SQLA v2: Are there plans to support questions in different languages?

[VolkerBarth]

Just a simple question:

There have been attempts in the last years to support NNTP groups in non-English languages (at least there has been a ianywhere.public.german.general group).

Well, that particular group (closed now) was rather quiet, and in most cases my personal best advice was to "send your question to the appropriate English group" (well, written in German, of course).

So, maybe these attempts were not successful.

However, are there plans to allow/support non-English questions in the new SQLA v2 website, possibly by using language-specific tags?

IMHO, it could possibly make more sense than a separate group because here, other users might be able to translate questions/answers between non-English posters and the SA engineers. (OK, this statement assumes that you brilliant engineers are better with different programming languages than with spoken languages. Feel free to correct me!) Furthermore, by nature the doc team does handle some more languages very well.

(A poll for this topic might be quite useless as each user here comes along with SA's native language...)

[Breck_Carter]

First observation: It's been hard to get past the critical mass in English. Second observation: Chinese might be the first successful non-English Q&A website, or possibly Japanese, if my book sales are any indication (Chinese copies out-number English by an order of magnitude, if not two).

[VolkerBarth]

@Breck: The question is not aimed at the current (small) community - that would be pointless. But given SQLA v2 is going to replace the (significantly busier) NNTP groups, I would expect that a big enough audience even for (a few) other languages might be available. - For languages like French or German, I would not suggest a separate site, just a particular tag. However, can't tell whether it would make sense for languages with a totally different character set like Japanese....

[Breck_Carter]

@Volker: I am including the NNTP community when I say it's hard to get past the critical mass... the traffic there is very low, too low to justify the fragmentation into the separate newsgroups that exist now. And that's in English, which has [political incorrectness warning!] far more unilingual speakers than French and German put together. It's not fair [curse that dominant English!] but it's a fact.

[Breck_Carter]

More hard truths: The traffic here on SQLA is not low, it's virtually nonexistent. The community is not small, it is microscopic in size. It's probably bigger than the SDN community, but "bigger than subatomic" isn't saying much. In a GOOD month, SQLA gets 300 page loads per day... that probably translates into a few dozen lurkers... in total.

[Breck_Carter]

Having said all that, language tags are a fine idea. Non-English posts have ALWAYS been welcome on the NNTP newsgroups, and I believe they should be welcome here. There haven't been many (any?) on the newsgroups, and none here, but that doesn't mean they are not welcome.

[former_SQLA_member1694874]

I'd have thought just a few tags for the very odd question would be the most anyone would need to do, especially considering how few people come here anyway. Luckily what we lack in size we easily make up for in quality, well sometimes....

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Ich finde diese Idee gut.

(Just to give an impression, poorly translated as "I like this idea.")

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Quod erat demonstrandum.

(No, I don't expect a 'latin' tag.)

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

Ich auch! Danke schön, Volker.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

@Graeme: So you show my assumption (in the question) is wrong - I should've known better w.r.t. the Kitchener-Waterloo area:)

[Breck_Carter · Accepted solution]

@Volker: Kitchener? Oh, you mean Berlin! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_to_Kitchener_name_change

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

Nein, ich habe Deutsch in der Hochschule studiert. Auf Englisch: Coincidence, actually. I took a few years of German in high school, before I had ever been to Kitchener-Waterloo. The German above was entirely from memory - I hope I didn't mangle it too badly. It's been a few years.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

@Graeme: No need to worry, your memory is fine - congratulation:) @Breck: Now I'm about to suggest that "history" tag...