Still no supervision in the French and Spanish forums?

[Claudio González]

I forgot that threads are extremely short lived in this forum, and the discussion that really began within an unrelated thread, here

Pierre Courtejoie, "Shouldn't these links be removed as soon as possible?" #8, 27 Feb 2005 1:21 pm

has already gone to the Archives, where it is in danger of going to the limbus in the near future.

I still think that this is an important issue, and still wait to see any improvement in those forums showing that the messages by Pierre and myself on the subject have not fallen in a void. Although we both value and thank Neil Keller for his attempts to get some reaction in higher quarters, his attempts have unfortunately been a failure.

It is pathetic to see pages in the forums in Spanish with templates that are written in a mixture of English and a very bad Spanish. It is even more pathetic that JC stopped more than a year ago feeling authorized to introduce any non trivial change to improve this situation. The worst part is however to feel that there is no one listening, or at least willing to admit that there might be problems in those forums.

I feel very disappointed.

[_P__Boone_]

Well, here it is.

You'd think that a company as big as Adobe would realize that a huge percentage of people on the Earth do not speak English.

You'd think that they would realize that forums out of control don't give a good impression.

You'd think that they would realize that they have a potential gold mine of non English speaking customers who will benefit immensely from these help forums, as English speaking customers have, if only the company would provide enough support to their products and customers, as to allow someone to hold the reins in forums that are already set up, but not functioning well.

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

[_Nigel_Moore_]

There are many other ways in which Adobe fails its non-US customers, the forum is probably the least of them.

[D__McCahill]

That brings up a possible reason for the problem ... Adobe contracts overseas sales out, and I think support is supposed to be a part of the deal. That may make Adobe reluctant to do much for supporting the foreign customer.

Of course, both French (Quebec) and Spanish (US and Guam) are significantly large markets that should be supported by the US side, since they are North American sales.

[Claudio González]

Hello Paz,

I would think Adobe is perfectly aware that English is far from being the most spoken language in the world, but that's not the point for large corporations; only where they have the most sales. In that, Spanish speakers seem to loose by far.

I would also think it doesn't worry Adobe too much whatever impression a Forum subdivided in five subforums totalling 840 topics in all since middle 2004 may give. Even more so if the number of people who come to voice their impressions in English in this forum is so small.

And I would also think, based on what I see in the Spanish forums, that they most definitely don't see any gold mine in potentially satisfied Spanish speaking customers. Maybe because of what I say in the first paragraph of this message.

Thank you for supporting our cause; there are not many of you.

[Claudio González]

Hello Don,

The relationship between Adobe USA and their subsidiaries around the world is almost a complete mistery for me. Except for the fact that, at least in my country, you'll find a non negligible number of people such as me who at times think it would be better to have none. So you may be right.

You got me there: I had never thought of the native Spanish speakers who are USA and Canada residents, although I would say I have seen only one posting in the Spanish forums. Perhaps the ones who buy Adobe products are by now fully bilingual and don't even know there are forums in Spanish.

[Claudio González]

This is my periodic -no longer monthly; too discouraged by now- bringing of this topic upper in the list before it gets buried in the Archives to die there without anyone noticing.

No change whatsoever since my last posting. As a matter of fact, no change whatsoever since my first posting on the subject on February 27, 2005, in a thread that has by now disappeared. Correction: it was stated officially here that there are no hosts/moderators in the forums in Spanish, something that wasn't too difficult to guess.

Many thanks to all of those who have at least offered moral support.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Your tenacity is admirable, Claudio. I've just about given up on the Spanish forums. It just seems that only Windows users ever show up there, and even those are rare.

[Claudio González]

Maybe it was and no longer is, Ramón. It is tiring to have not only to substain one's cause, but also to waste time responding unfounded attacks from people that don't even try to understand what you say. You may have noticed that I no longer bother to even acknowledge receipt of the garbage some individuals dedicate to me.

It would seem that this particular windmill is winning me the battle. Maybe Pierre is also feeling the same, which would be a real pity. Could it be, as I said not so clearly before, that our services are being declined/ignored because we are not charging anything for them?

[PECourtejoie]

Ah, thanks, Claudio.
I feel that more and more french-speaking users are using the resource. Unfotunately, a lot of posts are still in the wrong forum...

I noticed recently that the text description of the Adobe site on top of the French forum is in Spanish... (productos, soluciones, soporte, comprar)

I still think that maintaining some FAQs over there might be useful, once the forums are organized by topic (and this task is increasingly difficult each day) Halas, I'm almost sure that nothing would happen, as in some day in the future, the ex-Macromedia and current Adobe forums will be merged (Unless the work done and content posted can be ported to the hopefully new interface).

Too bad what a waste of potentially free value added for Adobe, economy in customer support, etc.

[D__McCahill]

> I noticed recently that the text description of the Adobe site on top of the French forum is in Spanish... (productos, soluciones, soporte, comprar)

Those are graphics Pierre. Had you been in the Spanish forums recently before seeing them this way? It is possible that your browser was caching the old images, and showing those.

They are French in my browser.

[Claudio González]

Hello, Pierre.

