Talk:Capacity Exchange

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Hello

I heard about this project from Z Blace. I am interested and excited about what can be accomplished within the project. Can you add a participant/interested people list so that people can put their names in? I want to invite some of my friends too. Egezort (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@Egezort excellent idea! @Andi Inácio can you please see what is best way to do this within your plans? -- Zblace (talk) 09:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Egezort and also @Zblace! That's an exciting idea.

As soon as I have this section for interested parties, I will tag you, so you can sign.
AInacio (WMB) (talk) 22:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Egezort! I'm happy to inform you we have our interested people list up and running. Please check our home page! a/c @Zblace
Best,
AInacio (WMB) (talk) 02:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@AInacio (WMB) thank you for notification!

@Irdiism maybe you are also interested in signing up? Zblace (talk) 05:55, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

would like to participate

this effort sounds very worthwhile. i would like to help out. could you please let me know how i might do so? thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey, @Sm8900. Please email us at capx{@}wmnobrasil.org so we can talk. AJurno (WMB) (talk) 16:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Great idea, weak title

In my opinion, the title of this project in English should be "Skills Exchange". The current title is very weak, and in my opinion represents a false friend^{[heterossemântico]} back-translation by a non-native speaker of English from a literal equivalent in a Romance language (likely Intercâmbio de capacidades; same as Échange de capacités, etc.) into the confusing English term *'Capacity Exchange' which does not mean the same thing. The word exchange is fine; the following two-word expressions are clear in English and mean just what you expect: "currency exchange", "information exchange", "stock exchange", "commodity exchange" and so on. You could, theoretically, have the expression "capacity exchange" in English, but it is rare and the primary meaning in English is different than the false friend examples.

Given the apparent origin of this project, I am going to assume that the English title comes from a back-translation from Brazilian Portuguese. Both the Portuguese word capacidade and the English capacity have multiple meanings, and a few of these meanings overlap and are the same in Portuguese and English but most are not. Of the eight definitions of capacidade at Houaiss,^{[free registration required]} you could use the English word capacity for 1, 2, and 5 but not for the others (4=talent, master, role model; 6=capacitance; 7=competence; 8=jurisdiction) and, crucially: 3.1=skill, ability, talent, aptitude (depends on context) and 3.2 ability (my translations). In the context of running text, you could say, "He is a true jack-of-all-trades—he has many ______" where the blank could be filled by any of skills, abilities, or talents, but not capacities. (In a different context, you could say "He has a capacity for mathematics", but that means something like a future potential: maybe he is a child who has shown some initial ability above the level of his peers; the word aptitude also works there.) As far as the two-word title, Skills Exchange sounds very much the best in English; Abilities Exchange is understandable but sounds awkward; Talent Exchange is mysterious, and calls to mind film companies or modeling agencies lending out their actors or models to each other or something. Capacity Exchange is also mysterious; what came to mind for me was interlinked server farms or electrical grids where servers or generators in one system would share resources with another system that was about to reach capacity (peak load) in order to prevent a crash or system failure.

I think the current English title will be clear to all speakers of Romance languages (even if they speak very rudimentary English, or no English) due to the false friend association to the similar term in their native language with the correct meaning, but will remain mysterious to native speakers of English. (Bilingual English-Romance speakers will probably get it, after some initial confusion.)

There are other errors of pt ⟶ en translation on the project page, such as the use of the word "predefinition"—which will be mysterious to most native English speakers—and which is another case of false friend translation of prédefinição. (The English word predefinition is rare, and means something different. See for example: pt:Wikipédia:Predefinições ⟶ en:WP:Templates.) I have changed this word to 'template'.

In my opinion, calling this project the 'Capacity Exchange' was a mistake at the outset, but you have probably been using it too long now to change it; you have an abbreviation, a logo, and everything. What I would do now, if I were you, is to replace all occurrences of the word capacity in running text in the English version to skills (depending on context, you can sometimes alter that to skills and abilities) *except* where you are referring to the project title; there I would use the abbreviation 'CapX' instead of the current title wherever possible as it is a meaningless gloss in English that if used enough, will take on the meaning of "Skills Exchange" as viewers become familiar with it through repetition.

Good luck with the project, it sounds interesting! Mathglot (talk) 21:12, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Examples from the video:

• In just a few clicks, you will be able to select the skills you want to share and learn. (@ 0:36)

  This is perfect! Completely understandable, sounds like native English. Don't change a word.

