jkph00:+1

Erinja, will there be something like the Facebook "Like" button available? Perhaps an "Agree" one?

We were thinking about putting something like that in, but I'm not sure where it stands. Would lots of other people like to see an agree button?

RiotNrrd:I'm more in favor of producing a list of discouraged topics, and letting a lot of off-topic stuff continue as it has been. Good, solid FAQs can go a long way in letting people know that reform proposals will be treated like trollery right from the get-go, for example.

I think we've had some discussions of reform proposals on the forums, if I remember, and we have certainly discussed this within the lernu team.

In fact, reform proposals are permitted in the Esperanto forums. I hesitate to address them explicitly in the terms of service because if we say explicitly that they are allowed in the Esperanto forums, it may create a false impression that Esperanto is open to reforms, and if we explicitly prohibit them, it may create a false impression that it's something that Esperanto speakers feel defensive about (versus the truth, which is that it's pointless to spam a forum discussing something that most Esperanto speakers aren't interested in, that has no chance of success, particularly if the proposer doesn't speak Esperanto yet).

The most recent wording on content that I had in my proposed rules was "Nacilingvaj fadenoj ĉefe ekzistas por helpi al komencantoj kiuj ankoraŭ ne bone parolas Esperanton. Tial, konversacioj de nacilingvaj fadenoj temu ĉefe pri Esperanto, ĝia gramatiko, kaj ĝia kulturo. Konversacioj pri aliaj temoj, ekzemple (sed ne nur) politiko, aktualaj eventoj, aliaj planlingvoj, ktp. okazu en Esperanto, en la esperant-lingvaj fadenoj."

In English - "National language threads mainly exist to help beginners who don't speak Esperanto well yet. Therefore, conversations in national language threads should mainly be about Esperanto, its grammar, and its culture. Conversations about other topics, for example (but not only) politics, current events, other planned language, etc. should take place in Esperanto, in the Esperanto-language threads"

The mention of "other planned languages" is intended to cover reform proposals, in an indirect manner.

The way the rule is worded tolerates some deviation from subject matter.

FYI it is likely that forums won't be separated by language in quite the way that they are here. It will be more like the forums at Slovake.eu; you create a thread in any topic, then choose the language of the thread. If you speak multiple languages, it will be easier to see threads in all of the languages that you speak, at once.

The question is, will this system lead to a profusion of English language threads on topics that have traditionally remained Esperanto-only? Does anyone have any ideas of how to discourage people from posting in English on these topics (short of actually prohibiting them from choosing English for these topics)?

Allowing people to post in English about the website (like the "Pri la paĝaro" forum in our Esperanto forums) is certainly within the goals of the site - the goal being to teach Esperanto. This would be possible in the new site. But a forum thread like "Catalonian independence" would have to take place in Esperanto on the current site; in the new site, it would theoretically be possible for someone to create that thread and indicate something else as the language.

In line with encouraging people to use their Esperanto, therefore, would it be too heavy-handed to limit the language choices to Esperanto-only for certain sub-forums, or can you think of another way the site could use to subtly discourage people from posting in other languages on topics that don't involve Esperanto or language in the slightest?

Erinja:The topic of forum conduct came up in at least two if not three threads here, so I thought it was a topic worth addressing.

I would have thought that it doesn't really matter where this topic came up, it's clearly an issue that effects all users of the site, so the natural first choice of language for this discussion ought to be Esperanto. Especially when coming from the administrator of the site. Surely it's a matter of respect for other long-term users of the site who maybe don't speak English too well.

So there are basically two issues.

1. Permitted topics and where they are permitted to be discussed.

2. Permitted languages in a particular thread.

As regards the first - it is so easy not to bother with some loon who wants to discuss a topic that has nothing to do with Esperanto (and that includes proposals for reforms), that I don't feel strongly about that. In any case a moderator can simply delete an irrelevant thread.

However any proposal that allows forum members who can read a certain national language, but not reply in it, to post their replies in Esperanto in the thread that uses that language, I would be in favour of.

erinja:
FYI it is likely that forums won't be separated by language in quite the way that they are here. It will be more like the forums at Slovake.eu; you create a thread in any topic, then choose the language of the thread. If you speak multiple languages, it will be easier to see threads in all of the languages that you speak, at once.

Then the solution is simple: Allow only Esperanto to be selected in "Viewpoints", "Humour", and "About everything else"; they may contain threads in national languages as a result of an administrative action (splitting a thread). Allow national languages in "News", "Questions", "About other languages" and - maybe - "About the website".

