Language coordinator
I talked with a friend who is a member of KDE Serbian translation team about what should be done if two or more users do not agree about translation, terminology or other language issues. He told me the following, and I quote:
"As people are aware that in practice the translation is a very subjective thing, then it is determined who is in charge of that language (the person is often called "coordinator"), and what the coordinator says, that's final. It is very important that the coordinator has technical means in order to be his last. If there is someone new and do not agree about some issues, and do not convince the coordinator what they want, they can leave; if they just start to work beside the warnings, then the chief will prevent that using his/her technical means.
As to who is in charge of a translation unit, in voluntary undertakings it's the one who first came on the project *AND* work on a regular basis. The coordinator can be changed only if he leaves the project or stops to work regularly. There is no other way — for example, referring to any writings, even if they are from God itself, do not pass."
This method is used in many open source projects, including Gnome, KDE, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva etc. Something similar could be applied here. What do you think?
I'm fine if some language communities want to have a benevolent dictator who is be able to have the final say, if that reduces conflicts. I would limit it to that, however. What I don't want is any kind of gate keeper role like the coordinators usually are in above mentioned projects.
I think it would be much better to strive for a consensus model, if possible. Precisely because translation is subjective, I don't think it is a good idea to give one person the absolute power to impose his/her personal preferences -- especially if this power is not based on translation quality but simply given to whomever got there first and/or produces the most. That way, one person could easily ruin an entire project language.
I have the exact opposite problem. A user came into the project, ignoring the translation practice in Serbian language, and started fuzzing around with the translations. This message is a response to his use of noun forms for button messages, which is totally wrong. Of course, he didn't consider my suggestions, and he kept reverting my edits, stating that "It is inappropriate to revert my edit or initial translation without a discussion". For such a basic thing a discussion or consensus is not necessary at all.
Well, this is a discussion. Niklas gave his suggestion, is it impossible to follow it? If that's a basic thing perhaps it won't be too hard to get it added to your language's guidelines with a brief discussion on portal talk.
I already posted the guidelines on the portal page of Serbian language, but it seems nobody care for it. Though, I am the only active Serbian translator on this site. Other users periodically come here to translate a few messages (often on translation rallies, like the already mentioned user I had problems with, which proves an obvious thing).
We try to cover some of these desires (from our own point of view) at mw:Internationalisation_wishlist_2017#Motivation_and_understanding. Some reasonable pieces are still missing.