Still no supervision in the French and Spanish forums?

>it would seem that, at least initially, there will be just one forum per language

Until that changes, I doubt there will be many contributors. :|

My dear friends,

The migration to the new forums has been repeatedly announced for "next April", and that next April is already here. I therefore think this is a good time to put an end to this very long and almost completely fruitless campaign.

During this time, and especially after the impending changes were announced, I have learnt many things about the way that the forums in Spanish developed to what they have been since I started my campaign. Now I understand why Adobe Spain has never fostered them, which in turn explains at least partially the low level of participation of Spanish speaking users of Adobe products in them. In contrast, participation in the ex-Macromedia forums in Spanish is considerably higher, although this will probably drop to very low levels because almost everyone accesses them using NNTP, which will be dropped.

The forces pushing for the final merge of both sets of Adobe forums are indeed strong, and they have changed completely the circumstances that gave birth to my campaign. It now seems almost certain that all localized forums will survive the fusion, although they will experience major changes. For example, it would seem that, at least initially, there will be just one forum per language, with no subdivisions in subforums. It would also seem that all messages already posted using NNTP will be imported with the single screen name of "Newsreade_user". Such things are likely to make the new localized forums difficult to use, to put it mildly. It is yet to be seen if they will manage to survive the changes.

However, not everything is lost. JC and his team have been most receptive to suggestions, objections, complaints and the like that I and others have posted regarding the forums in Spanish in the forum for commenting the new forums. Most important, there is some hope, however small, that the forums in Spanish may in the long run benefit from the forthcoming earthquake.

My final words in this thread are words of thanks: my very heartful and grateful thanks to everyone who has offered a helping hand in these over three years of battle. They are too many to try to name without running the risk of forgetting more than a few, which would be unfair. Without them, this discussion would have died a natural death years ago.

Thank you again, and I hope we will continue being in touch.

So we did make it into the real new year.

However, the future seems rather hopeless, unless John is joking.

I have just been through a period with a workload passing 100 hours per week. I have watched this thread every day until Saturday, though, but not during the days of final rush.

I still hope there is hope.

Don, this independent forum/whatever started as a FreeHand forum in this small underdeveloped country at the bottom of the world, long before I started visiting these forums, and it's still very active:

http://www.mmug.cl/index2.php

It has gained a well deserved reputation and has many regulars from other countries. The site even survived the virtual disappearance of Freehand and the complete disappearnce of Macromedia...

I mention this because I have the impression that in the ex MM forums there is a largish and very united community of users who enjoy their lack of moderators, and although they like the products they use, have a very negative opinion of Adobe itself, specially because of what they see as a lack of loyalty with their clients. Let's not forget that forums such as this

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/categories.cfm?forumid=39&catid=220&entercat=y

are full to the brim with justified complaints, mainly for the quality of service, although many of them talk simply of lack of service.

> I have read several messages at the other side proposing to open their own forum/whatever and continue living happily with their newsreader access and without moderation of any kind. The notion seems to be catching up

More power to them if they can do it. This was talked about before (the last fiasco) in some of the sections I visit. The problem is in getting the mass of users. And even if a critical mass is achieved, it is hard to maintain, because new users are harder to come by (to replace those who drop out for one reason or another). The fact that this place is Adobe's results in a steady flow of new users, who occasionally become regulars.

> It's going to be hard to have technical expertize for every program in every language.

good point. wonder if english is one of them...

I have read several messages at the other side propossing to open their own forum/whatever and continue living happily with their newsreader access and without moderation of any kind. The notion seems to be catching up.

>nobody knows if the modified forums in English are going to be utilized by anyone. People from "the other side" are not going to be easily convinced to use conventional browsers, and people from "this side" are not too happy with what little is known for sure so far

True... but since the only alternative would be for someone to rent server space and set up their own forum(s) I will GUESS that anyone who wants to ask a user to user question in an Adobe supplied forum is going to use the new software

> Not certain what you mean by "the other side"

I would say it's fairly common in the Comments... forums to call the ex-Adobe forums "this side", and the ex-Macromedia ones, "the other side". So no, I wasn't refering to any new group of Adobe Community Experts, and I didn't notice you wrote "Community" so I mistakenly read "Certified".

> I don't know the languages, but the new forum area DOES seem to have announcements in non-English languages

Yes, the existence of these announcements has already been commented. One curious fact about them: if you click on the equivalent of the Discuss the upcoming changes to the Adobe Forums here folder, you will be taken to the discussion in English. Except in the one in Spanish, which has its own discussion with just two participants so far (one of them is me)..., one of the reasons of my discouragement.

>That does not, of course, mean that any new forums in any of those languages (if there ARE new forums) is going to be utilized by anyone

Pardon, but I see no reason to expect new localized forums. I would expect the existing ones to be fused and modified in the same way that these will be. And, for that matter, nobody knows if the modified forums in English are going to be utilized by anyone. People from "the other side" are not going to be easily convinced to use conventional browsers, and people from "this side" are not too happy with what little is known for sure so far.