More languages than just English

[vijayjohn]

I'm not sure it would necessarily be a good thing if there were such spaces in other languages, really. Just look at the ones that already exist in English. Every so often, they spiral into total chaos, and I've definitely seen users complain that the general forums are not a place where they feel welcome (and that they can understand why other users avoid them, too). Do we really want the same thing to happen in other languages, too? At least we have some admins and global mods who all speak (or at the very least write) English just fine and can control the situation if it gets out of hand. Wouldn't it be an undue burden on them or on us mods of language-specific forums to have to do the same for other languages?

[Ciarán12]

I'm not sure it would necessarily be a good thing if there were such spaces in other languages, really. Just look at the ones that already exist in English. Every so often, they spiral into total chaos, and I've definitely seen users complain that the general forums are not a place where they feel welcome (and that they can understand why other users avoid them, too). Do we really want the same thing to happen in other languages, too? At least we have some admins and global mods who all speak (or at the very least write) English just fine and can control the situation if it gets out of hand. Wouldn't it be an undue burden on them or on us mods of language-specific forums to have to do the same for other languages?

That sort of sounds like you're advocating that we stifle discussion in other languages because those languages might actually be used to, you know, discuss things. Sure stuff will go off topic, get heated at times etc, etc... but isn't that what language is sort of for? I don't really mind if it's not a completely sanitised environment, I'd rather have the chance to use my languages to discuss the things I'm interested in (i.e. languages, politics, cultures and everything else that you find in the English-only general forums).

[IpseDixit]

Yeah I agree with Ciaran. Don't take it personally vijay but to me it seems quite a lame argument. It would be like not having sex because condoms cost money and they could break anyway.

And in any case, if we sum all the languages Unilangers know, I think we would cover most of the languages that are more likely to be used. So I don't think moderation would be really a problem.

I don't get why you seem to be so much against this proposal (but maybe it's just my impression). I actually thought you would've been one of the most enthusiastic about this idea.

I would love it if there were such spaces, I hate that English is the only language widely used for discussions of the type you find on the General Language forum, but I also agree that creating a space for discussions of that sort in other languages is impracticable. What you need to do is search the internet for other fora like UL in those languages. I asked on the Spanish forum if anyone knew of any good language fora in Spanish but no one did, and I can't find any looking myself.

I couldn't find anything like Unilang either in Portuguese, Spanish or French.

An alternative is to try to create threads in the individual language sub-fora in those languages which are not about learning that language. I tried posting a few such threads on the Celtic forum when I was newer and more naive (this, for example), they fell flat. But I imagine it would work a lot better with languages that at least a few people here actually speak.

I think that maybe a better compromise could be to create just one forum for all the general language and non-language related threads in other languages different from English. I think it would be better than single threads scattered all around Unilang, even if that would mean having a lot of different languages in one place.

[dEhiN]

Interesting discussion, and idea. So I don't know if my understanding of the forum breakdown is wrong, but I always though the language forums were for learning/practicing the language, and the general forums for general topics.

To me, this meant, in for example the Portuguese forum, people could ask questions (in Portuguese, English, or technically any other language) about Portuguese - grammar, vocab, translation, etc. As well there are the various game threads which allow you a chance to practice the specific language.

And then in the general forums, a thread could be in any language. Or a specific post could be in any language. But the topics were for general stuff, not specifically about learning/practicing a language.

If so, then I also thought that the reason most of the posts in the General forums were in English is because English is the lingua franca, which means that many people at least grew up learning some English in school, if they aren't native or fluent/advanced in English already. That is, I thought it was just a reflection of the current world we live in, and not a conscious choice made on the part of Unilangers.

Perhaps the reason that threads started in the General forums in other languages die out are because there aren't nearly enough speakers of any other specific language compared to English for things to continue?

For example, how many people on UL can use French well enough to carry on a 10-page thread about some general life topic compared to English? Yes, there ARE people on UL who can use French to this degree, but it's a small subset COMPARED to those who can use English. Thus, even if someone were to start a French thread, for the thread to grow to 10 pages, either the same subset of people would have to keep responding, keeping the thread at the opinions of a few. Or the thread will eventually die out. Whereas, when in English, you could potentially have every single ULer respond should he/she/it feel like it.

This also would affect my decision to respond in French to a thread started in English. I'd have to worry if the person I'm responding to could understand me, as well as if others active on the thread or those who read my reply could understand me. (And yeah, there's Google Translate, but this raises more potential problems. Now I'm forcing someone who may not want to learn French to use a translation service just to be able to read my reply and respond to it).

In my opinion, THAT is really the crux of the matter. There just aren't enough speakers of any particular language compared to English for English to not dominate the way it does.

[dEhiN]

Ok, so I split my reply into 2 because my first one was quite lengthy. And this one follows on what I said, but also might tie into what Ciarán wrote about finding spaces for general topics in other languages.

I came across a site called VoxEurop which is basically a political news site in multiple languages. The staff are journalists who speak various languages. And so for any given article, the journalist in charge of a particular language will translate the "original" article into his/her language. This allows you to read the same article in 10 languages.

