Is the suggestion of multilingual forums
really that different than having off-topic
threads in a forum? The threads/languages just become self-selecting
groups.
My only concern would be that subjects would be in a different
language from the body and it would be hard to know which
messages to read.
(Anyone noticing the irony in the 2 comments above? ;-) )
Actually, I didn't find the suggestion of multiple internets all that
bad, although there would need to be some cross-over capabilities.
There are already other proposals for splinter groups, for higher
bandwidth or greater security. As more of my web searches return
irrelevant pages, splintering starts to look good. Put all the porn
on its own net... What's wrong with an all French net? When I
watch TV, the station doesn't suddenly change languages... (Well most
of them don't...)
Of course it should all be in Unicode. I am not advocating an all
ISO 8859-15 net...
Cheers,
tex
dvdeug@hushmail.com wrote:
> 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.
>
> --
> David Starner - dvdeug@hushmail.com (dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org off vacation)
-- According to Murphy, nothing goes according to Hoyle. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tex Texin Director, International Business mailto:Texin@Progress.com +1-781-280-4271 Fax:+1-781-280-4655 Progress Software Corp. 14 Oak Park, Bedford, MA 01730http://www.Progress.com #1 Embedded Database
Globalization Program http://www.Progress.com/partners/globalization.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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