Good post, tripmon.

I am not entirely following you on the language thing, though.

The forums are not (in my idea) for intra-community discussions, but for inter-community discussions. That means that the language will be English.

News from the XOOPS organisation could be posted so that the local support teams can translate them and announce it on their own local sites.
In the other direction, local support sites that have something to announce, will write it in English so everyone else can understand it.

I may have misunderstood you, though, so don't hesitate to correct me.

I think we're talking about the same thing, but the reason I would opt for multi-lang follows:

IFF multi-lang forums exist, any user so inclined could log in and post what THEY consider to be a worthy announcement, news item, post, etc in their native language (it's easy to navigate and post due to multi-lang).

Now you have 1 'lead' in geography moderate those posts which are in his/her geography in his/her native language. This lead translates any necessary posts and also performs reverse translations (or assigns that to someone else on their Local Support team).

This lead is basically responsible for their geography's information in regards to the remainder of the site (eg. to XOOPS organization and cross geo) and would use english outside of their Local Support forum...

In esssence what I envision is that this type of freedom of posts in native languages would make it easier for the actual people 'making' the news to post it.

The benifit is that the onus for information updates and translations becomes a responsibility of the Local Support site Team Lead as opposed to a xoops.org function.

So for example each of the Local Support Sites would have it's own forum with posts either in english OR native lang. This forum (for each geography) would allow any user or contributor from that geography to post news in their native language. As needed, the Local Support team lead would translate those posts which had international significance and move them to the proper forum (WOX for example). All of the remaining posts in any given geography's forum could then be used by the team lead to generate a Local newsletter, including the active WOX posts.

The remainder of the site (aside from the forums by geography) would work as you describe.

The big benifit being, if we task an individual with both gathering and translating news it is a far more difficult job than moderating. Additionally, we are to a larger degree putting the power in the hands of the people by allowing an easier and more open form of communication. The forums I describe are SOLELY for the purpose of submitting news, changes, dev reports, etc. and the remainder of the site's business could be conducted in english.

Let me know if that does not clarify it enough... basically I agree with you that the lang should be english for the site proper, but if the admin headache is not significant, I see real benifits in information availibility in structuring the tool set and administration this way.

Quote:
I don't follow this. That's what the local sites are for.

If we have forums here for French, Japanese, Portuguese and German support, what is the role of xoops.fr, http://www.xoopscube.jp etc.?

1. I would suggest the forum for any group should be readable by anyone but the limited people could post if necessary.

2. About the list of local community support site. I suggest that please add some other contact points to prevent some situration like couldn't connect with the webmaster of the sites.

3. I hope there's someone could try to connect between each community site and here. The man don't have any job about programing here. :)

4. We don't need multi-language sites. The local community support site could always be the good place for local commnuity. I don't have the ability or interests to read messages which written in the language I don't understand.

1. Since the point is - among other things - to allow core developers to announce new releases so the local sites are prepared for it, it should not be available to everyone.

This point came from XOOPSDEM where there were comments that when we made a release here on xoops.org, French users could download it, experience a problem and go to xoops.fr to ask for help - and the xoops.fr staff would not even know that this new release had been made. For this purpose it has to be "secret".

2. Not following you entirely. You mean a list of contacts for e.g. the French support site in the event of the webmaster not being available? Isn't that a task for the support site to make their contact points available? On the other hand, I do see the point of having e.g. a "2nd in command" who is not listed as the webmaster of the site, but who the xoops.org staff or other local support site representatives could contact... I don't know, really. I expected some 2-3 people from each support site being involved in this - plus a handful of people to coordinate, write WOX newsletters, picking up information here and there etc.

3. That would be the "handful of people to coordinate [...]" I think.

I am currently under the impression that this project would not try and replicate any functionality which currently exists. Therefore, there is no reason to have ANY support information available anywhere within this project.

1) there will be *NO* support requests in these forums, that is what the Local Support Sites are for.

2) Only News, change, dev. info would be posted to these forums.

It would essentially be a XOOPS wide news repository with a forum for every Local Support Site where people in that geography CAN (not must) contribute news they think significant to XOOPS 'as a whole' in their native language.

I use Local Support Site and Geography interchangeably in this discussion...

