Team Coordinator Responsibilities

Being the coordinator for a language team in the GNOME Translation Project is not to be treated lightly. With the position, there comes many responsibilities in order to ensure that support for the language will continue to improve in GNOME. The most important responsibilities are listed below.

Remember that if some of the responsibilities below are not followed, the Translation Project Coordination Team may have to appoint another coordinator.

Resign When It Is Time

For every contributor, there comes a time when he or she wants, or has to, move on to do other things in life. This is also the case for language team coordinatorship. When the coordinator, or others, feel that the coordinator cannot meet the responsibilities and do the job properly anymore, the coordinator should resign.

In order not to leave the team in an undefined "black hole" kind of situation, it is important that the resigning coordinator also informs in the forum on https://discourse.gnome.org/ under the i18n tag of their resignation. If the resigning coordinator has suggestions for a new coordinator, please also let the forum know at the same time.

Make Sure the E-Mail Address is Correct

Most important communication in the GNOME Translation Project is done via e-mail correspondence. For this reason, it is very important that the coordinator ensures that he or she uses an e-mail address that he or she will be able to read and access for a very long time. The coordinator should avoid using Hotmail e-mail accounts or any other temporary or unreliable e-mail services, as well as work e-mail unless he or she expects to be working there for a longer period of time.

Having a GitLab Account

The coordinator should have make sure that he or she has an account in the GNOME Bug Tracker, which can be found at https://gitlab.gnome.org/. An account can be automatically obtained by going to that web site and following the instructions for obtaining an account.

This requirement is because we will typically assign translation bugs for the affected language to someone who knows the language and who can fix it, in other words someone from the affected translation team (https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Translation/).

Being Responsive to Contributors

A very important part of being a coordinator is being responsive to other contributors in the team, and also being responsive to new contributors wanting to join the team. If new contributors are feeling welcome, they are likely to stay contributing for a long time. On the other hand, if they feel that they get little or no response from the coordinator, they are likely to move on to do other things. If this happens, it is a tremendous waste of contribution resources.

Being responsive means that the coordinator should respond timely to e-mail. If the coordinator goes on vacation without possibility to read e-mail for more than a week, then he or she should temporarily hand over the coordination duty to another member of the team and announce that to the team.

Being Responsive to GTP Coordination Team and other GNOME Teams

The coordinator is the point-of-contact for the GTP Coordination Team and all other contributors about any issues with the affected language or its translations. Because of this, it is extremely important that the coordinator is responsive when contacted by e-mail about such issues.

Monitor and Act Upon Bug Reports

The coordinator should make sure that any bug reports ending up in https://gitlab.gnome.org/ involving the translations for the affected language will be responded to in a timely manner, and resolved within a reasonable time.

Review Contributions

The coordinator should make sure that there is some sort of review process or other form of quality assurance (QA) of the contributions happening in the team.

Approve Translator Accounts

When any person applies for a Git account for committing translations for the affected language, the coordinator will be asked to approve the request.

This is not to be taken lightly -- with such an account comes much power and great responsibility, and by giving approval to the account request, there is of course even more responsibility involved. Approving means testifying the trust to this applicant and that he or she will follow the rules and not misbehave, and testifying that the applicant is a real existing contributor to this language team and really in need of an account. The coordinator should not approve of applicants for which any of this is not true.