• Imagine a world in which every single Wikimedian can freely share in the sum of all capacities. (@ 0:01)

  The last four words are almost meaningless to me. Share all knowledge, like build an online encyclopedia? Completely mysterious.

One possible improvement, emphasizing the sharing:

• Imagine a world in which every single Wikimedian can freely share their skills and abilities with every other.

There are many ways to express this; if the goal is more the idea of a universal repository accessible to all, one might say:

• Imagine a world in which every Wikimedian can freely share in the sum total of all our skills and knowledge.

or, emphasizing the universality more:

• Imagine a world in which every Wikimedian can freely share in the combined knowledge and skills of the entire movement.

There are many more ways to express it, but I hope this helps illustrates the issue. Mathglot (talk) 22:26, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Mathglot, first of all, thank you for taking such good care in looking at our project. I appreciate it deeply.

I will start answering your suggestion to change the name due to "false-friend back-translation". The name of the project isn't supposed to be exactly accurate according to the English norm, but to be a name that uplifts itself. Actually, it was created by a group of European affiliates, some of them English natives, back in 2021 (see more at The Capacity Exchange initiative - cXc). So although I can see your point, it is not up to me or the current team to answer and justify its choice. We should embrace it and see the beauty in it :)

The term "capacities," from my point of view (as someone who wasn't responsible for its choice), is practically a neologism. At Capacity Exchange, we're not just talking about skills. We're talking about abilities, we're talking about projects, we're talking about tools, we're talking about skills, all under the term "capacity." And, obvisously, its use comes from the Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Glossary#Capacity building reccomendations.

I understand your strangeness, but I would like to ask you to open yourself to accepting everything that this term conveys and, more importantly, tries to achieve. The project is about facilitating and building connections focused on capacity-building among peers, and look at us here making a super connection about the term here on the talkpage. :)

Jokings aside, I hear, I understand, but I can't say we're going to change the term.

About the video, next time I should get your help on it! May I? :) We tried on an advertising language, and I am sorry it didn't stick on you.

I take this opportunity to invite you to meet us next Saturday at our translat-a-thon, Event:Many Tongues, One Movement:Voices Across Languages. Since you seems to be a person interested in languages (I saw the wonderful work on your Meta profile), I think you will be pretty helpfull at the event.

Warm regards, AJurno (WMB) (talk) 17:35, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi, @Mathglot, thank you for your message and comments here. As Amanda said, this project has its origins as an international project, and the name has not a Brazilian Portuguese translation background. The term itself is somewhat well-established in the Wikimedia Movement, you can see its definition in the glossary of the Movement Strategy 2030. Cheers, EPorto (WMB) (talk) 17:42, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Upon first learning of this project today, I watched the video then read the first two sections of the content page, "About" and "Documentation". I was struck by the same thoughts as Mathglot, in his comment of November 2025 in this topic/ thread. There isn't much to be done about it now. I do suggest that whenever discussing Capacity Exchange, you consider your audience, internal or external to WMF; if the latter, be ready to explain. "Capacity" is a common term with somewhat varied usage. Let me list some, and see if you think any is close to the Movement Strategy 2030 definition.

• Physical space (availability) such as square meters of land or cubic feet of liquid volume; when full or unavailable, is "at maximum capacity".
• Less tangible context, yet still mostly physical, is that of computer storage capacity; e.g. a disk drive held 10 megabytes of data or file transfers are limited to 1GB per day.
• Organizational use for project management; e.g. "my team has the capacity to support your needs". Capacity refers to a time-based collection of resources. "Resources" may include but isn't limited to a combination of this sort: People with needed skills (e.g. psych nurses, Python language developers, stone masons) whose work hours have not been fully allocated; Facilities availability (e.g. hotel room vacancies, unreserved conference space, unoccupied units of certified lead-free housing for children); Time-sharing (10 hours of AWS Amazon compute or mainframe processing; time and transport for backhoe usage).

Instead of capacity, I would suggest trying to use words such as "capability", "ability", and "skill" in project materials, when possible.

Slightly different concern, but relevant to this topic: Mathglot is probably owed an apology from AJurno (WMB) for this:

"I understand your strangeness, but I would like to ask you to open yourself to accepting everything that this term conveys and, more importantly, tries to achieve."

.