In a nutshell I'm trying to provide a place where users, dev's whoever can post NEWS they think pertinant in their own language which will then (by 'in geography' administrative process) be acted upon or not (translated) for the good of the entire XOOPS community.

Sorry for any confusion, I hope that sorted it.

edit:
The only people who would view the 'native language' posts would be the 'Local Support' or 'in geography' lead and those from that geography...

Any news items that are consumable by the ENTIRE XOOPS community (as seen fit by the 'in geography' lead) would appear TRANSLATED in an appropriate forum.

That bit may need elaboration, but I think the idea should be clarifying.

ok, got it now.

However, my point is that whoever can post NEWS in their native language on their own site and it would be the responsibility of that local site's representatives to relay that information in English to the closed forums here on xoops.org, where they can be acted upon by others, such as e.g. the French support site crew bringing news about what is happening in Japan, but in French on the French support site. It could also be used in the WOX newsletter and/or announced in the ordinary news here on xoops.org

The main point is that native language communication should be on local sites and relayed/translated in English by the local site representatives. Since it will have to be translated in order to be meaningful to others, native language information might as well be on the local site.

well i'm all for helping out regarding news team, i tried getting involvement from people a while ago during the PR debate, but there was not much interest from members in doing so, seems this thread has suddenly sparked more interest, which is good for the wrong reasons.

the proposal i made in the news thread along with Herko was a 2 stage WOX newsletter.. basically a non technical newsletter and then a technical newsletter, both seperate.. nobody seemed to comment on it so it was never pushed fwd..

I wanted to help - I still do time willing.

I'm more concerned now with the departure of so much coding talent from the XOOPS scene :(

Why? And is there anything that can be done to try and bring them back?

While I can see an easier implementation doing as you suggest Mith, I dont think the unification effort would resound throughout the entire community as well. I would view this a a big embrace to the international community from the org.

With all things considered, I think this should attempt to unify our dev colonies in a framework which makes it as easy as possible to gather and distribute news information across language barriers.

While creating some closed forums could be a simple solution, it is not as unifying, all encompasing, or warm and fuzzy as what I'm envisioning. Then again what do I know?

Quote:

I'm guessing that this could have been happening up to now and for whatever reason has not. My suggestion attempts to provide a means of easing the burden of the 'local site representative', while simultaneously providing a posting place that Devs could use for information which should be reviewed for inclusion into a xoops-wide information distribution.

This would significantly reduce the burden on the 'local site representative', while spreading the responsibility for identifying newsworthy content to geography's submitters.

Quote:

The only person who would need to see any native language posts in this scenario would be the posters themselves, and their 'local site representative'.

The 'local site representative' WOULD translate and move the documents to an appropriate English Lang forum (which could be browsable by all) *after* deciding that the posts in their own forum are appropriate.

The benifit of this is that you can create a WOX forum, a Module News forum...bla bla.. Where appropriate content *Would* be moved after translation by the 'local site representative'.

Now in order to publish an English Lang newsletter, the newsletter admin need only look to a single forum where all of the world's entries have been verified for content and translated.

Who cares how useful the information in a particular native language forum is to others? This is the responsibility of the 'local site representative'... if he/she deems it appropriate it Will be translated and moved to the appropriate forum (where it can be read in english). If he/she deems it inappropriate, the responsibility of that action lies with the 'local site representative' and not the organization. This distributes the responsibility for timely posts to the 'local site representative', just as having multi lingual submissions to the specific geography's forum distributes the the aggregation of news items to the community.

I see huge benifits on the administrative side to having a posting place for *xoops-wide news in any lang. It looks to me like it could save hours for the 'local site representative'. Run it as it's own entity seperate from the news which may only be applicable to a specific geography. Now, you could also run an RSS feed for each Geo which pulled native lang *xoops-wide news from the forums and have a single point of entry. Just extrapolating...

I see the 'local site representative' able to sift through information in a single forum (their own geography) MUCH easier than trying to review all the news items and pull from there, particularly in a high throughput geography.

The easier we can make this entire process for the submitters and admins, the more likely it will act to unite diverse XOOPS camps.

Pshew, I'm going to get another cup of coffee