User talk:Stefan2255

Beginners Guide 1.4.2

Hej! Have you noticed that you have changed the English page of Beginners Guide 1.4.2 into Svenska? --Chris2map (talk) 22:40, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately no, corrected. --Stefan2255 05:45 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Labels on data items

Hi. We don't add labels on data items for tag/keys/prefixes for languages other than English [e.g. "fritid=sportfält"]. Keys and tags are untranslatable, see Data items#Keys: Key/tag data items: add labels only to English. Don't add labels in other languages (use Aliases). Labels can and should be added in all languages to items which are not key or tag pages. maro21 18:32, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Edits undone --Stefan2255 06:53, February 2024 2024 (UTC)

You do not have to remove the "description" (Beskrivning) on data items as well. Only the "labels" (Etikett). The descriptions in different languages are welcome. --Chris2map (talk) 08:23, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Technically true, but adding "description" value is a pure unadulterated duplication, and thus violates the intent (e.g. "without information duplication", "this project's goal is NOT to replace the OSM Wiki pages (including infoboxes),"), and this is something the other translators obvious has understood, and I did not; thus NOT adding to the duplication is the obvious correct choice for now; therefore data need to be retrieved from the wiki pages (e.g. ValueDescription::description), until the duplication issue is resolved. Thus I'm herbay withdrawing my previous contributions to the "labels" "description" Data items, as I believe that retaining these would be detrimental to the future development of the OSM project. --Stefan2255 09:07 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see. You are concerned about inconsistent or duplicate data. Thanks for explanation! I for myself have followed the principle, so far, that it is better to have a translation somewhere (e.g. at data item) than not to have one (if no wiki page exists in a language). --Chris2map (talk) 09:17, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

There is Category:Pages loading description from data item that shows tag pages having no "description" parameter and displaying description from the data item. (For now only in main (English) namespace, but we could extend it to other languages. --Chris2map (talk) 09:32, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, locating the Wiki-pages missing the "description" parameters is a good idea, and yes you probably ought to.

However this don't really address the growing data duplication problem; while maintaining the ValueDescription as parameter values in the Wiki pages and thus easy to edit and localize is a nice idea, I think we will find that it was falacy, due to the mount of automation that is needed to maintain and ensure that the duplicated data is consistent. Thus I think "we" should just 'bite the bullet', and move the ValueDescription parameters into the Data items, however this clearly will require some change to the wiki UI, so the Data items page will be opened instead of the Template parameter editor. Adding a quick hack to do so shouldn't be that difficult (e.g. for a list of known special cases), but to properly is probably a bit more work. Further as mentioned on the Data items page, this can't be some magic hidden reference - the DataItem ID (e.g. Q4907) need to be clearly preset in the Wiki page source code, and there needs to be a some kind of Edit link on the reneded wiki-page. THat probalu imples renaming the template to DataItemValueDescription, and we end up with {{DataItemValueDescription|Q4907}}, but that is probably something we ought to be discussing elsewhere.

Lastly, I think the decision not to translate the Labels, is a missed opportunity to provide a better localized experience in the GUIs. OTOH I also aware of the controversy surrounding Microsoft's decision to make localized variants of the VisualBasic language, and resulting difficulties; so clearly there is no perfect choice, but as long as the translation is only used for presentation purposes in the GUI, I think it's usually the correct compromise.

Specifically what I don't want to see is editor specific translation of the tags, that is just a huge waste of effort ... it can be really confusing to see different translation depending which tool you are using at the moment; e.g. iD has its own translation of most things so "Stepping Stones" could be translated to "Stegsteanar"(sv) in ID, but "Trampstenar"(sv) in another - and neither would be incorrect - and as a user/translator of iD I find these issue a pain to deal with, as it unclear what is part of the GUI and what is provided by the OSM data model. IMHO, the less translations of the OSM concepts that the tools has to maintain individuality, the better. (Agan, there is probably a better place to address my frustrations...)

You address issues that I have already stumbled upon in some cases. I support your ideas. For the short information data presented in the infoboxes on the tag pages something structured like data items seems to be the adequate place to store. But duplication should be avoided. Unfortunately the data items are not liked by every user. And the data items editor could be improved. This is going to be a long long term project. --Chris2map (talk) 14:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)