Carolin wrote:i think making an individual subforum for each language would be overkill at this moment, but if we had more readers in a certain language, that would certainly warrant its own forum.
I agree there ... the German thread would be quite busy on its own, though
Last edited by crowwings on November 3rd, 2014, 4:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Jesus Christ walks into a hotel.
He hands the inn-keeper three nails - and he asks:
'Can you put me up for the night?''' --- Eric Draven
Carolin wrote:i think that as there are fewer readers there is less activity in lote project threads, so they tend to sink down to the second or third page of readers wanted, and are difficult to find there for newbies.
I noticed that too when I was diving to the bottom of the "Going Solo" or "Group Projects" subfora (just out of curiosity)- a disproportionate number of lingering projects is in languages other than English.
I definitely support the idea of giving more visibility to projects in other language by grouping them together by language, but I think some extra thinking should go into ensuring that it won't make the forum as a whole difficult to navigate. I'm registered in one community where there are about 20 subfora and it took me some time to figure out where to find stuff I was searching for.
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yes, i wouldnt suggest a whole lot of subfora either, especially as there would be subfora with only one project in them and that would just make the entire forum unneccesarily complicated. i would suggest a separate readers wanted for lote, just to see if this works out qua visibility, and if we do get more readers and more projects, we have to see how to best deal with a growing reader base and project count. at the moment, i think someone counted 38 non-english group projects (id suggest leaving solos in going solo as visibility isnt the issue there).
I did some quick counting taking "Readers Wanted: Group projects", GPs from "Launch Pad" and "RW: Short Works" into consideration.
The approximate results broken down by language:
German 10
Multilingual 4
French 3
Italian 1
Spanish 2
Arabic 1
Polish 1
Portuguese 1
Ancient Greek 1
Japanese 1
Chinese 1
Dutch 1
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crowwings wrote:But the forum itself really is a difficult-to-navigate place, took me quite a while, though I was no newby on forum stuff, - quite the opposite really.
I totally agree with this. That's why I started the Quickstart for non-English Users, which should be included in the welcome mail for new users.
J_N wrote:
1.) I believe volunteering in general is important in the US and also the UK. In Austria, not so much. I don't know about other countries, but if volunteering is not ingrained in your culture, less people will go looking for volunteering opportunities.
I don't think that's the problem. Just look at the 10 non-English Wikipedias with more than one million articles each.
The librivox page should be multilingual, including the registration process.
German is behind English the mostly spoken language at LibriVox. I would appreciate a german (sub)-forum and I think that many people who read in other frequently used languages at LV would be happy to have a forum in their native language, too.
I learned English at school (about 45 years ago) but it is laborious for me to read longer threads in the forum, and I don't understand many of the colloquial terms, and writing in English is even much more laborious for me. So I mostly refrain from answering or writing in the forum.
I sometimes thought of writing a description how I personally record (technical equipment, settings in Audacity, noise-cleaning and compression, Auto-Hotkey-scripts and so on), and at the same time I am interested to hear how other Librivoxers do that - but as English is the requested language I give that up, because it is too difficult for me. I think I'm not alone at this point.
May be a subforum must be specially moderated to avoid crosspostings - but I actually don't know who could do that.
I think Wikis in other languages could be useful, too. There are few articles in some languages, but already the "How To Become A Book Coordinator" is available only in English. If there was a german Wiki, I would volunteer there and translate or write some articles. I thought of doing so some years ago, but then it was said that the Wiki should be made mostly new when the new software and website came. Now writing this I ask myself whether I should begin writing german Wiki-pages, but I think that this is a bigger project and should be coordinated in some way.
The old LibriVox-homepage had a german start-page. This has gone with the relaunch of the site. All german recording say in the intro-disclaimer "weitere Informationen und Hinweise zur Beteiligung an diesem Projekt gibt es bei librivox.org", but when someone goes to the LibriVox-homepage and isn't familiar with understanding English, he will leave the site disappointedly and is lost as a possible volunteer. So I think a german (or other languages too, of course) startpage to welcome people in their own language would be very helpful to find new volunteers. It shouldn't take too much effort to write few translations of the most important pages (e.g. "Volunteer for LibriVox", FAQ) and to put links to them onto the original startpage.
