1

Proposal: Stack Overflow (in Russian)

Shouldn't SO translations be mainly devoted to language- (country-) specific questions, for example:

  • Questions about APIs of local sites/services (ex. VK, Mail.ru, Yandex)

  • Questions about non-latin, local programming languages (ex. 1С)

  • Language-specific SEO questions (see Baidu, Yandex, Seznam)

  • Questions about original non-English books and translations about programming

I don't understand example questions in SO translation proposals, except Russian. But in Russian proposal I don't see russian-specific example questions at all (EDIT: OK, there are probaby 2 such questions: Как преобразовать строку в кодировке win-1251 в Unicode в Silverlight? and Как пропатчить KDE 2 под FreeBSD). All these example questions may be useful for professionals, who don't speak Russian.

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
9

Those are not SO-translations. Those are separate sites.

Restricting national versions of SO to national questions only makes exactly as much sense as restricting SO to England-related questions only.

3
  • 1
    I disagree with you. Announce of "SO in Russian" proposal in the biggest russian online programming community got negative reaction. The main point of the people was "we don't want to translate already existing answers from the big SO". And they're damn right. For example, consider the highest voted example question in the proposal, "Что лучше использовать для вывода данных на экран в C++: printf или cout?". Guess, what is the best answer to it? I think it is "Dude, get google translate (russian -> english) and read this page: stackoverflow.com/questions/2872543/printf-vs-cout-in-c".
    – leventov
    Commented Jun 3, 2013 at 20:51
  • So, if SO in Russian will be flooded with such beginner questions.. . I don't know what then happen, but personally I won't use this site.
    – leventov
    Commented Jun 3, 2013 at 20:56
  • btw I know that "SO in ..." are not "translations", it was just incorrect term.
    – leventov
    Commented Jun 3, 2013 at 21:00
4

If there is a lot of people interested in any country specific API questions these questions are definitely welcomed. There could be possibly another categories of language specific technologies in addition to the already mentioned.

However to intentionally restrict the whole scope to only these questions is not productive because it impoverishes the community. I think that like with any other StackExchange site any programming topic in any language is welcomed if there are enough experts to answer the questions on that topic in that language.

4
  • Propose the best answer to the question "Что лучше использовать для вывода данных на экран в C++: printf или cout?". 1) Translation of all answers from the mentioned above question on the big SO; 2) Translation of the accepted answer; 3) Brief (2-3 sentenses) answer and link to the big SO; 4) Standalone answer(s) , the question is marked as "having comprehensive answer on the big SO", a-la cross-site duplicate?
    – leventov
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 16:40
  • Also, imagine the situation you have written the original answer to that question, but someone just dropped the link to the big SO question and his answer is accepted.
    – leventov
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 16:43
  • There is a good policy in SO that question and answer should be useful not only for questioner and answerer but for anybody looking later at the topic. Based on that I think the best action is to compile and translate something useful from existing answers on SO if there are any. It is actually not a cross-site duplication because anwser in English does not answer question in Russian in general sense as there is at least a part of community that cannot understand it.
    – tomaitsu
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 17:46
  • 1
    And moreover some duplication is sometimes good. As Jeff Atwood told: "One thing I want to be clear about, though, is that duplication is not necessarily bad. Quite the contrary — some duplication is desirable. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for."
    – tomaitsu
    Commented Jun 4, 2013 at 17:47

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .