International Community Collaboration Strategy

Context

Open StarTer Village is gaining traction beyond Taiwan. A Japanese community (proj-oss-boardgame) has already forked the repo, built a fully localized website at ossquest.com, and added Japanese translations for the homepage. As we move toward publishing the game online (see #348), we need a clear strategy for collaborating with external communities and welcoming international contributors.

Current Situation — Japanese Fork as Case Study

Aspect	Status
Fork	proj-oss-boardgame/open-star-ter-village
Website	ossquest.com — full Japanese homepage
i18n work	Added ja locale, translated _pages/, _cards/, _footer/
Bug fixes	HTML lang attr, 404 localization, sitemap multilang, Japanese fonts
Divergence	29 commits ahead, 120 behind — repos have diverged
Upstream PRs	None — all work stays in the fork
Webapp	They removed the webapp package entirely (homepage only)

This is a success story — a community independently adopted the project — but the lack of an upstream contribution path means both sides duplicate effort and drift apart.

---

Goals

1. Make it easy for international communities to contribute back upstream rather than maintaining long-lived forks
2. Establish a scalable i18n architecture that supports adding new locales without forking
3. Define collaboration models for communities with different levels of involvement (casual translators vs. regional maintainers)
4. Grow the contributor base to support the Online Launch Plan

---

Action Items

1. Outreach & Relationship Building

• Reach out to proj-oss-boardgame maintainers — understand their goals and preferred collaboration model
• Discuss merging Japanese locale content upstream (keep their site as a regional deployment, not a divergent fork)
• Identify other potential communities (COSCUP international attendees, g0v international partners, university open-source programs)

2. Upstream Contribution Infrastructure

• Write a Localization Guide — step-by-step instructions for adding a new locale (folder structure, config changes, content requirements)
• Add ja locale support to homepage/next.config.js upstream (accept Japanese content PRs)
• Cherry-pick valuable fixes from the Japanese fork:
  • HTML lang attribute fix
  • 404 page localization
  • Sitemap multilang support
  • Japanese font configuration
• Set up CI checks for translation completeness across locales
• Create GitHub issue/PR templates for translation contributions

3. Collaboration Models

Define and document these tiers:

Tier	Role	Example
Contributor	Submit translations or fixes via PR	Individual translators
Locale Maintainer	Own a language's content, review PRs for that locale	Japanese community lead
Regional Partner	Deploy a regional instance, co-maintain content	ossquest.com team

• Document expectations, permissions, and communication channels for each tier
• Consider adding a CODEOWNERS file for locale-specific directories

4. Webapp i18n Foundation

• The webapp currently has zero i18n — hardcoded lang="en", Chinese-only game data, no locale switching
• Evaluate i18n framework (next-intl or similar) for the webapp
• This is a prerequisite for international communities to contribute to the game itself, not just the homepage

5. Communication & Community Building

• Create a #international or #i18n channel in Discord
• Invite Japanese community members to the Discord
• Present the collaboration model at COSCUP or similar events
• Add "How to contribute translations" section to CONTRIBUTING.md