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Proposal: German language

I was wondering if we should make one language SE site, where all these matters are discussed e.g; Translation from Language A to B, Grammar and Usage issue, instead of making one site per language and manage the whole thing with tags?

How it will benefit the community?

  1. Its possible that one person knows more than one language or knows one language and learning the other and can help/get help under one roof.

  2. Its highly likely that some sites don't get mass traffic and will be shut down as per SO policies but its unlikely that a single site related to languages will be shut down because of this concern.

Why We Need One Site? Not N sites for N languages

  1. We can take the example of SO, it discuss all the matters related to programming stuff despite the fact there are many programming languages out there and if they will start making the sites for each such language, few sites will be dead the next day because of lack of people asking/answering questions in that tag.
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    There's already such a proposal. Feel free to follow it.
    – Borror0
    Feb 22, 2011 at 3:05
  • +1, I do support the idea and I wonder why it got that many downvotes. @Borror0 following the proposal would be different from the suggestion to merge existing language sites, or wouldn't it?
    – k.stm
    Oct 5, 2012 at 8:58

1 Answer 1

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The major problem with a multilingual site where most users won't speak all, or most, of the languages being used is one of moderation and communication.

On Stack Overflow, everyone uses English so, even if a moderator doesn't understand the technical details, he or she can still moderate the site. You don't need to be an Haskell ace to detect rude behavior, subjective or argumentative questions, etc. on Haskell questions. Such a site would require quite a moderation task force.

Similarly, establishing common policies on that site's meta will be a nightmare unless you decide to exclude everyone who does not speak English well enough to defend his opinion. If you make English the sole languages allowed on meta, then that'll alienate every non-anglophone on the site. Native English speakers will have a lopsided influence on the site.

Finally, if we go language by language, the SOIS team might be able to localize the UI step by step. Localizing for every natural language on the planet, however, is impossible.

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    Easy solution: drop localization and everything happens in English, just like in every other SE.
    – badp
    May 19, 2011 at 11:59
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    @badp And borror0 gave very good reason why that way lies madness and failure. One doesn't want to get the impression that you didn't actually read his reply...
    – Jürgen A. Erhard
    May 21, 2011 at 18:46
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    @jae It's not madness and failure, it's reduced audience. English is widely taught worldwide, especially to language experts an SE site ought to attract.
    – badp
    May 21, 2011 at 18:48
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    I don't see the problem, neither with a more scientific language board which requires English nor with a multilingual one -- at least if you restrict the board to be about one language family such as Germanic or Romance. I think the best format would have been to have "culture boards" which require a certain language and big "(comparative) language boards" which cover a big language family such as the indo-european languages, but require English.
    – k.stm
    Oct 5, 2012 at 9:09

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