National vs. Centralized Doom9 Forums

[StriderGT]

I am a member of the greek translation team and I would like to pinpoint some issues I observed concerning the forums featured by the officially translated sites. Those forums (including ours) try logically to immitate the structure featured in the main english Doom9 forum and people post questions etc over there too. The problem is that the people reading through the main forum are much more -including their availiable knowledge:-) so the national forums end up having very few posts and also force some people to post twice, read two threads etc. My suggestion is that it would make much more sense to introduce translated interfaces for the main doom9 forum and also add some localized features eg post in English/Greek/both forums, view only posts/threads marked greek etc (the greek posts ofcourse won't be availiable in the main forum). That also doesn't prohibit some local only topics in the localized forums. I know there are a lot of technical difficulties like the login system, where will the databases reside, whether they'll include all messages or be split etc. but I believe we have a very technical savvy community. There could also be other already implemented approaches to this issue so feel free to comment/suggest.

[Doom9]

hmm.. I doubt this can be properly implemented. And how would you split up the forums? per default only the english ones? And then people can decide which localized (for instance: greek general discussion and xvid encoding) forums they want to have displayed as well, and which of the english ones they don't want? This means that each time you display the index page you have to query the dbase to get the user options prior to making the real query to show the forums. Or if you go down to thread/post basis it gets even more complicated. You'd need an extremely powerful server and there's no board offering that functionality.. so it would require a huge amount of reprogramming which would have to be redone every time there's a new build of the forum software. Even now it takes time to implement the few hacks we have for each new version and when vbb 3.0 gets released there will be a long phase of reprogramming and that for hacks which are relatively simple.

I do see your problem but I think in the end it isn't one. True, there are people posting on both forums, but they usually post different things. As an example take the German forum. It's the only forum that really "made it" so far and it took a lot of work to really start building an own community. But now a majority of people there are really part of the German community, some of them couldn't post here if they wanted to because the lack the necessary language skills. I believe that given time and an effort on part of the moderation team localized forums will not only attrack people posting here, but many people who would never post in this forum because it's in English and they prefer to post in their native language. These are the people you should be after... and it will take a lot of effort and quite some time to get it done, but the German forum shows that it can be done.

Last but not least, your suggestion doesn't really solve the double posting problem.. if somebody posts a question in Greek, all the people viewing the English forum still won't see it, so if he wants to use the available resources of the English speaking people he has to post it again in the corresponding English section. Maybe, some time in the far future we have auto-translators which would allow you to post in any language and depending on the user's preferences posts would be translated on the fly but I wouldn't count on that happening for a couple of generations.

[StriderGT]

I agree with your comments and some of them where really on my mind while posting, that's why I mentioned the technical difficulties. Still I believe if properly implemented, it would work more flexibly than the german paradigm. Furthermore my suggestion is a more future oriented one, meaning that some of these multi-language features could be enabled in future fora software packages. I still remember the functionality offered by the first fora and we've gone miles ahead. So I find it a good chance to check the response from other users and hint a few developers regarding such localized functionality from a forum. Finally the model I envision would involve a topic, thread level localization and not a message level one. There could be the official index, a purely localized one and a merged one displayed according to the currently selected mode. I'm not into php or related programing though (a bit of delphi - but I should start checking web stuff :-) and as a result don't know the specific difficulties involved. Just some food for the mind... :-)

[Doom9]

Furthermore my suggestion is a more future oriented one, meaning that some of these multi-language features could be enabled in future fora software packages. I suggest you check out the vbulletin.com forums. there you'll see how likely the developers are to implement user hacks. Bottom line: it's hopeless. In the beginning I've tried and I've submitted patches of hacks that we use in this board.. some other boards took them up but the developers never considered implementing any of 'em. And it was by far not something complicated and little used as what you're suggesting.

And you didn't reply to my 2nd paragraph in my last post. What do I gain by having other languages on this forum? Nothing! On the contrary, I have a shitload of problems. Different moderation teams, moderators who don't speak English so I can't even talk to them, more administrators, more users which mean more problem. I already get comments in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch sent to my email and I can't do anything with them except to forward them. I'm no post office and I don't want the same thing to happen here.
Aside from being an administrative nightmare having a centralized forum is also less error resilient. Of the server goes down, several communities are locked down, not just one. The server running this stuff would have to be much more performant, we need a hosting allowing for more traffic, etc, etc.
All I see coming my way is more work, and I really can't use that. I'm not getting paid to do this, so efficiency is my main concern. I know it's frustrating for you, Scipio often comes to me with ideas that would make his life easier.. but more often than not they make my life harder and I really can't have that. I'm sorry I cannot give you more support.

By the way, I could go on for pages to list reasons why I wouldn't have a multi language forum but it's really pointless.

Last but not least, having your own forum gives you certain possibilities to be different from the original. The German community (where I sometime participate) is something different from this one. And that's a good thing. Different countries have different cultures.. here we have some sort of melting pot of average European and American culture, and I think certain things would be done differently in a Greek community. I've been running this forum for about 2.5 years now and there's enough problems taking up my time already. Now you want to face me with the following situation: somebody posts the same message in Greek and in English, and for one of the posts he gets a strike, the thread is locked or he gets a snappy response from one of the mods. So the guy will come to me complaining and I have to explain why he's being treated differently on the same board. Sorry, but I cannot possibly do that. As I said, I post in the German forum and certain things are definitely handled differently over there. As long as you stay true to the initial goals that's fine, even better if you can adapt to the people you're serving. We'd be having quite some conflicts in rules interpretations and tone if we were to merge.

[Scipio]

Hi guys... :cool:

it's time for me to add my 2 Cents, I guess.
I support Doom9 in this little discussion.

Still I believe if properly implemented, it would work more flexibly than the german paradigm.

1) Sorry, IMHO the opposite is true. With my own forum I have the most possible freedom. Why should a centralized forum be more flexible?

2) Proper implementation = nearly impossible. The Admin would have to speak all languages, so even the best implementation would fail here. We already have 6 languages with more coming!

3) Traffic would increase / forum performance would decrease dramatically.

4) I don't see the problem of language in the interface - all nationalized forums use their language in the interface! There are language packs for many languages out there. And besides: What's a German/Spanish/... interface good for if you have to post in English here anyway?

And most important:
5) It's all about control. If Doom9 can't understand the languages used in his forums, he can't decide on those things and doesn't even know what's going on (legal aspects!). So why should he offer this service if it can even be dangerous in some way.


I found the reasoning behind your proposal...
The problem is that the people reading through the main forum are much more -including their availiable knowledge:-) so the national forums end up having very few posts and also force some people to post twice, read two threads etc.

More people speaking English than <insert language here> => that won't change even with the all-in-one forum.
National forums having few posts => you've just started! just wait a few weeks/months! German Doom9 has nearly 30.000 Posts with nearly 3000 members! And we even have guides that will be translated FROM German TO English! It's not only about copying Doom9.org and his forum.


------------
bottom line:
I guess you already see that your offer has been refused by Doom9...
It would be a nightmare to administrate that forum and it would eat up time that Doom9 does not have.

I don't see the striking arguments for having 10 different languages in one forum... just imagine the confusion! And to be honest: Who does really use more than 2 or maybe 3 languages every day? Most people don't even know more than their mother tongue + maybe a foreign language, so these centralized forums would not really interact with each other... Greek and Chinese people probably wouldn't ever come into each other's forums etc.

Problem: You want two languages in the forums?
Solution: Keep two browsers open, one with your localized and one with the English forum - you would have to read two forums even if your suggestion would be realized! :p


-------------------------------


I already get comments in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch sent to my email and I can't do anything with them except to forward them.

Oh, I already experienced that... and I'm sorry. Perhaps we should add something to the guidelines like "don't mention Doom9's contact e-mails addresses on your contact page", huh? The French guys hide their contact address pretty well (http://doom9.free.fr/contact_info.htm) at the bottom of the contact page. We should really remove all English-only addresses, what do you think?

I know it's frustrating for you, Scipio often comes to me with ideas that would make his life easier.. but more often than not they make my life harder and I really can't have that.

Am I really this bad? Hopefully, I also brought you some improvements. :p And I apologize for my 'bad' ideas and my mail bombs (single mail for every typo/error...). After all, there's always room for improvement - but our time is restricted, your time even more than ours...

[StriderGT]

Everything mentioned is true, propably because I did not clarify that no change AT ALL should be implemented in the main doom9 forum -icluding moderation, administration etc-. Even the localized ones would just feature a simple mirror of the main doom9 forum and administration moderation would reffer to the localized topics/threads only. It is more of merged view implementation than anything else, as I said it wouldn't be wise to mix messages in threads. Think of it as two seperate forums with one common interface. It's propably my fault because I used the term centralized, which clearly doesn't describe what I meant. The index merging -if there really is such a need- we discussed earlier on should occur in each seperate localized forum server, and thus would not be that performance hungry. Ok I am waiting for another round of heavy artillery...:-)

PS It was just an idea, if unrealizable we should just move on...

[Doom9]

it still doesn't work. From a user perspective he can now post in two different forums via the same place. Great. So he posts in greek, gets no answer within the timeframe he expects an answer, and posts it again in the English forum. That offers a whole new set of cross-posting opportunities. And, if he gets a reply in the English forum that won't help all the people who don't speak English.

And, access my forum database from another machine than the one the forum is running on? Try to sell that idea to an admin, he'll bite your head off. It's a security hazard and I'm not gonna have that. It would also enable every lamer out there to run a doom9 forum clone and adding forums as he pleases. You know how particular I'm when it comes to let other people use my resources, I'm simply not gonna have it, ever!

I think you're operating under a wrong assumption. I wouldn't have my site translated to other langauges for people who speak English but rather have news and guides in their native langauge. That would be creating competition with myself and make no sense whatsoever. True, in the beginning it will be those people visiting a localized mirror, but the goal is to go much further than that. There are a lot of German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Greek speaking people out there who don't speak English well enough to come to my site or post in my forum. These people are a huge untapped resource which I'm trying to get access to by having my site translated in other langauges. I don't want to split up my readers by language, I'm trying to extend to reach of my site by gaining access to other markets which will only open up when I offer my stuff in other languages. I once again have to refer to the German site... it attracts many people who previously either didn't hear of Doom9 at all, or wouldn't visit my site because they didn't understand enough. That is the audience I'm looking for with localized mirrors. And this aren't the people who'd post in my board anyway so regardless of any administrative and security concerns your suggestion wouldn't make much sense. In the end you have to build up your own userbase to be successful, just catering to my own visitors isn't enough as the number of those people is significantly lower. Ask yourself this: How many Greek people are into DVD backups? And how many of those speak English well enough to visit my site and post in my forum? You want to be able to reach 100% of the former group, not just the few percents that the latter group consists of.