FreeGameDev

Hello,

Simutrans has 10 international (i18n) forums: http://forum.simutrans.com/ ranging 11 to 7169 posts.

Of 75,523 posts on the whole Simutrans forum, 18,363 (24.31%) were posted on the international forums.

All the i18n forums have different moderator staff, I assume they are community volunteers.

So the question is: Should we add an international forums? Who would volunteer to moderate?

Note: A long time ago an STK community member showed interest in a German fossgame community. Sometimes we have posts in low quality English language, which could profit from international forums.

PS: I'm talking about FGD-wide international forums. Not Per-Project.

Are you talking about international forums for one or more projects, or for the community section?

I think they would be good. No reason why not to. There's a few French and German speakers on here, at least.

Just need to make sure that there are active moderators.

fgd-wide @oln

Aren't we talking something like:

COMMUNITY
Forum Feedback - FreeGameDev Projects - LibreDeadWiki - OpenGameArt LinkyForum

INTERNATIONAL FORUMS
Deustche - Français - Espanyol - Zhōngguó

I still think this is will just increase fragmentation. I'd rather read poor English than google translate German and French

I kind of agree... we are a English page and people visiting us are at least somewhat proficient in English.

I am not sure... on one hand, it might fragment things, on the other hand it might unite things, at least a bit.
For example, there's a German forum for STK, but most of the users there didn't switch to the official forums when we got those, as they're in English. So we've already got the community somewhat fragmented, though I believe the German forum is not very active anymore.

I think people who are bilingual or at least 1,5-lingual (first language+poor english) would probably just write in english, because the readership is biggest then. Having international forums would probably attract people who dont speak english at all.
I cant foresee how that would work, I just can say how I would do it. I would still write in my poor english because I know most people can read it, but I would take a look in german forums as well, because I assume that people that write there are not speaking english at all (or very bad at least), and participate there as well.
That is somehow fragmentation, but right now is the situation, that people who dont speak english, are outside - and that is fragmentation as well.

charlie {l Wrote}:Aren't we talking something like:

COMMUNITY
Forum Feedback - FreeGameDev Projects - LibreDeadWiki - OpenGameArt LinkyForum

PROJECT FORUMS
STK - LoS - LW3D - ETC

INTERNATIONAL FORUMS
Deustch - Français - Espanyol - Zhōngguó - Penguin Language

Yeah.


QUESTION: Who would be willing to moderate an international forum? (What language?)

I don't really see any benefit in having an international forum, at least not at the moment, still I can offer my help moderating a forum in Portuguese if you need it.

I'll moderate the American one. I'm not a yank but I understand it, I think. Dip cookies in my tea and spread jelly on my sandwiches, yee haw!

I will moderate me and arthurs secret Norwegian forum where we will plot world domination.

I'll moderate the Norwegian moderators, see to it that they don't do any strange Norwegian stuff

@charlie how about a loltalk forum instead?

@oln @Arthur @Tranberry done!

Is anybody aware of the need for a PT language forum? Would any other person be willing to moderate PT?

qubodup {l Wrote}:Is anybody aware of the need for a PT language forum? Would any other person be willing to moderate PT?

PT as in Portuguese? As far as I can tell, I'm the only Portuguese speaking user, there may be others lurking around but if so, they do a pretty damn job at speaking English . I don't see a need for a specific forum from the existing topics but if it is created I can moderate it.

I'm from Germany but I would not use a German subforum. I think the same argument against PM or emails can be stated here: If people start talking in their native language (not English) only very few people can read it - and this destroys the openness. Also, I wouldn't know what to talk about in a general (not project-specific) and language-dependent forum.

qubodup {l Wrote}:@oln @Arthur @Tranberry done!

Wait what? I wasn't actually serious, but I suppose we could keep it.

I can moderate Russian forum but:
a) there are only 2 Russian users I've met here (+me, so 3 in total)
b) I agree with Tranberry and Julius. This can increase fragmentation + half-empty subforums usually look quite sad.

I doubt as well that having language subforums is a good idea; both because of aforementioned issues (separation of people), and because it would make spam prevention much harder. Have all language moderators be away a few days, and let them be of a language which isn't spoken by many FGD users; who is then supposed to take care of the spam? Or even of the serious topics? If no one is there, no one can help.
In the English forums, this isn't a big problem, as all (at least now) FGD users are able to speak English, thus there always will be someone to help. However, this does not apply to language specific subforums.

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish could be made into one forum until FGD is overrun by Norwegians.. If we need these extra forums

I don't think there are that many Scandinavian people anyhow, and the ones who are here are probably fine with speaking English. (Unless we have a lot of Scandinavian matters to discuss.)

I guess it makes sense for countries where people are not as used to having to use English.

I'm with you oln, one thing that might be good with localization is geographic topics, like if there is a get together in Norway, it would be of more interest to anyone who is able to attend. But that is the _only_ good thing I can come up with at the moment.

But like you just said, we are not many..

Yep, but a Danish - Norwegian - Swedish forum would at least make more sense than separate sections for each of those. I think we can understand each other just fine, at least with ordinary written language.