The general question was asked about Italian, but we’re interested in feedback regarding other language forums here. In general, these would probably be low volume and would just be a “Discussion in [Language]” category without extensive divided sub categories. When we implemented Spanish we found the participation was enthusiastic but not high-traffic and everyone kind of posted in the same category, but more could always be added in the future.
Parlo italiano e parteciperei ad una categoria dedicata alla lingua italiana su questo forum.
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Je parle français et souhaite participer à une catégorie dédiée à la langue française sur ce forum.
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Ich spreche Deutsch und möchte in diesem Forum an einer Kategorie teilnehmen, die der deutschen Sprache gewidmet ist.
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Please suggest other languages you may like to see, but we would need to gauge potential active participation for each.
I know there’s already a Discourse-based IF forum in French, but I admit I find it a bit of a pain to have to switch back and forth between that one and this one (often forgetting to check in on the FR side for a long time), and have often wished that they could somehow be merged!
That being said, I haven’t been very active on that side of the community so far, and I’d want to defer to the preferences of folks who are more involved and who have been putting in all the work to build/maintain the existing spaces.
(But I do think I’d personally be much more inclined to participate in French-language events and discussions if I could access them via this site in some way)
We can’t really merge with a Discord network, but I find similarly I don’t like pure chat discussions - and that seems to be the way unless they’re very well managed. It’s much easier to catch up with archived forum messages than in multiple scrolling real-time chat streams.
Yeah, I figured that merging was just wishful thinking anyway! Also agree on the chat vs forum question — I really like having organized threads to read through.
Just to make sure, what do you mean by “that seems to be the way unless they’re very well managed”? (I think I missed what it’s referring to!)
I can ask in the Discord (where we’re more active), if you all want, but the French community have had their separate space for a long time (as old as mail groups). I’d wager they would rather keep their independence.
We’re trying to share links to events when they pop up, since we know there are some French-speaking users here (the French Comp tend to get some cover, as far as I’ve seen).
Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing a couple of those posts!
I wasn’t very clear but what I was trying to say is that I’d love to have a subcategory of this forum where all kinds of FR posts (whether original ones or links to other FR spaces) could be shared, found and discussed. Like a little French bubble in this big IF hub.
I could see it driving traffic to other FR communities through links but I could also see it cannibalizing a bit of their audience, so that would be my main concern?
A lot of Discord forums tend to leak members and participation. They’re often set up with 30 different chat channels differentiating by subject, but unless the server population is high, most participants tend to gather in one or two channels and not use the others - unless the server management is very strict and involved managing chat by subject.
Since the chat is in one channel, it’s difficult for people to catch up, and you’ll get different conversation threads kind of overlapping which isn’t the best to keep up with.
Whoops, I’m sorry. I have confused Discord and Discourse several times. The original post this started from was talking about an Italian language Discord community.
Discourse forums play well together and links to other messages onebox nicely!
The Fr forum looks so nice! I’m glad to know it’s there!
In the late 1970s, there was a local radio station in Rimini (Italy) whose presenters spoke in Esperanto.
Ten years earlier, the microscopic nation of ‘Rose Island’ (in the sea in front of Rimini) had Esperanto as its official language.
I’ve experimentally set up two simple categories for Italian and French discussion. Feedback is welcome, especially correction for my poor Google-translate-generated welcome messages.
Currently they are single-category general discussion. In general sub-categories don’t receive a lot of traffic, but if volume warrants, we can expand.