Hub-specific forum thoughts

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Pilots,

Based on a post I've just read from the old forum, I'm thinking that allowing "native language" as well as English in the hub-specific topics might be a nice way to encourage community within the community.

BUT

Doing so is going to have to come with a "cost", and that cost will be moderation and/or translation. So, we'd need MT associates (moderators) to police native language posts in the hub topics, and also to provide (if necessary) translations of posts for those that don't speak the hub's native language - assuming the author doesn't provide a translation in the first instance.

Votes and opinions welcomed.

[EHM-2029 Sotiris]

IMHO,

it's too early to do this yet.
My principle fear is that we're not exactly a cohesive bunch as we are.
If we start fragmenting further then we may never reach a critical mass.

Let's try and get together here first and if we're so many that we can support 'sub-groups' then by all means do it.
Again, just MHO.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Basically I like the idea, although as you said, moderation required. I think we should go for nationality groups instead of HUB groups though, if we made it at all.

Once I made a quick discovery among Hungarian pilots, if we had a Hungarian board (with me as moderator) wether they would be more frequent forum visitors ? That time we were 7-8 Hungarians being 5th largest group of nationality among pilots, if I remember well. It was interesting to hear from them, that they do not write much on the forums because low English knowledge, but because they did not have much to say. They were happy with flying as much as they could afford and meanwhile silently red the Forums. In this particular group the English language was not a big problem, and they said although it would be fun to have a Hungarian board, it is not a simple guarantee they will be more frequent poster here...  Maybe it is different at other groups...

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

I am with Sotiris on this one: not yet.

Being Dutch, I got the English language poored in right after potty training, so there's no language barrier for me. I think this holds for most Dutch "aviators". It even gets to a point where I sit down in the evening and wonder whether that article I read this afternoon was in English or in Dutch - and I don't remember.
Maybe when the community grows to such proportions that we start to see a Dutch getto emerging, the time is right to separate them

Basically what I am saying is that creating 10 divisions within a 100 people (active members order of magnitude) group will end you up with maybe one or two active sub-groups. One of which is probably the English speaking anyway

Just my thoughts. Feel free to disregard any of it...

[EHM-2430 Mike]

Eric-Jan,

I totally agree with you, I'am also dutch(16 Years old and still going to secondary) and i Think dutchman can speak, write and read very well. so there is no language barriare for us.

Mike

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Just to give you a current snapshot of pilot nationalities in order (registered pilots):

UK - 65
Portugal - 16
USA - 14
Netherlands - 8
Belgium - 6
Australia - 6
Germany - 6
Norway - 5
Hungary - 5
Switzerland - 5
Canada - 4
...the rest

You can see, English is dominating, then Portuguese, and also there is a quite big German community. The rest are probably too few. If we stick to the original questions, pilots are divided among HUBs in larger groups.

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

Nice and enlightening statistics!

And yes, the original question was not for a subdivision per language, but per hub. You are right.

But how would that work with , say , the EHAM hub? There's 8 Dutch guys, so they will most probably "belong" to that hub. Let's count in the Belgian force of 6 people to that hub too (assuming they speak Dutch, not French ) But what if (hypothetically) 2 more Portugese guys and three Hungarians also chose EHAM to be their hub, for whatever reason. What would become the Hub-language? There's really not that many people around in the world that speak Dutch ... or Portugese ... probably even less that speak Hungarian ...
So the "per-hub-one-language subdivision" probably would not work either. You would end up with a subdivision per language, irrespective of the hubs, anyway.

So that's more or less the reasoning behind why I picked up on your "nationality groups" idea (thus leaving the hub groups idea) without giving it much further explanation. It did swing the thread off-topic a bit, though.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Of course, you are right in case of EHAM! But you can be sure that 90% of Portuguese guys are registered under LPPT. I think in that case a Portuguese sub-forum may helped the life In case of Zürich, we could have a German language base, and maybe Greek for LGAV, although there are multiple nationalities there too...

[EHM-0654 Murray]

TBH, looking at the stats you left for us earlier Robert, the VA is mostly UK English, and by quite a margin. It might be best to maintain the status quo for now and not worry about "native language", at least for the immediate future.

[EHM-2483 Marcus]

I also agree to have English as the only language here. As a German I am definitely far away from speaking / writing perfect English but it still good enough to post and read messages. Allowing other languages will in my opinion not result in any additional benefit but would just slow down the communication and separate us from each other.

Marcus