Why the need of non-english discussions?

[luca]

Hi all,
I'm an italian developer and sometimes my english has some errors but I think that writing in italian deny non-italian users to understand it.

Now I see a lot of topic in a lot of languages that I can't understand. In this way I can't support then discussion or I can't be helped by the discussion .

What do you think about?

[andre]

Well, I am ambivalent in this issue. I have already suggested a way to at least filter out your search results to those languages you can understand. That would keep the search for new topics and the likes at least useable. There are ups and downs to being able to ask questions in your own language. On the plus side, it is often easier to express yourself, and that makes formulating a good and precise question easier. Good, well formulated questions tend to get much better answers than questions that are hard to parse. On the other hand you probably limit your audience, as less people are able to read it. So, it is something to considder on a per-user basis. Personally, I prefer to ask my questions in English, as I am fairly confident that I am able to write in that language in a way that gets my question across well enough. However, I also understand that not everyone is able to do that, and I would be willing to help somebody in Dutch, for instance.

If your command of English is of such a level that you can express your question well, then I think it makes sense to ask it in English, especially if the user community in your language is not so big. However, don't underestimate the number of users in some languages. There have been French and Russian language Qt forums or lists for years, and probably others that I am not aware of. The number of users speaking Spanish, Portugese or Chinese also probably should not be underestimated.

[luca]

[quote author="Andre" date="1293007779"] The number of users speaking Spanish, Portugese or Chinese also probably should not be underestimated. [/quote]

I don't want to underestimate Spanish, Portugese or Chinese but I think that those discussions are very useless for the community other than Spanish, Portugese or Chinese .

[vcsala]

I am the founder the Hungarian group and we use the Hungarian forum to discuss strictly Hungarian community related issues (eg. translation, looking for Hungarian speaking developers, etc.). I beleive the main aim of the groups to somehow help the local communities and integrate them to the global Qt community.

I beleive your issue is mainly about filtering the discussion, and we already have a thread discussing this issue and I think we already have a suggestion registered in bugtracker to support this feature.

[EDIT] Moreover this way we can help those developers who has relatively poor English to find an interface to the community and to get support for their work.

[maciej]

Hi Luca,
I think that non-english subforums are needed. For example you can post there some information about local events or language specific problems (like problems with text coding). For more general issues it's obvious that such topics should be posted in other (English) subforums.

You may be interested in reading "topic":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2453 about hiding group forums for non-members.

[andre]

[quote author="Luca" date="1293008180"]
[quote author="Andre" date="1293007779"] The number of users speaking Spanish, Portugese or Chinese also probably should not be underestimated. [/quote]

I don't want to underestimate Spanish, Portugese or Chinese but I think that those discussions are very useless for the community other than Spanish, Portugese or Chinese . [/quote]
If it is useful for those subcommunities, it is IMHO useful for the Qt community in general.

André

[luca]

[quote author="maciek" date="1293008849"]
You may be interested in reading "topic":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2453 about hiding group forums for non-members.[/quote]

Hi maciek,
This should be useful to avoid a lot of strange posts in "Posts since last visit" :-)

[andre]

I also commented on this issue in the comments of the "announcement blog":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/blog/view/beta_of_the_groups_feature_is_now_live_looking_for_feedback for the group function.

[luca]

[quote author="Andre" date="1293011791"]I also commented on this issue in the comments of the "announcement blog":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/blog/view/beta_of_the_groups_feature_is_now_live_looking_for_feedback for the group function.[/quote]

I've seen now your posts and I'm with you .

[kamalakshantv]

[quote author="Luca" date="1293009391"]
[quote author="maciek" date="1293008849"]
You may be interested in reading "topic":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2453 about hiding group forums for non-members.[/quote]

Hi maciek,
This should be useful to avoid a lot of strange posts in "Posts since last visit" :-)[/quote]

Yes, this should be fixed somehow.

[mgran]

I've added a feature request that goes something like this, let me know if I forgot something:

"Since we now have language based forums we need a way for people to filter out the languages they don't speak/understand.

Maybe a solution is to "subscribe" to the forums you want to follow, where the default is "all" but you can unselect forums from a list.

This would then show up in the "Posts since last visit" search result. And the "193 new posts" counter on the front page should also ignore forums you don't follow."

[goetz]

Good idea to allow subscriptions on a forum base. It's not only languages that one does not speak, but also a pure desktop coder might not be interested in embedded or Qt Quick stuff.

[changsheng230]

Do wish that non-english sub-forum can be well positioned? Sometimes people would like to use native language talking about techinians.

[giesbert]

Hi Marius,

I think that is the best solution. Then everyone can decide, which forums to follow and which not.

[vcsala]

Yes, that will solve these issues.

[CreMindES]

I'm with the last few writer and especially with VCsala, because I think it's impossible and maddness to talk about translations in English... so non-English discussions are also needed for staff like VCsala has already mentioned above.

[fcrochik]

I like the idea of subscribing to forums but don't know if it will be enough to address the language issue.

I would assume that people will start threads on any forum (mobile, desktop,...) using their "first language" and probably this is something that we want to support as long as we can create filters.

Is this suggestion in addition to or instead of the other language related suggestions for the forums?

Some that I remember:
being able flag thread with language tag (on first post);
language as search criteria;
filter language anywhere we have a list of threads;
language indicator for each thread anywhere we have a list of threads;
allowing users to select his preferred languages on profile so by language filters will default to them.

These are just the ones I remember related to forums. There are others related to the wiki.

[goetz]

Only the regional forums have non-English content. The other forums are strictly in English, so this would not be a big problem.

[fcrochik]

Is this spelled out anywhere? I don't see in the rules.

Now that you said, it actually makes sense to me so we don't have too much "fragmentation/duplication" of the contents.

[fcrochik]

I just created "a new thread":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2870/ suggesting to remove the group forum threads from the "posts since last visit". I think it could be a work around until a longer term solution can be found.