It is impolite if not rude to tell Mathglot that he is strange.--FeralOink (talk) 09:02, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

FeralOink, couldn't agree more; thanks much for your thoughts on this. I had (still have) a bunch of raw notes for a lengthy response to AJurno's message, but never got around to it. There are so many misfires of translation involved, that I think I more or less gave up, as it is clear that the name is not going to change. A non-native speaker asking a native speaker "to open yourself to accepting everything that this term conveys" made me realize that continuing the conversation would fall on deaf ears.

Other than that, don't go too hard on AJurno: they are very likely unaware that they are conflating the translation of the Brazilian word for "foreign" (br_PT extranho; also estrangeiro, but that is not at issue here) which I clearly am from the PoV of a Brazilian, with the Brazilian word for "stranger" or "strange" (br_PT: also extranho). The point being: they have one word which means simultaneously foreign and strange. The same sort of confusion plagues French speakers (and speakers of other Romance languages) because French does not distinguish between stranger and foreigner either (fr: étranger). This is a marvelous, albeit ironic, example of the pitfalls that await someone writing in a foreign language that they more or less speak pretty well, but miss out on the nuances, causing completely avoidable dust-ups like this one.

AJurno, if you are watching, you don't need to apologize—I know exactly why you used that (wrong) word—but I hope you understand the strange/foreign distinction in English now. And also that Capacity Exchange is a ridiculous name in English, even if it is way too late to do anything about it now, and was already decided well before you became involved. It was just so avoidable an error, and makes me wish the originator had discussed it first. No problem using the abbreviation CapX as it is a meaningless gloss in English, and thus can be assigned to any meaning you like. I recommend using the abbreviation exclusively, and avoiding the full title as much as possible. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 09:59, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you @Mathglot for pointing the difference between strange/foreign - and, yes, you were right to assume the path of my mind when I used that word. What I intended was to use in a sense of “odd”, "weirdness" ... what I would say in portuguese as: "Eu entendo sua estranheza, mas gostaria de pedi-lo para se abrir às possibilidades que esse termo transmite e, mais importante, tenta alcançar". In portuguese, this is a very polite and kind phrase, the exact tone I always use to talk to people, specially those I know nothing about - and that is where I came from.

I apologize to you and to @FeralOink for the impression of being rude. I did a mistranslation in the attempt to write the message trying to show you my own voice on it, as I sound in my mother language. I, then, did a (bad) literal translation without thinking too much on the senses of the term used. I do apologize for causing this misunderstanding between us three.

About the name, as also pointed by @EPorto (WMB), it is a common term used on the Movement Strategy and present on its glossary... so we know where it came from, even if I was not responsible for it.

I thank you for this conversation because it does show us the importance of being able to find someone who can talk to us in the languages we are native, or more comfortable with - and CapX can help us with that.

I hope you feel that you can always reach out to us here or at our email. Best regards, AJurno (WMB) (talk) 19:51, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

It is good to hear from you, @AJurno (WMB), and of course, my countryman @Mathglot too!

Thank you for your courteous explanation., AJurno. Thank you for taking the time to write your explanation and for providing a polite apology.

My final thought about the project overall is to encourage you to heed Mathglot's suggestion: Use CapX to refer to the Capacity Exchange initiative. Do so will be especially helpful when discussing the initiative with audiences external to WMF and WMF projects.-- FeralOink (talk) 03:10, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

MassMessage

Hi. Could you stop posting messages to people that have reverted your mass messages? This is considered inappropriate in several European countries, including mine. If you want to post to several users, then make a page with a list of recipients that people can remove themselves from. Snævar (talk) 14:04, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

It's being addressed at Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Report concerning User:Joris Darlington Quarshie --Min☠︎rax^«¦talk¦» 14:10, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Snævar and @Minorax, thank you so much for your message. We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience. As you may know, CapX is an international tool with an international team, and, in this case, we got lost on different cultural contexts. We are aware of that now and it should not happen again. Best, AJurno (WMB) (talk) 17:13, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Organization access request

Hello. The user guide states that user groups should ask the CapX team to manually add users who should have editing rights, but does not seem to provide a point of contact. Can I have editing rights for the Wikimedia Stewards User Group? Best, Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 04:18, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi@Vermont, first of all, thank you so much for your interest in having an organization profile on CapX! I already gave access to the org. profile and you should edit it through your personal login. You will see the option on the menu. I also put the email on the text as well. It seems that we only put the email information on the card, and forgot to put it also on the text. Thank you for letting us know. I hope you have a great experience on the tool! Cheers. AJurno (WMB) (talk) 17:11, 24 November 2025 (UTC)