[Ready for translating] About Adblock Plus page

Discussion on adblockplus.org website and translations
Wladimir Palant

[Ready for translating] About Adblock Plus page

Post by Wladimir Palant »

I wrote the initial version of the "About Adblock Plus" page - en/about

A link to this page should be displayed at the bottom instead of "Adblock Plus development: Wladimir Palant". It will also replace "How is Adblock Plus related to Adblock?" section of the FAQ. The goal is to give a short and concise overview of the project, something that even people not familiar with Adblock Plus can understand.

Comments? Better formulations? Anything that could be improved?
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Hubird
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Hubird »

Original text
Adblock Plus is an open-source project dedicated to making people's Internet experience better. It addresses especially the increasingly severe problem of annoying advertising on the web by giving the control back to the users. By adding filters to Adblock Plus users can decide what a website is allowed to load. In addition, Adblock Plus provides the element hiding mechanism to deal with cases where the offender is an integral part of the page rather than an external resource. Users who don't have the knowledge or the time to create their own filters can choose from over forty filter subscriptions that have been prepared by members of the Adblock Plus community and are constantly being updated.
To date, more than 10 million people chose to use Adblock Plus, and they are getting more every day. Adblock Plus has been both the most downloaded and the most used extension on addons.mozilla.org almost continuously since November 2006. PC World chose Adblock Plus as one of the 100 Best Products of 2007. The project also received the Linux New Media award for Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
I had a quick look and have made some suggestions in bold.

Adblock Plus is an open-source project dedicated to making people's Internet experience less frustrating. It addresses the ever increasing problem of annoying and intrusive adverts on the web by giving control back to the user. By adding filters to Adblock Plus users can decide what a website is allowed to load. In addition, Adblock Plus also provides an element hiding mechanism to deal with cases where the offending ad is an integral part of the page rather than an external resource. Users who don't have the knowledge or the time to create their own filters can choose from over forty filter subscriptions that have been prepared by members of the Adblock Plus community and are constantly being updated.
To date, more than 10 million people choose to use Adblock Plus, and this number is increasing each day. According to addons.mozilla.org, Adblock Plus has been both the most downloaded and the most used extension almost continuously since November 2006. PC World chose Adblock Plus as one of the 100 Best Products of 2007. The project also received the Linux New Media award for Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
alberto
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by alberto »

'how it started' section (i.e. old stuff) is still larger than 'what it is about' section (i.e. today and future) :-)

How about adding some stuff about the vision or main goals, as you mentioned in previous blogs e.g.
bring Adblock Plus into a position where it can influence the web as a whole.
Michael
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Michael »

Below is my rewrite of the content; while I was intending to indicate the altered sections, I have changed so much that the exercise appears to be worthless. I have removed the details of the development of subscriptions, as I agree with Alberto that emphasis should be on now, not the past.
About Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is an open-source project dedicated to improving the Internet browsing experience of millions of people by removing online advertising and returning control back to the users. The extension allows the addition of filters to define what a website is permitted to load and provides an element hiding mechanism to collapse unwanted sections of a page. People who don't have the knowledge or the time to create their own rules can choose from over fifty filter subscriptions that are being constantly updated by the community.

The add-on has been both the most downloaded and the most used extension on addons.mozilla.org almost continuously since November 2006, and there are currently more than 10 million people using Adblock Plus daily, a figure that is steadily increasing. Adblock Plus was chosen by PC World as one of the 100 Best Products of 2007, and in March 2010 it received the Linux New Media award for Best Open Source Firefox Extension.

The Adblock Plus community
The Adblock Plus project is an open community and owes its success to the dedication of many contributors:
  • Lead developer: Wladimir Palant
  • Code contributors: Nickolay Ponomarev, Fabrice Desré and Rob Brown
  • Dozens of filter subscription maintainers
  • Subscription list managers: Michael and Eitan
  • Over fifty translators who work on the extension and the website
  • Over one hundred active forum members who help others, suggest filters and discuss proposed features
  • Thousands of development build testers who install pre-release versions of Adblock Plus and report bugs
  • Millions of happy users who spread the word about Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus origins
The original Adblock extension was created by Henrik Aasted Sørensen in 2002, although after three releases he lost interest and project ownership was transferred to rue. A number of development versions of the add-on were published between 2003 and 2006, although no release was ever officially designated as being stable despite the now significant number of followers. Important features were not implemented and the extension was not updated to match changes in Firefox; this prompted community member Michael McDonald (mcm) to create a forked version called Adblock Plus 0.5 in 2005, which added the highly desired functionality to the add-on. In January 2006 Wladimir Palant took over Adblock Plus and released Adblock Plus 0.6, a completely rewritten extension as a part of an independent project. Just under a year later Adblock Plus was the most downloaded Firefox add-on, a position that it has retained ever since.
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Hubird
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Hubird »

Wladimir Palant wrote:The goal is to give a short and concise overview of the project
I feel it is starting to get a little long now, I did not have any major issues with the general "vibe" of the original text.
Wladimir Palant

Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Second round: I updated the page and I think that I managed to consider all the feedback. Looking forward to more comments.

