I normally stick to the English forum because I have a hard time expressing myself in Esperanto. I also have a fear of making mistakes which further fuels my fear of posting something. >_<

But yeah, I totally agree that we need a subforum where beginners can start their own topics. I think that if beginners are surrounded by other begginers, they'd feel more at ease. (At least I would)

The concept of memes has been around for a while now (I mean, before things like lolcats, which do seem to have been around for too long ), so I guess "memeo" works.

jean-luc:I noticed that some people wonder why the eo forums are relatively poor (in content and quality) compared to the native language forums. But Lernu is a website for learning, by definition only few of the members are able to produce a lot of good and interesting esperanto.

But another question arise. There is supposedly 2 millions people speaking eo. Let say that there is 10.000 of them at the same time proficient and regular internet users.

So where is *the* esperanto forum, where all these people gather ?

All of the Esperanto forums act like "the" Esperanto forum, but a lot of crap finds its way into Vidpunktoj (it's the first one after all).

Vidpunktoj, by nature of being called "viewpoints", has a big target painted on it for controversy

"Free catalonia! God doesn't exist! God does exist you heretics! The world's going to end!".

There's a lot of good stuff in it too though

ceigered:"Free catalonia! God doesn't exist! God does exist you heretics! The world's going to end!".

Free catalonia! - what is catalonia?
God doesn't exist! - almost certain!
God does exist you heretics! - whose God?
The world's going to end! - 100% sure

What is the big deal with all of this? Screw it.

ceigered:a lot of crap finds its way into Vidpunktoj (it's the first one after all).

indeed. i sometimes wonder if people are aware of the existence of other E-o language subboards.

chrisim101010:There is only one English language forum, but 8 in Esperanto. I can understand the reason why, but it does mean going through 8 different forums to see if something interests me. I only need to enter one English forum and read down the list.

This seems to be a big problem. So many people here are unaware of the fact that it's possible to follow all the Esperanto-language forums as if they are ONE. Just use the RSS link called 'En Esperanto'.

Or is it that people don't understand what RSS is? I've mentioned this so many times, but people continue to complain about not being able to follow the Esperanto-forums easily - it just doesn't make any sense!

sudanglo:Here, I think the lively nature of the English language section may be the reason.

I don't understand why so many people believe the English language forum is somehow more lively. I follow all the Esperanto-language forums as well as the English-language forum via RSS. I cannot honestly say that the English posts are any more interesting than the Esperanto-language ones.

The English language forum often bores me due to the fact that discussions such as this one crop up so often.

The Esperanto-language section often has interesting political debates. Recently there has been an interesting discussion in Esperanto about languages and films in India. Language questions are also debated a lot in Esperanto - and in all areas responses come quickly.

sudanglo:Quite often a post in the Esperanto Questions section (I tend not to read the other Esperanto forums much) may not receive many reactions, or they may be slow to apppear - allowing ones interest in the topic to go off the boil.

I just don't think this is true. Questions are generally answered quickly, I would say.

sudanglo:
Nevertheless I think one could encourage more participation in the Esperanto forums - establishing a different tradition, so to speak.

Absolutely. People should try to make the effort to actually use Esperanto. You've got to start somewhere! People shouldn't be surprised if making thousands of posts in English is not helping their Esperanto much.

ceigered:It's not about translations so much, it's more about expressing my own personal feelings and injecting myself into my writing, which no one else but me can do, and trying to do that for EO. Sometimes it can feel frustrating when I look at a post I've written in EO and go "man, I feel like someone else wrote that".

Obviously, when speaking your native language you feel that you have complete control over it, and the language you use feels closely connected with your character. This is difficult to achieve in a foreign language, even in Esperanto. It takes time, and gradually you get familiar with the new ways of expressing yourself. It is certainly very frustrating, but you just have to be patient I suppose.

ceigered:That all said, given how much the Esperanto forums tend to update without me realising it and me losing my place etc, I think it'd bring the pace down to something easier for learners if things were split up.

Yes, the Google statistics show that the Esperanto-language forums here are more active than the English forum. The following shows the average number of posts made in the forums over the past 30 days:

English-language forum = 34.1 posts per day
Esperanto-language forums = 71.4 posts per day.

- the figure for Esperanto represents posts in the RSS feed 'En Esperanto'.

darkweasel:

ceigered:a lot of crap finds its way into Vidpunktoj (it's the first one after all).

indeed. i sometimes wonder if people are aware of the existence of other E-o language subboards.

Yes, it's a rather bizarre situation. Are RSS feeds such an unknown concept? Maybe there needs to be clearer information on the main page of the forums to explain to people how to use this feature.