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Apr 26, 2013

Sharing the misery part 2 - EU Q&A proposal

Alright, getting back to the "sharing the misery" post from yesterday evening about how the proposed EU Q&A could work (this is the thread the whole issue is about), because an interesting post appeared:

Gnomus wrote:

What would be tremendously helpfull would be one person, that speaks English and Russian with following jobdescription:

1. Follow RU side Q&A and compile and translate most intresting info to English (and then to other languages by other WG emplyees or community as necessary). Basically what Silent Stalker is doing now in his blog.
2. Follow EU side Q&A and give answer to questions that have been already answered on RU side by devs (no need to reask them). Possibly give also his own opinion and generally make us feel that someone is listening to us. (Currently some feedback is acted upon and some not, but there will go months before anything happens and people don't even know if any WG employee has read their concerns. Then all of a sudden something changes. This is quite frustrating. Simlpe "noted" would help in this.)
3. Gather intresting unanswered questions on EU Q&A and send them to developers (and translate them to Russian if needed) for answers.
This could be done with US side, so that same person would do same job for them also. Basically just liasoning job between English speaking community and Russian speaking developers. I wouldn't mind having same with other supported languages also, but EN-RU is the most important because most of community can speak English.

Why do I get back to this? Because this is the best proposal/summary I've seen to date. This is how I would want it to look like, if it was up to me. A few points to "polish" it a bit though:

For one, translating is really not enough. Overlord stated today that he'd like for the translations to be a start. I disagree. Literal translations wouldn't work, the person responsible has to interpret too. Why? Two reasons:

- first one is a bit complicated: during one translating session, a question is answered with statement A, a page later another question is answered with statement B, that effectively denies statement A, thus statement B is correct, but literal translation would include both statements A and later statement B. Typical example: SerB/Storm "premium account buff" exchange this wek. It's confusing as hell. Ideal solution therefore is for the translator to read statement A, to read statement B and interpret both the A and B as only B. This is by the way where most of the whine about my incorrect translations comes from: something is later denied, I combine both statements into one answer, which is "B" and people whine "A" wasn't translated. It was, I just decided to ignore it in favour of B. Of course, I CAN interpret things wrongly, but it's not because of the language. Well, not mostly anyway (from what I heard from Russian players who aren't inherently hostile to me, the mistake ratio is quite good).

- another reason for interpretation is that during the literal translations, SerB/Storm would end up sounding like aggressive morons. What works for RU doesn't work for EU/NA

Obviously, one way would be to skip the answers where SerB/Storm is trolling, but that's hardly possible. Why? Because even negative answers ("this won't be implemented") have their value, if only for players to know what not to expect and not to ask such stuff again.

Another important part Gnomus caught very well is the constant communication. It's important to keep talking (writing) even when there is not that much to say, because players won't feel abandoned that way.

Naturally, the person who would do such a thing would have to recieve a "developer" status in order to make the things he/she says "legit" (if someone random started doing this, the reaction would probably be "fuck off, we want developers").

But yes, I believe what Gnomus proposed is exactly what EU server needs. Plus, it would put no additional requirements on the developers (unless the amount of questions passed from the EU server would be too big - but that would be that person's job to sort out the useless crap). Obviously, all this would have to happen only in English, there is NO way how to do this in all the supported languages. That's simply not doable, that would be up to the people stepping up (as mentioned in the first post on this topic).

31 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It is clear to me from the very beginning that Silentstalker want that position in WG. Surely you will denied here, Frank, but you know you would accept their job offer;)

      We shall see what happens in next 12 months period.


      /phot

      Delete
  2. Couldnt agree more...
    And u already proofed that most questions asked in an Q&A have already been answered. so not the lack of ansers/Info itself is the problem, the lack of communicaton of those is.

    all we need is a person who can close this gap and provide us with the info that is already out there but does not reach EU Community

    and they dont even have to search, we already have this guy...just pay him and let him make his living from it :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not going to happen - eu community officials are too busy being useless\causing shitstorms occasionally.


