L10N guidelines for reviewing translated articles

Who are Reviewers?

Becoming a Reviewer is a major step forward from 'only' localizing the KB. You agree to take on a few new responsibilities, but it also brings new opportunities to contribute and cooperate with others on a bigger scale. You will be able to shape the future of SUMO's KB in your language.

If you started your locale at SUMO 'from zero' and were the first contributor for it, you have technically been a Reviewer from the very first day - making sure your work is ready to be published for users speaking your language to find and use.

If you joined an existing localization group, you may consider becoming a Reviewer if you want to expand your skills and learn how to collaborate on and be responsible for content on a new level.

As a Reviewer, you are encouraged to keep localizing and contributing new revisions to the KB. This way, you will learn from your own work and the work of others.

As a Reviewer, you will have a chance to:

• Greet new members of the SUMO community who want to localize into your language
• Work together with Locale Leaders and other Reviewers on guiding all Editors in their work:
  • through 1:1 mentoring on language and quality
  • through documentation (e.g. a Style Guide for your locale)
• Help organize and attend Mozilla events in your area
• Provide fair reviews of contributions provided by all Editors in your locale - and provide construtive feedback on their quality - this includes:
  • Approving good revisions and encouraging Editors to continue their great work
  • Rejecting revisions that can be improved, and letting their authors know what and why could be better

What skills can you practice and develop as a Reviewer?

• Localizing for the web, between English and your target (native) locale
• Ensuring quality for online localization in your target (native) locale
• (Co)creating linguistic documentation for your locale
• Providing meaningful feedback that leads to improvement (some call it 'mentoring')

How can you become a Reviewer?

If you want to become a Reviewer in an existing localization group, it's up to the current Reviewers and Locale Leaders to decide whether you have enough experience to review the contributions of others.

So, if you're interested, ask the Reviewers and Locale Leaders for your locale about it!

If you are the only person in your locale and want to review your own work, please let us know in the contributor forum and we will help you in the situation.

How to be a good Reviewer?

Above all, keep localizing - it is hard to review the work of others properly if you have no experience of what it is.

Furthermore, a good Reviewer is known for providing good reviews (surprising, eh?).

How to review?

A good review:

• includes a sincere 'thank you' to the Localizer for their effort - regardless whether it's an approval or a rejection (this is very important!)
• is written in a friendly, kind manner
• is completed within a week from the submission of an article's new revision (if you need more time to complete it, inform the Localizer)
• is equally learning and teaching - the Reviewer is learning how Editors interpret and adapt the source material, and teaches them how to do it even better
• takes some time and is done carefully
• checks for all links and customization options in the revision
• checks for correct vocabulary (including names of the user interface elements mentioned in the instructions), style, and grammar
• includes a 'what & why' - a list of all fragments of the revision that should be improved, with explanations for each of them (for exceptions to this, see below)
• is not too long to read - if the submitted revision can be improved in many ways, the Reviewer should let the Localizer know about the most important improvements, and include a fair warning that the next revision will also be rejected, for additional reasons that the Localizer will get instructions about

Read the article and consider correcting the translation if it involves minor changes. If you are unsure, consider asking another localizer or the person who originally translated the article.

If you are reviewing a revision that appears to be based on the current (active) revision instead of a previous but newer one either pending or already approved, do not approve that but ask the localizer to redo and base his or her revision on the proper (newer) one instead to prevent undoing previous edits.

Needs changes

When approving a revision, you have to decide what, if anything, still needs to be changed. If everything specified in the "Needs change comment" has been taken care of, you can uncheck it to clear the comment and approve the article. If there are still things that need to be done, make sure the checkbox is checked and update the comment. This way, everyone can easily keep track of what work needs to be done on articles.

Spam and mistaken edits

In the case of spam, you should simply delete the revision (click the "X" in its entry in the history view). In the case of mistaken submissions (no changes) and misplaced help requests (when the revision is basically a support question), you should defer and include this message in your comments:

Hi.

It appears you may have been trying to get help with Firefox. If that is the case, please ask your question again here, https://support.mozilla.org/questions/new so that we can better help you.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Once you've done that you can delete the revision.

Delete Spam

Note: You cannot delete an unapproved article that is spam or a support request by deleting its revisions. Refer these articles to one of the admins.