You sound a lot less disenchanted than I feel. Good for you and for the forums in French.

I took a quick tour through the French forums, and didn't see anything in Spanish; the items you mention are in French in almost every window (Firefox 1.5.0.1, Mac OS 10.3.8. I had to add this to get rid of an unwanted smiley) . However, I did notice that:

1. If I click on the Signet button, I get a page with everything in English.

2. If I click on the Modifier les abonnements button, I'm taken to a window with a Products - Solutions - ... row of buttons (in English), and I am informed that "You are logged in as ..."

3. If i click the Centre de Messages button, and in the new window I click on the Chercher dans forums button, I get a third window in English and with an error message.

These are the sort of things that JC and I were slowly but steadily correcting in the Forums in Spanish before the Adobe Fenwick takeover. It's a pity that, apart from taking power and preventing everything but the most minor changes, they have done nothing for our forums in nearly two years. They must be really powerful for achieving this in spite of isolated efforts from some hosts/moderators.

By the way, I noticed that you managed to get in the main page a sticky note with guidances for newcomers. I wasn't so lucky; mine went to Adobe Fenwick without ever coming back or even been acknowledged, so there isn't one in the Spanish forums. Naively, I though that if they didn't like mine, they would produce a better one in a couple of days; I never imagined they would be unable to do so in a couple of years.

[PECourtejoie]

Sorry, lack of correct terminology rendered my message hard to understand: I was speaking about the yellow "tool tips" (don't remember the proper terminology for websites- description?) that you get when you mouseover the buttons.

Yes, Adobe France should have "somebody" translate those pages, Claudio. I have not seen any complaints about it so far, but still, it looks like a half baked meal. I wish to have had the time to do as much as you did...

[D__McCahill]

I see it now Pierre. I didn't rest my mouse over the graphics long enough to see those ... and apparently neither did the coder at Adobe.

Shall we start a gambling pool to bet on how long it takes before the pages are fixed?

:)

[Claudio González]

A couple of decades?

[Claudio González]

Sorry, I didn't have time when I wrote my message above.

As I understand things, the forums in Spanish are still using some old templates that were created before the ones now used in the forums in English. If the same thing happens in the forums in French, and Adobe Fenwick keeps on blocking changes in these forums, chances are those pages will never be fixed. Two years with no sign of any kind of revision -not even such an obvious and easy one as ensuring that everything is written in the same language!!!- is a very long time, even by Adobe standards.

[PECourtejoie]

Claudio, I went to an Expo in Paris, and tried another approach with some Adobe reps. We'll see what it gives...

[Claudio González]

Hello, Pierre, congratulations, I see you haven't lost hope yet. Let's trust your reps are more succesfull than the mods/hosts who have tried to help us here. (I don't feel like looking at the whole thread to check, but I am almost sure that there has been only one. I used the plural just in case ... ).

[Jacob Bugge]

Back to the top. Hi Claudio, hi Pierre.

[Claudio González]

Thanks, Jacob. I was going to do it tomorrow.

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Claudio. A month and a half ago I became worried, and I was just about to post when you did.

[Claudio González]

No, it's you who is welcome, Jacob. Although the subject of this thread does not affect you, you are willing to at least help in avoiding its going down to the Archives. And the reason for the longer time in my bringing it up again last time is that I am indeed feeling discouraged. I would have expected that after nearly a year of postings, Pierre and I would have been allowed to continue in improving our forums as we were doing before the Adobe Fenwick takeover. Sadly, Adobe Fenwick doesn't even respond to hosts/moderators addressing them directly. Or to JC for that matter. Curious, to say the least.

[Jacob Bugge]

Googling Adobe Fenwick, I came across this remarkable web page: http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts2001/macromedia_adobe/20011019com.asp

[Claudio González]

Hello Jacob,

I find it difficult to follow what lawyers write in my own language, so I didn't attempt to read in detail the document in the link you gave. I did, however, understand what it all was about. I don't remember having read anything about this legal battle, so I don't know if anything else happened afterwards, or if there was some sort of agreement, or a final veredict. Do you? Anyone?

As to Adobe Fenwick, it is a private joke in this thread, and I tend to forget that not everyone coming here knows about it. It all really started in the thread from which this one originated, gone to the limbus by now.

Perhaps you know by now that the French and the Spanish forums were taken over nearly two years ago by a still undisclosed Adobe branch, and that's when our problems started. It was even rumored that it was the Ireland branch (I am not joking). Well, the point is that at one stage, and joking about this secrecy, Ramón suggested that it was the Adobe branch in the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. This is a small ficticious central european country appearing in a most hilarious movie called The Mouse that Roared, featuring Peter Sellers in several roles. From that time onwards, several of us talk about Adobe Fenwick when refering to the undisclosed Adobe branch which in two years has done nothing for the French and Spanish forum except for preventing any improvement.

Sorry you had to use Google to try to understand what I was talking about.

[Kath-H]

The article is from 2001. All sorted.

[Claudio González]

Thanks, Kath, I had noticed that the article is five years old, that's why I found it strange that I don't recall having read anything about this matter. But then, my memory is not what it used to be ... and I am not reading as much as I did.