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

I said nothing at all about Symbian, so please, don't paint me with the same brush. Second, do you go to many phone forums? If you do, you'd know and understand the misinformation that happens in them. Yes, sometimes that same thing happens here too... it's not always avoidable, but it pales compared to what you see in those other places.

If you find that offensive, don't complain about those of us pointing it out. Go complain about the people spreading that misinformation instead.

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Major announcements can and should be translated into as many languages as possible. We clearly have a very multilingual user base that seems to enjoy helping out wherever possible so getting them to translate that shouldn't be too hard.

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I honestly wouldn't really mind if we had subforums for other languages except for the fact that - completely ignoring the misinformation thread - maemo.org, as a whole, is having enough trouble staying alive and usable. Yes, so far Talk has avoided that issue... but will we have the infrastructure available to handle having... say... another 5000 Spanish users, 5000 French and so on.

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

i never said you said anything about symbian, i've made it clear i've been talking about two posts by two different people all along.
i'm quitting the bs here as we started to argue over something that may or may not happen which is pointless lets try and be productive instead

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

The infrastructure is funded by Nokia and if it's slow it's not because of lack of funds. Increasing those funds based on evident activity increase is totally fine with us. We want to help maemo.org being a successful 'home of the Maemo community'.

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

I agree on that.

From reading qgil, I think the technical issues are a different subject: we should discuss first if we should go this way or not.

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

(Sorry, my previous post could be confusing too).

Why not just keep a few threads with links to "proper" in-your-language forums?

As said, I don't believe just having a in-your-language forum here will be that helpful. Unless it's a "kinda-pro-user" forum (and I would like that -- in fact, I've been considering setting one of those up).

EDIT: IMHO I don't think there will be any load problems. I don't expect this to get filled with international users from day 1. More like a measly 1% of the number of English users.

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

Last I saw a large percentage (20 something % I believe) of iTT's hits were from German speakers. ITT did pretty well with out additional sub-forums.

It has been my experience that the wider your "store front" (sub-forums) the smaller your "inventory" per store (depth of information). More sub-forums also make the forum harder to manage.

I agree that "another way will to look at it is: forums elsewhere will happen anyway so breeding them" will have an effect on the Maemo community. However, that effect can also be negative.

The thing that most makes me cringe when reading misleading or false Maemo information elsewhere is a preceding statement of "I read on maemo.org., blah, blah, blah".
Spreading the maemo.org fora footprint to wide may make managing the "message" more difficult. We could eventually find pockets or sub-forums in disagreement or posting contrary information than other sub-forums... and not even know it. :eek:

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

NvyUs and zerojay, please step outside and solve your dispute.
Personally, i'm against. English is the language of the internet, just like http is what you use if you want to see a webpage. Because generally PR people are required to speak at least english, i think there are really few people that could add more information but can't because of the language barrier. Keep in mind that normal developer employees are barred by NDAs from revealing anything important (right, nokia people?).
Sure, maybe some independent devs would have it easier if they could chat in their own languages. There's nothing stopping them from creating their own unofficial communities. But i don't think they will get very far without basic grasp of english (because, let's face it, we're not writing shakespeare here, so no one really needs advanced skills)
So, bottom line: everything official in english only. This would create a "master" message to compare against. Since there are certainly more than 2 english speakers in any other language community, distortions are easy to fix by using the english original. And sub-communities (preferably not affiliated to maemo.org to avoid confusion) all you want

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

Just for sanity, do you mind disclosing your native language(s) when posting here. It can be that people mostly in favour tend to be mostly non-native English speakers and viceversa.

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

@MrGrim English is no longer the language of the internet last weeks announcement is proof of that http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8333194.stm

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

<Native Language = Canadian English eh ;)>

I think I speak for many here when I say that maemo.org would be receptive to accomodating non-English speaking users. We all want Maemo to be successful in as many hands as possible.

With respect to the sub-fora for other languages. I would much rather see something like a translation built into the site. Then users can specify their preferred language. All their interactions with the site are then in their own language. This makes the whole thing flow as one unit, rather than creating further layers and divisions. I do not know if this is technically possible, and obviously the quality of the translation would be a key factor in the success of this approach.