[development] updating translations: how valuable is user data after all?

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Ashraf Amayreh wrote:
> What if the update script compared the PO imported strings to the ones 
> in the database, if they are identical it would be marked as "not 
> modified" in the newly added modified bit, else, it would be marked as 
> modified. Would that work?

Well, the idea of the modified bit would be to mark what you modified on 
the web interface, so we can protect them from later modifications. The 
fact that an updated translation contains modified strings does not mean 
you ever touched the original ones. Keeping them in the database would 
conserve the bad translations the teams try to update. This reuse of the 
modified bit would be against the intended role of the modified bit.

Of course we can reposition the suggested modified bit, but then it will 
not serve a protection role, just some kind of notification that the 
version in the system is different in the PO files. How would that serve 
the user? How would users clean up this stuff, to distinguish between 
translation team updated strings and real user modified translations?

Gabor