If you’re a localizer, the next two weeks are extremely important. Please take a the time to read this post so you can prepare your locale for the new Knowledge Base.
At SUMO we’re taking a huge step forward by finally switching to our all-new Knowledge Base. Most of the work is done and we had an awesome test day last week. We’re currently fixing the last few bugs before the release on November 30th.
A new KB means that we have a lot of new strings in the UI — more than 2000 words in all. You can find the new strings in Verbatim, our new tool for all UI localization. It’s a lot of words, but fear not: up to 50% of the strings were ported over, so if you’ve localized those in the past you don’t have to do it again. When we moved them we marked them as fuzzy, so you can decide for yourself whether you want to accept them or change them.
We need your help, so please start localizing those strings so your locale is ready for the release on November 30th! As always, you can have a look at the new software on our staging server at https://support-stage-new.mozilla.com/
Of course we’ll need a little time to port over thousands of articles from our old KB to our new system. In order to do that, we will need a little downtime when it’s not possible to edit articles on the existing site. The freeze date for the KB is November 29th, 1 am PST. Please make sure that you’ve made any edits to your articles by this date. We can’t port over any changes after that. But you can of course continue working on your articles from November 30th on in the new KB. :)
What happens after we’ve switched to the new system?
Since this is a completely new system written from scratch, and the Firefox 4 docs will be ready to be localized soon, we would like to assist you in localizing them on the new system. For that we’ll have a SUMO KB localization sprint on December 2nd. The sprint will start at 6am PST and last till 2pm PST. That’s 3pm to 11pm in Central Europe.
During the sprint we’ll be ready to help out and answer questions in #sumo on IRC. Please try to attend the sprint, since it’s your best chance to get to know the new KB, and collaborate with other localizers who’ll also be in the channel. We’ll have the list of the documents for the sprint ready soon and I’ll of course keep you updated on them.
To summarize:
- The new KB will be released on November 30th
- We have the full new UI in Verbatim ready for immediate translation.
- All work on the articles in the old KB must be done by November 29th, 1 am PST, to be ported over to the new one
- We’ll have a KB localization sprint on December 2nd, between 6am and 2pm PST, where you’ll find us and other localizers in #sumo for help.
Two very busy weeks ahead for everyone, but it’s really worth the work — or as one localizer put it during the QA day last week: “The new KB is light years ahead of the old one!” Hope to see you all on the other side :)
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Kadir Topal
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