At Wed, 20 Dec 2000 13:08:52 -0800 (GMT-0800), Alain LaBonté <alb@riq.qc.ca>
wrote:
>[Alain] I had no intent of asking anything, but since you provoke me,
> I
>found something with which I wholeheartedly agree:
>>International forums and discussion groups should welcome contributions
>in all
>>languages if their participants were really seeking the best and most
>>interesting contributions. [...] If people want the best
>>from the Internet, they have to invite back the best by first realizing
>that
>>original thoughts automatically entail the use of original modes of
>>expression.
So, one paw, most people are incapable of learning another language, but
on the other, forums should be in many languages, so people have to know
a dozen languages to understand them. Hmm.
The use of a forum is limited to its participants' ability to understand
the messages on that forum, including the language. A forum that mixes
English, Russian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Greek and Chinese in equal proporation
will be of little use to many people; the signal to noise ratio will be
over 1/6 or 2/5 for most people. So 7 different forums will appear with
s/n rations approaching 1, and anyone wanting to communicate in multiple
languages can subscribe to multiple forums.
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