ceigered:...putting it politely, this IS an Esperanto forum and therefore the use of Esperanto shouldn't be discouraged just because someone can't speak English.

Enh?

This isn't an 'Esperanto' forum. It's an English-language forum on a multilingual website dedicated to facilitating the learning of Esperanto.

Some figures: Among the national-language forums, the English one is presently the largest, with about 11,000 messages and about 1100 threads (nearly 5 times the number of threads in Spanish or German). So it would be quite natural to assume that a pretty large chunk of the active Esperantists here speak English. Hence, questions regarding the English language, even if posed in the Esperanto forums, will usually end up getting a decent number of replies, IMHO.

nshepperd:
Maybe we could just say, if one of these "neangleparolantoj" asks a question, that this thread is marked as a bilingual one, and so could everyone please post their reponses in both english and esperanto. If they only speak one of the languages they don't have to risk their post to be deleted, just that it might be ignored, at least until someone translates it for them.

I think this is a fine idea. If the thread contains a warning in the subject line, noone would have cause to be offended, cxu ne?

nshepperd:I think we should be kind to those who "ne parolas angle"....

One possibility may be to allow directions in Esperanto to a thread in the Esperanto-speaking forum, if the writer wishes speakers of English to be involved.

I don't really think this "marking" of threads gets to the core of the issue. The issue is not causing offence to English-only speakers, but having threads that are unreadable by people who only speak the particular language of the forum. Marking an English thread as Esperanto-only isn't going to change that, and would probably just cause confusion about what exactly the purpose of the "other language" forums is. And anyway, if people forget to post in the right forum what makes you think they're going to remember to post a warning message on the thread?

I also don't think posting in the English forum is necessarily going to yield better results than taking the Esperanto post to the Esperanto forum. Sure there will be more people there who speak English, but it's not guaranteed they will even be able to understand your message, which seems to me a bigger problem than the supposed unavailability of English speakers in the Esperanto forum, something which I think is really just a misassumption. There are plenty of English speakers in the Esperanto forums.

My view would be just leave the system as it is, but perhaps have a slightly friendlier way of reminding people about including a translation in their post. Perhaps some kind of box that would popup in the corner with a standard template message in it? That way the admins could just click a button or something rather than continually posting messages, and the poster wouldn't feel embarrased about being reprimanded.

Ok Tommjames, Miland, Rohan and others of similar opinion I guess are pretty right but I do agree with nshepperd, andogigi and those of similar opnion too...

I really think though that a tagging system (like nshepperd's idea) would still be good. E.g. just right in the subject line "Bilingual" - and that doesn't necessarily have to hurt English speakers who don't understand Esperanto enough, rather I reckon it'd be good allowing them to gain exposure to the language without having to move out of their comfort zone. And not only that but within the thread they would find help from users quicker than in a EO-only thread due to the problems caused with speaking native languages in those threads. But this is a topic that I think needs consideration.

ceigered:I do agree with nshepperd, andogigi and those of similar opnion too..

I must admit that I've got some sympathy for the idea. I appreciate the argument that many speakers of English don't frequent the Esperanto-speaking forum much, and sometimes Esperantists may want to attract their attention. That's why I suggested posting something like 'Mi havas demandon por angla-parolantoj, bonvolu vidi ĉi tien'. Or 'I have a question for speakers of English, please see here.

I don't really see a problem with the current system. If you are reading posts in a language, respond in the same language. There should be no reason why someone should be so eager to write Esperanto-only posts in an English forum. And if you are eager to practice yours skills, no problem! You can definitely write in Esperanto (or any other language) in the English forum, so long as you provide an English translation.

The problem with writing in off-topic languages in a forum is that you get non-speakers of that forum's language having a discussion in the wrong language in the forum. For example, in the Chinese forum link given as an example, I saw a fairly long conversation taking place between non-Chinese speakers, in Esperanto (almost exclusively, except for a few posts) and in the Chinese forum. This is the whole point of having forums separated by language. And it's true that this site has so many English speakers, you can certainly get a question about English answered in the Esperanto forums.

Worst comes to worst, if you don't speak a language at all, and you feel an absolute need to post to a forum of that language, use Google Translate. The results are sometimes laughable but they are usually understandable and it's better than writing in the wrong language. You can always accompany that with a grammatically correct Esperanto translation, if you so choose.

I see no reason to introduce a complicated tagging system. It is really simple. Post in the language of the forum, period. There are numerous Esperanto forums to use for questions written in Esperanto. They aren't as active as the English forums? Then go read them and post to them and make them more active! A forum is only as active as its users. Each and every one of us is responsible for the activity level of the forums that we are interested in.

Good point(s) erinja

Oh well... Looks like that's been put to rest then as far as I'm concerned though. I guess I just feel sorry for all the people who get the big read notice under their messages, the big and read part scares me

A notice would be pretty useless if it wasn't read. If it is red however...

Rogir:A notice would be pretty useless if it wasn't read. If it is red however...

Ah.. yes... It would be quite useless if not read, wouldn't it? Well in that case I propose we now have audio notifications!

I wonder though if maybe we need a colour change, like say instead of red we have green notices

(and yes, they were intentionally switched to confuse people)