(In reply to comment #0)

Apparently it's also "known" that you can replace the contents with
"FUZZY"
which might be an alternative replacement for this enhancement request, as
only
a few power users would know this (and it's not clear how users would learn
it).

Manual FUZZY is being replaced, so this request intersects several issues.

• Bug 48973 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Ideally there should be a button used to mak a unit back to Fuzzy, a unit may have been validated by error.

• When ediring a fuzzy unit, the Translate tool removes the initial "FUZZY" from the text being edited in the textarea, but the proposed actions should not be just "Save" and "Cancel", but there hould exist a checkbox reading "Keep this unit fuzzy when saving" (unchecked by default when opening the unit). Even if we make some changes in the fuzzy text, this text is still not valid, and we can pass the hand to another editor by keeping the edited and saved text as fuzzy. It would require an additional click to this checkbox before pressing the "Save" button. It is not acceptable that the Translate tool silently edits the edited text in the textarea displayed and that we can just press save to confirm something that is still wrong.
• When editing a non fuzzy unit, the "Save keeping fuzzy" should be replaced by "Make this text fuzzy when saving". For example we could start changing the text (e.g. the value of a date, or remove some extra linebreaks, without understanding the language used, so the edit will be minimal, to hel another translator.

Ideally, the Translate tool should work also with reviewers, if translations must be validated by them before publishing. This means that they can keep an existing text publshed in a previous version (only the translator that chenged it would see his recent change he did.

• When ediing any version, we should be able to navigate easily in the Translate box acroos versions, and the box would display the user that created that version, the date he saved it, and the edit comment. Navigating between versions should use simple links "previous version" and "next version", just like when viewing regular pages in the history (the info is visible at top of pages as a small line).

I do not understand how fuzzy-state is related to page deletion. I consider "save as fuzzy" to be such a rare case that I do not see enough reason to complicate the current interface.

The points about review-gating translations and history browser are also out of scope for this bug report.

It is highly related : the translation may have been created the first time only with spammed or completely bogous content, or random content

It is then impossible to revert it to something else that will not be fuzzy, we want deletion to restore the language fallback that would have been used, or want that the translate tool does not use this fuzzy item (which was initially created not fuzzy by the abuser, but reverted as fuzzy after review by another translator).

Suppose you mark a new page, all its translatable items don't have any translation, and many languages won't have any translation for a very long time. At any time an abuser will come and will fill in some slang words or non-sense. As this is a page creation, we cannot revert it. We also cannot blank it completely (the Translate tool does not accept blank entries).

What we want is the equivalent: filling the content with blank, marked as fuzzy, the saved translation itme will contain now only "!!FUZZY!" and won't be used in the generated page, fallbacks will apply.

It is not very evident to blank those items, but we can revert these by entering "FUZZY" (and nothing else) in the text area before saving it. The edit comment should automatically indicate that

• "User blanked the translation and marked it as fuzzy".

Note that the Translate tool does not allow us to add an edit comment, it is added automatically. It should also indicate if a content was preserved or only partially modified but also marked by a leading "FUZZY:" with two edit comments:

• "User marked the existing translation as fuzzy"
• "User modified translation and marked it as fuzzy"

This bug will not be fixed in a way that has anything to do with FUZZY.

Note also that the Translate tool could also force all items in the translated page to be created immediately with "FUZZY" and nothing else.

These entries containing only "FUZZY" would be considered everywhere as being untranslated at all, including in statistics. All entries will be found by FuzzyBots, that will discard them.

When to save all these "FUZZY" items ? Only when creating it the 1st time: first save it as "FUZZY" to create it, wait for completion, save the first edited content.

This allows easy revert of edits by reviewers (and notably by those that monitor a partially translated page that was created with minimum content to test the interface (they are receiving notification emails for EACH nexly created item because they monitor the generated page).

Translation review is an important process and is full part of the Translate tool (where it is called locally "rereading"). Rereading translations should allow marking translations as FUZZY in a single click even without changing it and keeping its content.

If a translation is clearly abusive, translators should also be allowed to blank it: when saving, there can be a dialog asking if they really want to delete the translation, in which case it will be saved as "FUZZY". This dialog should offer a way to enter an edit comment for explaining why it was blanked.

What you are proposing is not technically clean solution and wont be implemented.

Please refrain from further off-topic discussion on this bug or I will remove myself from cc.

It is not off-topic, you just don't understand the real issue that was cannot easily mark a translation as really bad.

IF you don't want to modify the edit interface, instead provide icons in the Rereading view, so that we can vote AGAINST (not just FOR as now!!!) this translation and allow with this icon to:

• reverting it to the previous version (this only requires the capability to revert pages, any logged on userhave this right, unless it has been blocked by removing his "reviewer" right),

• or delete it if there's none (it requires wiki admin privileges, different from the "translate admin" group)

• or saving it as "FUZZY" only (equivalent solution that does not require any admin privileges but the standard user rights of all translators).