@Hubird: Thank you, very useful.

@alberto: You are right, my obsession with history seems to shine through. The "how it started" section is much shorter now, fewer details.

I also added a "mission statement" at the top - got some external feedback on that as well. This should be sufficient for this page - we can go into more detail when we are bored enough to write an Adblock Plus Manifesto.

@Michael: Thank you. You do tend to use unnecessarily long and complicated sentences so please don't mind that I simplified your suggestions in many places. You will notice however that much of it has been taken over. And - yes, got it, they are not "users".

I did keep the original headings - I would like to have this a little less formal, more conversational style. Otherwise all the differences are minor details I think.
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Hubird
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Hubird »

The only thing I feel needs changing now is
PC World chose Adblock Plus as one of the 100 Best Products of 2007. The project also received the Linux New Media award for Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
There is nothing wrong with the grammar I just feel it would be best if this could be condensed into one sentence, Michael's suggestion fits nicely IMO.
Adblock Plus was chosen by PC World as one of the 100 Best Products of 2007, and in March 2010 it received the Linux New Media award for Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
Wladimir Palant

Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Reason why I didn't like Michael's suggestion - I don't want to start all sentences with "Adblock Plus". But I'll see that I improve these two sentences somehow, I see how they disrupt the rhythm of that paragraph.
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Hubird
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Hubird »

Wladimir Palant wrote:Reason why I didn't like Michael's suggestion - I don't want to start all sentences with "Adblock Plus".
Yes, fair point.
Wladimir Palant

Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Wladimir Palant wrote:But I'll see that I improve these two sentences somehow, I see how they disrupt the rhythm of that paragraph.
Done, better now?
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Hubird
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Hubird »

PC World rated Adblock Plus as a top innovation in its 100 Best Products of 2007 list, and in March 2010 the project also collected the Linux New Media award for the Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
I'm not keen on the idea of starting the sentence with "PC World", it seem out of place to me.


Perhaps something along the lines of:
Amongst its achievements Adblock Plus was listed as one of the Best Products of 2007 by PC World and in March 2010 the project also collected the Linux New Media award for the Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
Michael
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Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Michael »

I have made a few minor alterations and promise that one day I will get used to writing simple sentences...
What it is about

"We want to make the Internet better for everyone. Purging bad ads is a good start."

Adblock Plus is an open-source project addressing the problem of annoying and intrusive online advertising by putting users back in control. The extension allows defining filters that determine what a website is permitted to load, as well as a way to collapse unwanted sections of a web page (element hiding). People who don't have the knowledge or the time to create their own filters can choose from over fifty existing subscriptions that have been prepared by members of the Adblock Plus community and are constantly being updated.

More than 10 million people currently use Adblock Plus, a number that is steadily increasing. According to addons.mozilla.org, Adblock Plus has been both the most downloaded and the most used extension almost continuously since November 2006. PC World rated Adblock Plus as a top innovation in its 100 Best Products of 2007 list, and in March 2010 the project collected the Linux New Media award for the Best Open Source Firefox Extension.

Who we are — meet the community

The Adblock Plus project is an open community and owes its success to the dedication of many community members:
...

How it started

The original Adblock extension was created in 2002 by Henrik Aasted Sørensen, who later transferred project ownership to rue. The add-on managed to attract a significant number of followers before it was ultimately abandoned in 2006, despite the fact that no version published since 2003 was designated as stable. In 2005 the lack of progress prompted community member Michael McDonald (mcm) to create a forked version called Adblock Plus, which added some highly desired functionality to the add-on. In January 2006 Wladimir Palant entirely rewrote Adblock Plus and made it a self-contained project. Less than a year later Adblock Plus was the most downloaded Firefox add-on, a position it has retained ever since.
Wladimir Palant

Re: About Adblock Plus page - feedback?

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Thank you, Michael. I took over pretty much all of your suggestions (transfered => transferred - I blame the spellchecker), only exception being the "as well as" part which seems to be missing something.

It looks like there are no disagreements concerning the overall structure of the text, all comments addressing only formulations. This means that this should be ready for translating.
alberto
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Re: [Ready for translating] About Adblock Plus page

Post by alberto »

More than 10 million people currently use Adblock Plus...
Some of these figures will (hopefully) continue to increase over time, and the page will need updating. Can I suggest making "10" a fixed value, so can be updated without impacting the whole translated sentence? Or alternatively place markers either side e.g. <fix/>
Wladimir Palant

Re: [Ready for translating] About Adblock Plus page

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Actually, I intentionally kept the numbers pretty vague so that this doesn't need to be updated too often. But - sure, made this fixed. Also added a bunch of <fix/> tags to make each sentence in a paragraph a translation unit - have to remember doing that in future, will make updating things a lot less painful.
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