Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

A German subforum would be cool!
I know many people that post in other forums (german forums) about the n900 and maemo
because they do not understand English so well.
They would be very happy about a German subforum on maemo.org

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

I was just wondering... what happened with this?

Now that the N900 hype is starting to settle down, and the extra fake/spam sites are starting to disappear, I think it would be a nice moment to reevaluate your positions on this issue.

For example, while I initially was skeptical about the idea, I'm every day growing more fond of it. :) (If there's still need for Spanish mods, you have my candidature, but I don't think it will be needed :) ).

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

I would (try to) read any Spanish-language forums. Can't someone just start one here and see what happens? If it's awful, it should be killed. If it's great, it should be imitated.

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

wow, you're ego is pretty damn high, so you're saying that english speakers are the wise man that have the answers?.... my native language is spanish, but i speak English and understand some french, and i agree that the maemo.org should divide into more categories as it would be even more difficult to find answers to what you're looking for, searching in different languages (like, when i don't find something in english, i search spanish places, and then french, etc) but you're way out of line saying that, considering that FINNISH people invented the phone you're using.

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

I think what Zerojay was meaning is that like it or not, English serves as a common language between people who have Spanish, Finnish, Arabic or Swahili as their first language. (Do we have any Swahili speakers?)

The point is not that English is 'superior', but that it's common. The Finns who invented the phone can give you useful information because both they and you share a common language: that language happens to be English. But unless they learn Spanish or you learn Finnish, they aren't going to be able to contribute to your forum.

(Moot point actually - I assume Quim speaks Spanish!)

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

That isn't even remotely close to what zerojay said... and ironically, your interpretation helps prove his actual point.

Please don't make anything evil out of that comment. I'm all for multilanguage versions of this forum, but at the same time, I'm being as objective as zerojay was.

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

I know that English is a common language, i think it's the 2nd most spoken language in the world, and i totally agree that maemo.org stays english because it makes things easier to find, but what he said was "a lot of the people with the real information just don't speak those languages" wich is kinda offensive, specially since the people that help the most here are finnish or french or german or whatever like zehjotkah, who keeps posting videos on youtube about different n900 app, in he's native language, what he said wasn't being objective but despective, the neutral point is just saying english is more common, not that non-english speaker "will end up with a lot of crap" in their threads.....like he said

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

The fact is that there a lot of incredibly smart techs whose English is not good -- Russians come to mind, but that's just my mindset.

This would be an experiment, and not all of us are so omniscient that we know the result of an experiment before it's tried, unlike you others.

As I said before, can't we just let someone try it out and see how it goes?

Edit: On second thought, why don't we switch the official language to Chinese and not allow any other languages to be used? That seems to be the wave of the future...

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

Granted zerojay oversimplified and failed to make his point as neutral as he could had he taken more time, but there was no ill intent in what he said.

Re: talk.maemo.org vs non-English forums
 

Ah well, seems like I reopened a can of worms I didn't want to reopen.


Look, the reason I revived a months old thread is because of the horror I'm seeing in external forums. Whatever we do, it just can't be worse. It will be awful, but at least, there's a better chance that at least some of the "enlightened" people that roam around here will scroll down to the international forums and say a few clarifying words from time to time. MUCH, much greater chance than if the international forums are scattered around the world wide web.


And seriously, there's a lot of untaped potential out here. I've seen people trying to translate each and every package in extras by downloading, editing the source and reuploading to their own "repository" (aka a web served directory full of .debs) -- just because they don't even know they can file a feature request for "i18n support" to the package maintainer.