    ~orzel286

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  4. not really sure this will have ANY impact on how WG does their business, but im sure this blog does not need to turn to wot.eu forums... keep it real, and post articles and facts, dont degrade yourself to another "voice of reason" teaching WG what to do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't worry. It's not like I'll post one rant per day :)

      Delete
  5. Must agree, probably the best solution possible.
    Just finding the person to do it may may be a bit harder. Because as you said it cant be some company that does some dry translations, plus the one doing them have to dig through the game mechanics and know them before even trying to go for translations and should somewhat know the tank history. (For this as you said a good solution could be some player (like you were obviously))

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  6. They should just hire you Frank

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  7. While it is easy to understand that the EU community is made up of many different communities and differing even within countries like Germany, there needs to be some sort of leadership. Someone who has a pan European perspective.* Every so often there is news on the main site of competitions that have already run in the English, German, CZ or Spanish communities that seem only to be published through Facebook, twitter or some other BS social media channel. The EU WG lot seem to be arranging for them selves to do as little as possible to engage any players. Yes when you look at want the US lot put out I end up spending more time at their portal when not playing than the EU one.

    Just like the players at the arse end of the results screen, EUWG are a bunch of, likable for the most part, passengers.

    *Sounding a bit totalitarian there but I mean that they need leadership from someone who understands or at least has a grasp of the different perspectives across Europe.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I know Russian and follow RU Q&A and even reply to people on forum but they ignore my answers because some people just don't want to read anything. IMAO making Q&A on EU is useless nobody reads it anyway and those who want to know the news read them from another source like this site for example.

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  9. Expect little from a company that gives us 'scull' badges.

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  10. Its best solution i've seen so far. Not that it'll happen. Shame.

    Usual WG case in point, 8.5 comes out and they screw up the daily reset time. Have they published anything about it the website, have they hell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What did they screw up, apart from setting to 7:00 ?

      Delete
    2. That's just it they didn't set it to 07:00 its something like 20:00 gmt now......

      Delete
    3. Server restart (or whatever you call it) was set to 07:00 CEST for EU. It's officialy published in "Version 8.5 Released" news article. Don't know where you're from, but 7:00 CEST is GMT +2...

      Delete
  11. Do you remove comments you don't like...?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some, yes. Russian stuff and troll BS. If you don't like it, don't read it.

      Delete
  12. Hey Frank.. I realize that you always type "noone" (saw it in other posts). You should either use "no one" or "no-one".

    I know that this isn't important and I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi or some shit like that, but seeing that you have a great English, might as well make it perfect :). And if you wanna say "piss off or F U" to me, i understand. Just wanted to let you know that's all..

    Keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know I'm making grammar mistakes. That's the side effect of trying to make everything as fast as possible and not being paid for it :D Sorry, it's just not something I can focus on properly.

      Delete
    2. To an English speaker it wouldn't matter. Maybe it would confuse someone who has English as a 2nd language I don't know.

      Even schools over here allow some incorrect grammar in informal text.

      Just as long as you don't go full txt spk, never go full txt spk.

      Delete
  13. In a way what would really help the Q&A is to build a sort of PAQ (Previously asked questions) appropriately categorised and get a picture of what they have said might or might not happen and when it changes. Possibly someone could state to do that from your translations.

    Obviously you would look to condense and simplify. e.g. Buff/nert of Vehicvles:

    Maus - "Small Buff" - "Soon" 2x/04/13
    Loltracktor - "As Necessary" 30/04/13

    etcv

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That could be a part of the official Q&A. Truth to be told, I suppose I could do it here, but I am just tired.

      Delete
    2. I'm not expecting you to.

      But I might see if I can achieve something myself.

      Delete
  14. They could save themselves some work and just copy/paste from your blog. :p

    ReplyDelete
  15. This may be a bit of an ignorant question, but why don't you simply take up the job, Frank?

    Does WG not want to hire you because of your "reputation"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Come on... apart from actually having a job, do you REALLY think WG would offer me a job after I caused one employee to be fired, leaked stuff and called Ectar "Ecturd"? :) I don't think so.

      Delete
    2. Never say never... life was a weird way of working sometimes ;)

      Delete
    3. Are you out of your mind? How can you think that someone as dedicated and independent would want to take orders from RU? There's nothing else you can do as EU employee.

      Delete
  16. The worst thing is one-way feedback, and that's common to all WG. I posted some good (in my opinion) ideas in NA WoWs forum and asked several times WG team members to make any comment (even fuck off would be appreciated) - while KGB was then very active in Q&A and he promised to find some time, he never managed that.
    I stopped to post any further, i still have some other ideas, some quite big ones and i just can't make myself wanting to write anymore.

    ReplyDelete

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