Delete empty qqq pages

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CLOSED This issue is closed by Jon Harald Søby

Some time ago I created qqq pages (switched namespace to qqq and started translating without going back to de), that are now empty (I cleared them).

As I think having empty pages is not good in general, I'm asking for the deletion of these pages.

The pages are:

Tobi 406 (talk)‎

The /qqq pages are intended to provide help to translators, such as listing other resources with similar terms, giving hint about usage (when the English resource alone is ambiguous, such as lack of distinction between nouns and verbs, or the too frequent overuse of Capitalization in English where other languages have more restrictions, based on meaning or usage in sentences). They may convey pointers to check the usage in the application, or with related separately separated resources, or give hints about what will be in replaced placeholders. There may also be warnings, such as terms probably left untranslated (except if needed for transliteration of the Latin script, notably brand names that are still derivable grammatically in some languages; some brands may also have dedicated adaptations for some languages, e.g. "Wikipedia", with the adapted name chosen in a separate process that may need to be documented in qqq pages). So the /qqq pages are not specific to any language, they are usually written in English (sometimes they include some autotranslated templates for generic hints). For some projects, there may exist a terminologic list that should be checked (to help increase the coherency). But they have nothing to do with specific languages like "de"... The "/qqq" pages are helpful and can be recreated at any time even if some hints are removed (because they were temporary). If you are multilingual or can read/understand other languages, check how resources are translated, because you can detect cases that were tested and corrected in other languages and this gives hints about what to do (English alone is ferquently not enough). If there are talks somewhere about terminologic choices, these "/qqq" pages should not be cleared. If a problem was found in a language, and then fixed for that language, it's likely a problem also in other languages and keeping the issue doucmented is helpful. It also provides feedback to developers (even if they often request to post a bug report in a bug tracker like Phabricator or in the Support request pages: post the link to the bug report and its talks and resolution, keep it even if it's resolved). Deleting a page will just make the history invisible, and if it is recreated, the history is lost. An empty page anyway does not cost anything more in the server. Translatewiki.net otherwise is not a development platform for the supported software to translate. That's the role of "/qqq" pages to post any such reports and hints that will help translators to other languages still lacking proper translation: this avoids long searches and repeated corrections later after testing the result (which will not be used immediately but integrated progressively).

But NEVER use the "/qqq" page for making any actual translation, these are not junk "test' pages, but are like what documentation pages are for templates.

Verdy p (talk)‎

Done Deleted all but two where other users have added content in the meantime.

Jon Harald Søby (talk)‎