What about… nuking the different language boards?

EtherealDesert

What about… nuking the different language boards?

Yeah, it’s me again. I just thought... Why not demand people communicate in English? If we want active users, wouldn’t it be logical to demand that people gave their thoughts out to everybody? I mean… doesn’t language boards (minimally as of now though) spread out a lot of potentially useful people? And of course… I love cultural complexity as much as the next guy, but people of all nations and cultures, can easily locate any number of exchange forums, why does it has to be here? And yes. People who speak whatever also wish to communicate about Frihost, but surely… surely they are able to realize the need of contribution? No matter how restricted the language skills might be Wink

Maka

Well the rooms where set up so they all stick to one section, before we had all differnt languages all over the place, this was just a step further to simplify it.

Texas Al

1. Bondings lives in Belgium, so for Frihost, English is the foreign language. If Bondings were to follow your advice, this website would only have forums in Dutch, French, and German.

2. Because English is so widespread, on the internet people who know English talk English to each other without being forced, because they'll reach a wider audience. I suspect that the non-English forums exist not because the people on them want to exclude English-speakers, but because they don't know the language well enough to be able to participate in the forum. For instance, I suspect that a good portion of the rejected hosting requests are coming from people in China who mean well but simply don't understand the TOS, and as soon as there is a Chinese-speaking mod on the staff, the situation will get better.

And why should we care about, say, Chinese speakers who don't speak English? Well, see answer #1 above, and also because there are huge markets out there that the ad-impressions could reach if we don't exclude them for silly linguistic reasons.

EtherealDesert

He he. Well. My idea was actually to nuke all the language boards. Except for the English department. Admittedly I said “different language boards” but I find it fairly clear, that I meant all except for one main language (call me euro-centric all you want). I agree with you on the whole, it’s not with negative thoughts that people talk in other languages. But I think it’s more convenient. My suspicion is that people tend to enjoy the familiar things (say, a specific language). Therefore… will people who speak other languages, use those boards more... simply because they exist. And in regards to the Chinese market… Well. It’s huge. Granted. But my reason for this idea wasn’t merely linguistic nonsense, but an earnest thought of involving people. I don’t really think that people who surf, build web-pages and want to participate in a post-for-host concept, doesn’t know how to articulate themselves in English. Might be wrong though Wink

dark_paladin

Well, I still think the language boards should be nuked. If people can't communicate well in English, then they can just post it in their own language. Creating seperate language boards are like segregation. and "seperate" is "unequal!"

If possible, I think Frihost should stop creating new boards. Instead, group some less popular boards together and concentrate them in one spot!

Texas Al

I wonder if there's some kind of Babelfish plugin for PHPbb. Of course Babelfish translates things into broken English... but that will fit right in!

foggy

Your post got me thinking, Texas Al. It would be great to have such a mod. It may not completely eliminate all language barriers, but it would certainly lower them.

I know Bondings has been busy lately, and as soon as his schedule clears up a bit he has a lot of things to work on having to do with this community and such, but here is a link I found interesting: http://mods.db9.dk/viewtopic.php?p=591#591 I haven't personally tested it out, so I can't vouch for it's working ability, but it seems to include the features people are mentioning and alluding to.

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