuel Murray
samuel at translate.org.za
Decathlon, for volunteer opensource translations
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/decathlon/