Avoiding unintelligible unanswered posts

[Tazmanian]

I don't know how much of a problem this is, but I've seen a few unanswered posts that were unintelligible enough for me to suspect that the poster's native language isn't English.

This raised the question in my head of why people would post in English if they can't write good clear English. The answer that immediately came was that perhaps they think they would get a faster response. This would especially be the case if their post would otherwise fall in the "Other Languages" forum. After all, most of the traffic in these forums is in English. Sadly, their posts often are so unintelligible that few bother to reply.

Perhaps we should encourage such folk to post in their native language first and to use English as a second resort.

Thoughts?

[ender wiggin]

My thought is that the Internet is an international culture. We Americans (I'm going to assume you're American even though your nick is Tazmanian) tend to think that America is the only country on the planet, and (American) English is the only language worth speaking. We need to be more open minded, and if we genuinely can't understand the point the poster is trying to make we should gently let them know (hold the flames, please). Note, I'm not talking about minor errors in grammer or spelling - those should be ignored.

[Tazmanian]

(I'm going to assume you're American even though your nick is Tazmanian)

How presumptuous of you! Actually, I'm not American. But you're right: my nick has little to do with my nationality.

We need to be more open minded, and if we genuinely can't understand the point the poster is trying to make we should gently let them know (hold the flames, please).

I'm sorry if my post came across as being intolerant of non-native speakers of English. Nor did I intend to imply that all non-native speakers write bad, unintelligible English. This is exactly the sentiment that I was trying to avoid.

My intention was to point out that (from what I've seen) posts that are unintelligible often go unanswered. If the lack of clarity is due to the poster's lack of command of English, then rather than have these "customers" be ignored, perhaps it would be more productive if they posted in their native language to start with. That way, those who speak the same language can begin helping right away.

Of course, this is a "two-way street", as it were. Unintelligible posts should not go ignored. As 'ender wiggin' points out, if you think you can help from what you understand of the post, then please do take the time to help out! If you can't understand enough to decide whether you can help, at least ask some clarifying questions.

[ender wiggin]

I think that it may be just a function of the higher volume of posts / posters in the English-speaking forums. Perhaps they expect a better chance of getting a good answer by posting in English? You never know - I imagine there's a good chance that they're dupe-posting in their native language forum as well.

BTW, please forgive the libelous post :

I'm going to assume you're American

[psyqil]

Perhaps we should encourage such folk to post in their native language first and to use English as a second resort.

I just had a look into "Other Languages", not much happening there, and I sure can't tell what but the international forums aren't really international, either, only Europe, where most of the people speak english, and Russia...ok, spanish and portugesian is not only spoken in Europe, and the latest continent-poll in OTW showed only three people from asia (and four from the south pole...funny folks ), but this isn't really the place for people speaking only cantonese e.g.

My thought is that the Internet is an international culture.

Of course, with a common language: english...my friends who think their english would be to weak to read english sites or watch english movies deprive themselves of so much content, that I try to get them to improve their language...lazy bastards...

So I fully agree with you, if it's unclear, ask!

[pranyi]

Perhaps we should encourage such folk to post in their native language first and to use English as a second resort.
Thoughts?

You would need a very good motivation to prevent help-seeking people from posting. I don't think that your idea is particularly
realistic or nice.

[Shan]

You would need a very good motivation to prevent help-seeking people from posting. I don't think that your idea is particularly
realistic or nice.

I'm not seeing how your thinking this is a bad thing? All Taz is trying to do is see too it that these non-naitive english speaking people are able to get the help their asking. We're no good to them if we can't understand what their saying, so by politely pointing out that they might be better served by posting in a section of their own language is purely for their own benifit. I'm not saying that just because they may speak another language first that we should ignore them, and certainly if we can help them we should, but just the same, I see quite a few posts by people that don't seem to know the language very well post thread after thread (or reply to themselves) 'yelling' for help, and getting angry when we can't provide it.

[ptitman]

the fact is that english might be the only language people can "speak" as a foreign language. If you look through the gentoo forum index you will see 10 different languages which are all european languages, among them you can find scandinavian and dutch .... there is no better english speakers than those, most of the scandinavian can speak english fluently, as for dutch...
But what about people from asian countries!!! none of them speak english as their native language even though english is the only language for them to communicate over the internet.
Developped countries might represent only 20% of the world population, the other 80% might speak either english, spanish or french as a second language because of former colonies ... still to be a lot of people left aside if they couldn't post in english.

I believe those people have no choice but posting in english as i'm not sure many people will answer to a thai post

[Boris27]

Let's not start about Dutchmen . The reason I don't visit the Dutch forums here is that they're like the Dutch tweakers.net forums. Full of annoying show-offs in their puberties.

That might just be a prejudice, but my English is fine, so I much rather visit the English boards. I get the feeling that people really do know what they're talking about over here.