But what is relevant to this thread is that that site allows users to comment in any language they want. Or put another way, there is one comment board for each article. So if I read the French translation, I could comment in French, and if someone reads the article in Italian, they could comment in Italian. But they use Google Translate to allow me to read the comments in a language I don't understand.

I'm not advocating something like this be done here. I'm only illustrating one solution to the problem of commenting/replying in a language that someone may not understand.

[vijayjohn]

That sort of sounds like you're advocating that we stifle discussion in other languages because those languages might actually be used to, you know, discuss things.

I don't think I'm advocating anything, just expressing my doubts. And I don't mind people using other languages to discuss things (it's been pointed out already that that happens sometimes in the general forums anyway). I do mind people using any language (including English) for, say, personal attacks. I don't see how that sort of stuff does any good for anybody.

Sure stuff will go off topic, get heated at times etc, etc... but isn't that what language is sort of for? I don't really mind if it's not a completely sanitised environment, I'd rather have the chance to use my languages to discuss the things I'm interested in (i.e. languages, politics, cultures and everything else that you find in the English-only general forums).

And in any case, if we sum all the languages Unilangers know, I think we would cover most of the languages that are more likely to be used. So I don't think moderation would be really a problem.

But what if you were the one who had to clean up the mess afterwards, so to speak? How would this work, theoretically? If a bunch of problems suddenly erupted on the forum you moderate, how would you deal with them? Could you contact the admins and global moderators to get their help so you didn't have to deal with the problems all on your own? I mean, I think at least that should be possible; otherwise, I think expecting you to deal with it all on your own would just be unfair to you.

Yeah I agree with Ciaran. Don't take it personally vijay but to me it seems quite a lame argument. It would be like not having sex because condoms cost money and they could break anyway.

No offense, but that's a strange analogy and sounds as if having UniLang available in multiple languages is necessary for its survival or something.

I don't get why you seem to be so much against this proposal (but maybe it's just my impression). I actually thought you would've been one of the most enthusiastic about this idea.

Sure, I think it would be great if I could talk about stuff in all sorts of languages instead of just English, but I'm extremely skeptical that the creation of the kinds of forums you seem to have in mind will ever actually happen. To be fair, I was also extremely skeptical about the viability of a linguistics-specific (sub)forum, but I think it's pretty clear by now that the linguistics thread has turned out to be considerably more successful than I thought it would be. Perhaps the biggest problem as I see it is that AFAIK, only the developers can create new forums, and I'm pretty sure they have already said several times that they have a ton of other stuff to work on on the site as it is and busy lives on top of that.

I dunno, maybe I just have an unfortunate tendency to be way too skeptical about proposals to create new forums and stuff. But also, see what dEhiN said. (I know he said you could probably write a post in any language on the general forums, and I said you probably couldn't, but oh well. Maybe I'm wrong about that as well, who knows).

[Koko]

If you created a thread in Portuguese there, it would probably get moved to the Portuguese forum.

Well, that wouldn't be a very friendly attitude...

I'm not sure it has anything to do with a "friendly attitude." I thought that was just policy.

A solution to its move to the appropriate language-specific thread would be to allow similar languages to that thread (Czech-Slovak-Polish Cultural/Discussion Thread).

[vijayjohn]

If you created a thread in Portuguese there, it would probably get moved to the Portuguese forum.

Well, that wouldn't be a very friendly attitude...

I'm not sure it has anything to do with a "friendly attitude." I thought that was just policy.

A solution to its move to the appropriate language-specific thread would be to allow similar languages to that thread (Czech-Slovak-Polish Cultural/Discussion Thread).

Huh, that sounds like an intriguing idea! (Actually, this reminds me of the "language cafe" threads; for example, I think there's a Romance cafe thread and a Germanic cafe thread. Or am I confusing things? ).

[Koko]

Do the forum rules forbid making threads in other languages, might I ask? In any case, I'd be for this idea. There's nothing wrong with it but for the extra work the developers would have to go through. I'd love to join in those discussions to read what others have to say about certain topics in Italian or Czech or Bulgarian.

[Johanna]

I think it sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice, I'm not so sure it will work, like dEhiN says, we seem to simply lack the number of active members who are advanced speakers of any particular language other than English to support multiple subforums in multiple languages, not over time anyway.

Sure, in the beginning there will probably be a lot of people creating threads about all sort of things, but how many of those will ever get more than a few posts? How many of the people who are active at first will grow tired after a while and rather discuss the same thing in English since that means getting input from a lot more people?

We have had a few threads in languages other than English, but they have all died pretty fast. Yes, that is fully permitted and we won't move such a thread to a language-specific forum, unless it's about that language only of course. And no, threads don't get pushed down that fast, the most active subforum is General Language Forum, and even there it takes about a month for a thread to disappear from the first page

Anyway, no matter whether or not we are currently creating any new forums, the same old thing still applies: for there to be a chance for one, you have to show us that it probably will be active enough to be worth creating

[Saim]

I definitely agree this is one of the main problems with Unilang, but I'm not sure how it could be solved especially now when activity seems to be pretty low. I imagine back in the day general language forums in at least Spanish, French and German may have worked but I think there's too few of us now for anything like that to work out.