Machine translations into languages you don't know
Because other people are not supposed to fix your inherently wrong texts.
So people are not supposed to review anything here? We all make errors, including you. Fixing them is all the job, it takes time, and patience. We are supposed to work in community here and help each other, and everyone makes the best he can to improve the situation, but never definitely because someone else will have a better idea, or things were not so obvious as the first thought they were.
We are supposed to review.
We are not supposed to create hundreds of inherently wrong texts for other people to "review".
You exagerate, these are not hundreds of wrong texts everywhere, and they were extremely limited and rarely visible. And nothing was broken, all was navigatable, and esily fixable if needed. Typically users do not see these very often, many do not see them even once! And they were never tricked to perform any incorrect action. Nothing changed on the site navigation at all, it is just offered as an additional hint.
I don't exaggerate. This page is just one example, but over time, you do it on many, many pages, and it easily aggregates to hundreds, and possibly event thousands of them.
And they are not easy to fix. If they were actually "easy to fix", you'd fix them yourself, wouldn't you? But of course you wouldn't, because you don't know the language.
If at least you'd talk about this to specific people who translate, it would be reasonable, but you don't do that either. And even then it wouldn't be necessary, because the languages in which you do this, like Russian, Ukrainian, German, Arabic, Japanese, Kazakh, etc., don't need a lot of help anyway because they have enough active translators.
So just stop.
I know German since long, I have worked for several years in Hamburg, especially on i18n projects, I've worked in other countries also throughout Europe (including Portugal) and the Middle East (Morocco, Emirates, Lebanon).
I am also a dual French and Dutch native (with direct family in Western France, Northern France, Wallonia, Flanders, and Southern Netherlands). I may not be perfect in those languages but have no difficulties with them.
When I say "easy to fix", it's just easier to fix than when there's nothing, a few letters, without going into technical syntaxic details.
And I've made absolutely nothing that "vandalizes" others creations (they may have their own preferences). But you've just deleted things without providing any form of help to anyone.
People who know German and Dutch complained multiple times that they were surprised to discover very wrong and hard to fix translations that you've made quietly. So leave it to people who do know them perfectly. There are enough of them.
And people complained abot your own translations you did to other languages in Africa and Central Asia (even recently). But they fear your reaction and power. I have more thanks from many people, than complains that I never receive except from you. Among those that thanked me multiple times is GerardM, a Dutch native and a cofounder (with Nike) of TWN (also the maintainer of an important project hosted here). He is also the site admin that gave you the admin right in 2010... I've never received any complain from him (but may be now he no longer works very actively in TWN), and neither from any other Dutch or German contributor. We all do our best, we all ahve been reverted in one time, but very rarely because there's very low level of errors or things that we could have forgotten, or just because there are some other possible formulation/alternatives and a terminogic choice was made much later to solve new ambiguities, or because old messages were not completely documented to explain their effective usage (nothing is definitive, there are various good reasons for changes made later by others).
Where did people complain about my translations?
I only make technical fixes or copies of translations about which I'm sure, and even then I coördinate with people who know the language and ask them to verify it. You just do your things quietly.
Where did people complain about my translations? That's the same thing, I could have reacted if was aware, but find no traces about these claims (not even in your talk page, so this must be on side channels). But most people don't complain, they just fix it as they see it, and understand why there could be some confusion. You made errors as well, I and others fixed them without complaining because we all try to do our best (even when you try to translate to some African or Central Asian languages, and these were not just "technical fixes", you may have made your own checks be comparing various sources and finding multiple exising usages: then people may argue that these were not the best choice for the given context)
People have been complaining about what you do here for years. Here, for example: Thread:User talk:Verdy p/Machine translation. It was not OK three years ago, it is not OK now, and it will never be OK.
People also complained multiple times about this on the public Telegram translatewiki channel. Unfortunately, there's no convenient way to link there, but with a bit of patience, you'll find it.
And many, many times people complained privately to me on email and Telegram. People are not always comfortable about speaking up publicly, perhaps because they see that you edit so much. But someone has to say something to stop it, so I'm saying it now: Don't post any translations to languages you don't know.
The example you give was not a translation but an initial creation. Then it was edited by various users, and seen many many times, a few others were abale to add some languages. One user complained that one message may be wrong but fixed it himself. And this was not machine translation at all. The initial creation was to make sure it was translatable and show the format. At that time, there was no infrastructure in place to use the Translate UI, it starts appearnig but there's lot of work to make it easy. Those mesages have then helped many many people; like all the rest in TWN, this nothing is definitive and all can be improved, but we have plenty of time and no one is fooled by false hints. Eevn native translators make their own errors or typos frequently and then fix it later if it helps, or if there are better formulations that one may find without deviating too much. Just today the initial maintainer of a project added 2 typos, I submitted one to their bug fom, its was fixed but later I discovered another one (that I had not translated myself but was wrong as well in English, and it was fixed as well by the initial maintainer; these 2 messages have been submitted twice to transltions and reviews). As well source messages may be ambiguous (I also submitted a bug request about it, and its was changed twice in a few days, translated twice, reviewed twice...). We all do our best but there are unseen errors, this happens all the time, but in fact rarely: statistically we still progress much faster this way. It's curious to see that people that may complain are those that do the least work, and use side-channels, but never then thank for thee massive job performed that they benefit everyday (and do they participate to the reviews or to any question and discussion on the appropraite place? Do they submit bug reports, do they document as much as I do to avoid further difficulties by other newcomers?) Also for very long this site was also deserted from admins for basic maintenance and navigatability. When I started many years ago, this wiki was arpidely becoming a nightmare to use except ni English (so it was not at all prepared to perform its essential task: making wikis accessible to other languages, including those that still ahd no or too littel content available for them). So don't blame me for the very few errors/bugs I may make. Now if people complain that I do a lot, that is non-sense. I have never blocked anyone to do much work as well by themselves and start cooperating ion the appropriate place, and not privately, dispersing on unreferenced side-channels that . I've not hidden atall what I was doing.
Also I've search on Telegram and found NO reference at all about me. I searched for several years (but there's a limit on the history we can see (may be it was also only in private messages there). The only references are my own signature in the few public messages that I posted there, when there was a bug report to discuss (and there was an indication that this doscussion occured there). How are we supposed to cooperate if everyone just discusses privately in side-channels?