User:Xbony2/T3

T3 is a project with the goal of making a third iteration of the translation system on this wiki.

Goals
The goal of T3 is to combine the pros of our first translation system (using no extension) with our current second translation system (using Extension:Translate), and to minimize the cons.

"T1" pros

 * All pages are translatable; users don't have to ask admins for help.
 * No special mark-up or templates are needed for the most part.

T1 cons

 * Pages are not every marked when the base page is changed. Because of this, translated pages are never (or are rarely) updated.
 * There's no abstraction. Untranslated templates are often used by mistake.
 * All pages are translatable; new pages and stubs don't have any protection.
 * Not really an issue on this wiki, but many wikis lack a language bar or other template, making translations near invisible (see also- how the Terraria Wiki and Dota 2 Wiki manage on-site translations quite well, whereas the Minecraft Wiki does not). Also the organization of translated pages is fairly complicated.

"T2" pros

 * Templates are largely abstracted; translation is simpler.
 * Portions of pages that are not translated (like version numbers, templates, etc) are updated automatically.
 * Outdated portions are marked in the interface, and how much of the page is translated is noted at the top of the page.
 * Translations/translation statistics are very well organized with automatically generated pages like Special:LanguageStats/zh-cn and Special:SupportedLanguages/zh-cn.

T2 cons

 * Only pages that are marked up can be translated.
 * Special markup is needed on translatable pages. Markup makes wikitext much harder to navigate and edit (newbies [and often experienced staff] often mess it up).
 * The way we use modularized navboxes currently is designed to be compatible with Extension:Translate, and because of this, changes can only be made to navboxes after marked by a translation administrator.
 * Translatable pages cannot be moved or marked without a translation administrator.
 * When an English page is updated and marked, the portion updated will replace the outdated portion on the translated page, even if it is just a small change.
 * Editing statistics because of translations are often overinflated, as translating a small page can take as many as ten edits, while simply creating that page in English might just take one or two.
 * Extension:Translate is a third-party extension and cannot be modified to the FTB Wiki's needs as easily.
 * Gamepedia doesn't like the Translate extension much.
 * It's been known to have strange bugs, such as awkwardness with modules and sometimes failing to update pages.
 * Anonymous users cannot translate (although that's more of an issue with how we have it configured).

T3 pros

 * All pages (except certain marked pages) will be translatable.
 * On the base English page, the only markup that will be needed is the language bar at the bottom of the page.
 * When an English page is changed, the translations will automatically be marked as outdated via bot.
 * Translated pages will be able to be marked as complete, incomplete, outdated, in need of cleanup, work in progress, etc in the translation header, and will be categorized as so.
 * Hopefully, templates and such will be somewhat abstracted so it will be easier to translate.
 * Modular navboxes will be able to be modified by anyone.
 * Is FTB Wiki-specific and FTB Wiki-maintained.

T3 cons

 * Might be slower than T1 or T3, but we'll see.
 * Abstraction might not be as good as T2's abstraction because of the lack of translation tags.