In any of these 3 cases, there should be a way to explain why we vote AGAINST the translation and want to revert/delete it.

This is abolsutely need for quality review of translations, a work that any translator participant should be allowed to do himself, and subject to the general policy of translators.

Note that full deletion is generally not needed and not wanted: saving as "FUZZY:" only preserves the history, and allows seeing it in the activity of participants.

This will allow detecting editing wars caused by multiple reverts (visible in the history).

Saving as "FUZZY" only is FULLY equivalent to a revert here and should follow the same policy as standard reverts.

(In reply to comment #9)

the real issue that was[:] cannot
easily mark a translation as really bad.

It's not about understanding, it's about that NOT being this bug 48005. You should file a separate bug report for such a thing, or even better post all of the above on a mediawiki.org page. It's already been pointed out to you 4 times: 3 above and 1 at https://www.mediawiki.org/?diff=881475&oldid=420768 .

James, considering that verdy completely hijacked this bug, what do you think about making it into "Provide a way to mark a translation as very bad"? There are already two specific bugs about undoing and deleting.

I did not hijack this bug, but the difficulty deleting a page is not a but of the Trnalate tool itself, it is a basic MediaWiki feature that requires a separate adminship, unezlarted to the Translate tool.
Here we need a way to delete a translation, using only the translation extension itself. So yes my replies/suggestions are perfectly on topic (and yes replacing the content with "!FUZZY!!" only already DOES this work, except that it's very unfriendly for tranlators if they don't know it).
I just *suggest* adding this within the Rereading view with an additional icon to mark a translation as bad (clicking on it would cast a negative vote) and an icon to revert it (any translator could do it).

On multilingual witi sites it ihas already been observed that the Translate tool already *hijacks* the normal behavior of sites where it is enabled, by restricting edits too much and causing excessive work by wiki admins. Yes the translate tool is intended to be used by a maximum number of contributors (it should be) and not just by a few admins that are definiteitly NOT good translators.

At some point later, even the specific "translate admin" right should be dropped, or opened to any regular user. Translations is a basic feature of regular users already doing them without the tool by editing pages or templates. The Translate tool is just there to help/accelerate the process and easily manage translations, it should have NEVER limited them.

It's not clear what this bug is asking for. It is possible to delete a specific translation (i.e. page in Translation namespace) as long as you have the 'translate' and 'delete' rights. It is also possible to delete all translation units in a translated page using Special:PageTranslationDeletePage, but that requires 'delete' and 'pagetranslation' rights.

This bug seems to be asking for an option in the drop-down menu to link to the deletion form. Is that correct?

(In reply to PiRSquared17 from comment #13)

It's not clear what this bug is asking for. It is possible to delete a
specific translation (i.e. page in Translation namespace) as long as you
have the 'translate' and 'delete' rights. It is also possible to delete all
translation units in a translated page using
Special:PageTranslationDeletePage, but that requires 'delete' and
'pagetranslation' rights.

This bug seems to be asking for an option in the drop-down menu to link to
the deletion form. Is that correct?

Yes.

Change 139292 had a related patch set uploaded by Gerrit Patch Uploader:
Add delete link to drop-down menu

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/139292

Change 139292 merged by jenkins-bot:
Add delete link to drop-down menu

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/139292

My request is now resolved. If there are other changes that other people would like to see, please open another bug.

Does this "delete" action require an admin privilege (i.e. is it a true deletion that deletes all the history, or that just replaces it with a missing translation (the equivalent of blanking a page) ?
For now the simple blanking option (that preserved the history and did not require any admin privilege) was to make it fuzzy. This has the same effect on the generated page, but it was still reversible normally.
Deleting pages (or translation units) is only needed for spammed contents, or translation units that will never need to be added again (possibly with a different content), what is more accurate is only to hide a version (this requires admin privileges) due to legal issues (such as a copyvio, or because it was created by a spammer that infected too many pages with too many things left in the history).
A translation unit should be considered like a normal page with the same operation rules.

It is just a normal delete. The delete option in the menu links to the corresponding translation unit's action=delete page.

The delete action is administrative only. It has the bad effect (like when "deleting" pages) of masking everything in the history, instead of just one revision. It is not equivalent to an "undo" edit (which comes back to the previous version.
It cannot be used to jsut mark that a translation is bad and revert it to the previous version. It cannot be used for updating.

Really updating it to only this

!!FUZZY!!

is better and does not require any privilege. Translators can change things quite often, incrementally. It should be directly possible with the same immediate effect of hiding a translation. Do you intend to remove that possibility of manually marking a translation unit as fuzzy?