OK, so far there have been some suggestions that could be fairly quickly implemented (I think):
Librivox main page in different languages
LOTE subforum - but not just for the projects, there should be a place for general discussion as well; like Karlsson said: some people don't feel comfortable enough with English to participate in the other forums, and they too, should have a place where they can ask questions or exchange ideas.
bilingual language tags in the catalogue
Hokuspokus, what do the other admins say? (I assume, there is a discussion ongoing in that secret place that is the admin-only area )
Julia - Introverts, unite! Seperately... in your own homes.
Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. ― Susan Cain
Just now I noticed that all the alternative language versions of the Main Page disappeared. I'm not sure why but I thought that at least some of them were still available after the revamp. Are all the LOTE Main Page translations gone forever or can they be retrieved?
As for the subfora, I agree that well-represented languages can get their own, but I think it's essential that lesser-used-on-LV languages should be made visible too. Otherwise the current state will be perpetuated forever, with some better-represented languages having more visibility and new volunteers and others struggling to get that one group project done. How about an "Other languages" subforum (at least for the projects if not for discussions) with the list of languages available in a visible place and constantly updated?
Last edited by Piotrek81 on November 9th, 2014, 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Maybe we could subdivide them by something like "Germanic", "Romance" (where we seem to have the most projects) ... which would give the languages with very few projects a better chance of being seen? although, I am not sure about national sensibilities... someone might be offended if their language is put into a larger category?
Julia - Introverts, unite! Seperately... in your own homes.
Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. ― Susan Cain
I like the idea of one subforum (for general discussion in all languages) maybe just below the "New Here? Introduce Yourself!", which is quite high up in the forum page so hopefully quite visible, where there would also be included (stickied?) threads with links to projects for a particular language, as Peter suggests.
But then I wonder what the title of this subforum would be and in what language!
Rapunzelina wrote:
But then I wonder what the title of this subforum would be and in what language!
Good question I think it could be just names of languages in such a form as the users are accustomed to, e.g "Francais, Deutch, Espańol, Polski, Italiano....". If it were to be a subforum for wider discussion not just strictly about projects we could use the word "welcome" in various languages.
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J_N wrote:Maybe we could subdivide them by something like "Germanic", "Romance" (where we seem to have the most projects) ... which would give the languages with very few projects a better chance of being seen? although, I am not sure about national sensibilities... someone might be offended if their language is put into a larger category?
i personally think we should start with one single LOTE forum and then split off languages if they "get too big"
i dont think you can get offended by having your language included in LOTE - id more likely feel lonely in a forum in a language that i have all to myself if i decide to record in turkish (i think i am at the moment the only speaker )
i personally see no problem with a second LOTE forum that is for discussions (of all sorts), it would be good to give non-english speakers a voice in discussions (which they do not have if they cannot participate in the discussions going on in english).
Piotrek81 wrote:Just now I noticed that all the alternative language versions of the Main Page disappeared. I'm not sure why but I thought that at least some of them were still available after the revamp. Are all the LOTE Main Page translations gone forever or can they be retrieved?
The text on most if not all the pages in the new catalog has been fairly significantly edited, so new translations would be needed. The old pages are obsolete, but probably still accessible. I don't think we deleted them, but they are no longer part of the current catalog pages section in wordpress. You could probably find them using the wayback machine at archive.org. I pulled up an old catalog page I needed that way recently.
In case you wonder where the non English group project went you wanted to join - there is a completely new forum Readers Wanted: Languages other than English here: viewforum.php?f=60
Between Readers Wanted: Dramatic Works and Readers Found.
Most non English group projects will move there in the next few days.
)
although, I am not sure about national sensibilities... someone might be offended if their language is put into a larger category? 
I think it could be just names of languages in such a form as the users are accustomed to, e.g "Francais, Deutch, Espańol, Polski, Italiano....". If it were to be a subforum for wider discussion not just strictly about projects we could use the word "welcome" in various languages.
)