Still no supervision in the French and Spanish forums?

Who is it up to Chris, do you know? That seems to be part of the problem, no-one knows who to make a request to.

One would think that the persons responsible of the forum would visit it from time to time...

I agree that we need some native language hosts.

Unfortunately, it's not up to me.

The problem is that most of the members in the French forum fail to find the new topic button. Indeed, in many online forums, a "create new discussion" button is available inside a thread, but not here, the only links are "post a reply", or "back to topic list"(and this one, only in the first post).

It might be a very welcome addition in the US forums. In the French forum, it is very common to find, in a 10 posts thread, 3 different unrelated topics! I do think that native speaking hosts should be appointed in those forums.

> the final reponsibility for action (or inaction) has to lie with the appointed hosts

By that I mean specific zapping of anything there brought to the attention of the hosts active in the rest of the forums.

I have to say that by far the best moderation is self-moderation by peer pressure but I do accept that it doesn't always work. It's to the credit of members there if it does manage to function to some extent, without a specific host being active.

Oz, I wasn't asking for any action from you -unfortunately, Neil Keller's previous efforts produced no results, maybe showing that action from well intended moderators/hosts doesn't take us anywhere. I was just wishing you had in this case one of your reputedly brilliant ideas for solving crisis. We are in need of some help and have not obtained any in many, many months.

By the way, you say that

>... the final reponsibility for action (or inaction) has to lie with the appointed hosts.

but the sad truth is that there are none in the French and the Spanish forums. As I have said many times, we have to moderate ourselves, and this is only part of the problem. The other -and major- is Adobe Fenwick.

> Trust people like Pierre and myself when we do post here because we feel that some action beyond our powers is needed.

Of course it would be my inclination to do so, Claudio, though the final reponsibility for action (or inaction) has to lie with the appointed hosts.

> It would make a most welcome Christmas present for French and Spanish speaking people who do not know any English.

Well, let's see... sadly a full resolution to this is not within my modest power but once again enquiries about the matter will be made further up.

Hello Oz,

I'm glad for your interest in this subject, which I thank and hope it lasts.

For forums without moderators or hosts who speak the language, such as the French and Spanish ones, I can visualize only two ways of dealing with troublesome issues:

1. Do nothing and let the natives to sort things out as well as they can. This seems to be the norm nowadays, and in most cases it works surprisingly well in the Spanish forums.

2. Trust people like Pierre and myself when we do post here because we feel that some action beyond our powers is needed. For my part at least, this has worked when I have posted as a last resource, but there seem to be some people who do not trust me, which is not pleasant, as you can see in previous posts in this same thread.

There is of course a third way: to deal directly with JC, but I somehow feel he doesn't want in the least to have to act as moderator or host. Not to mention that he seems to feel inhibited to do much under the present and far from clear circumstances, with Adobe Fenwick officially in charge but doing nothing at all except blocking any possible action.

You have repeatedly shown in these forums to have good ideas to solve complicated problems. I wish you had one for this particular issue. It would make a most welcome Christmas present for French and Spanish speaking people who do not know any English.

> First, I'm glad that there is a way for someone here to nuke some posts.

I imagine that other hosts have the technical power as well as myself but it is a bit tricky to be quite sure of one's ground when dealing with a language with which one is not very familiar. Hence the post to which you kindly drawn attention has been not so much nuked as parked out of sight!

I was half ironic, half serious in the second part of my message.
First, I'm glad that there is a way for someone here to nuke some posts. But, then, I really wonder if someone "here" still has admin powers to the localized ones, to do the suggested actions