Having just now read this thread (I am able to read lernu! only every few days), I am almost completely in agreement with erinja. I came to lernu! as a learning resource for Esperanto. Yes, I agree that it is a good thing that there are fora within the website for people to discuss who knows what -- but in Esperanto! -- as this can be a learning experience for new people. After all, an auxiliary language in the end is not for discussing fine linguistic aspects of the language itself but rather for communication among real people about real topics. If I want to write / talk about my pet cat to someone with whom I share no other language but Esperanto, it seems reasonable to me to ask a question in the English (or whatever) forum as how best to express myself in E-o. If I want to talk about the latest scientific or political or whatever theory without regard to E-o, without regard to how I might express myself in E-o, then it definitely seems to me that the national language fora are not the place for such matters.

I guess I'm just afraid of being part of a discussion in which someone makes some off-hand remark about something only vaguely related to the main discussion, and the Lernu! Cops (tm) descend upon them immediately with cries of "Off Topic!".

I don't know that I want to police what I write THAT carefully. I don't see a problem with a lot of the off-topic stuff here now, as it is. Some of it we could do without, sure. But most of it, I just don't see it as a problem.

The only thing worse than no moderation is too much moderation. If we seek to ban all off-topic discussion, we risk moderating too much.

bartlett22183:After all, an auxiliary language in the end is not for discussing fine linguistic aspects of the language itself but rather for communication among real people about real topics.

^This post (chopped down a bit, sorry) actually resonates a lot with me. I haven't been learning Esperanto for that long and mostly sporadically, for various reasons. I'm not a linguist, though like most people here I'm interested in language structure, but it can impede your learning, especially if you're a beginner, to come up against detailed Esperanto linguistic issues. It makes you feel like you have a larger mountain to climb that contradicts the ideas about Esperanto's relative simplicity and communicative clarity.

Obviously some people are much more advanced and can discuss finer issues of Esperanto, but what do you do if you're not solid enough to fully take part in the Esperanto fora and the natural language fora very often discuss issues beyond your level?

It's a different issue than on-topic/off-topic (might well be off-topic, but I don't think so...).

RiotNrrd:Almost every forum I've ever belonged to has at least one place where completely off-topic posts are OK.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to allowing the new "pri ĉio alia" forum have posts in any language, not just Esperanto. I just wonder about the effects of a decision like that, if it would become a hotbed of English posting about unrelated topics, where people would go to chat in English, rather than learning Esperanto enough to discuss things in Esperanto. In your opinion, am I overreacting on this point, and do you think that such a thread would have the usual mix of languages, but be generally dominated by Esperanto?

RiotNrrd:I'm more in favor of producing a list of discouraged topics, and letting a lot of off-topic stuff continue as it has been. Good, solid FAQs can go a long way in letting people know that reform proposals will be treated like trollery right from the get-go, for example.

If you were to write such a list, what topics would it contain?

Chainy:

Erinja:The topic of forum conduct came up in at least two if not three threads here, so I thought it was a topic worth addressing.

I would have thought that it doesn't really matter where this topic came up, it's clearly an issue that effects all users of the site, so the natural first choice of language for this discussion ought to be Esperanto. Especially when coming from the administrator of the site. Surely it's a matter of respect for other long-term users of the site who maybe don't speak English too well.

As I said, I am not currently engaged in working on the rules, and I prefer to discuss topics when I'm actively working on them. I brought it up in this forum because it was becoming an issue in this forum. But I created a thread. Perhaps you'd like to guide the discussion there, since you seem to have more time for this at the moment than I do. I will likely not do anything substantive to the draft rules for at least a month and a half or two months.

Thanks for your help!

Vestitor:Obviously some people are much more advanced and can discuss finer issues of Esperanto, but what do you do if you're not solid enough to fully take part in the Esperanto fora and the natural language fora very often discuss issues beyond your level?

This is something that has been discussed before; people having very detailed grammatical discussions in the national language forums have been encouraged by other users to take their discussion to the Esperanto forums.

I guess it's a matter of taste, some beginners love to read about the minutia of grammar, some don't.

Our language rules have long been a pet peeve of sudanglo's. Who do you cater to, in a situation like the English forum - do you cater to English-speaking beginners who can only understand a post if it's in English, or do you cater to people who can read English but can't speak it, and post only in Esperanto? It's my opinion that if you want to read the discussion but can't post in any language than Esperanto, then this is your own problem to solve, not the problem of the English-speaking beginner. A non-speaker of English can always use Google Translate to translate something into English, if he or she is desperate to post but can't speak English. The user could always accompany it with an Esperanto version, for those who are able to read it.

[substitute any other language for English above]

I'd be interested to hear other viewpoints. I don't care how easy it is to learn Esperanto, you can't understand much on your first day of studying it, even passively, unless you've studied other languages before.