Still no supervision in the French and Spanish forums?

[Claudio_González1]

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.

[Jacob Bugge]

Claudio,

I believe a translation here would help the OP get some help.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/434077?tstart=0

This is a case of No Spanish supervision of forums.

[Claudio_González1]

Hi Jacob.

I have had much less time than usual to come to these forums, and have been very worried by what is happening in them (see "The purpose of this forum" thread), so I have just seen your two last messages here. It is now rather late on Sunday morning, so there is nothing useful I could  possibly do now. I will retake both messages tomorrow.

Thanks for caring.

[Claudio_González1]

Jacob, the poster was one of those poor souls who never find their way back. He never replied, and he is still shown with that one and only post...

[Jacob Bugge]

Claudio, maybe more than anything we are rescuers old lost souls here, maybe more than ever, and maybe with more difficulty than ever.

I am saddened by the loss of friends, too.

Speaking of which: Pierre, are you there?

[Claudio_González1]

Jacob, I feel very sad when I see what some people have made of this Forum Comments forum. I recognize everyone's right to complain about the things they don't like in this new version of the forums -you and I have done it much more than once. However, I absolutely disapprove the belligerency Buko and others are showing in every message, as well as the mocking tone of several others. I was taught as a child that violence generates more violence, and this has clearly happened here. The verbal violence these people are displaying cannot in any way help in obtaining the changes they and us would like to see; on the contrary. I remember having read rather recently a bitter message by JC defending what he has been doing, something I don't recall having ever seen before in all the years I have been visiting these forums. Unfortunately, it has become impossible to maintain a rational discussion on anything, because these people are littering every single thread. Sad.

Yes, we are losing very valuable people every day, and this explosive atmosphere will certainly not help to retain those who are thinking on the possibility of leaving. As for Pierre, according to his profile, he was still around ten days ago, but I haven't seen him for quite some time in any of the forums I frequent.

http://forums.adobe.com/people/PECourtejoie

Coming back to topic for a while, the situation in the forums in Spanish is pathetic. There is only one forum, for all products, including the ex MM ones. People who frequented the latter used NNTP, and they have not been around since the implementation of this new version, with a few exceptions who post about once a month. Finding the forum, for someone not in the know, is almost impossible: the link in the site of Adobe Spain takes one to the list of forums in English. So the number of newcomers with questions in almost nil. We are getting at most a few posts per week.

To be frank, the idea of not coming back to these forums has crossed my mind several times in the last few weeks.

[Jacob Bugge]

I presume there is no good news here either, Claudio.

[Claudio_González1]

Unfortunately, no, Jacob. I'll write longer there

when I get up (I have just woken up); and last

night I was so tired that I'm afraid I mixed Phos

with Graf in some of my comments, and I want to

find out that, and make the necessary corrections

if necessary. Which isn't easy with a non working

search engine.

All the best,

Claudio.

>I presume there is no good news here either, Claudio.

>

[Jacob Bugge]

I am relieved that you are not yet giving up entirely, Claudio.

[Claudio_González1]

I know the message below is extremely long, so I would like to ask humbly anyone opening it to bear with me and read if in full. Many thanks to those who do.

Why am I finally giving up?

The OP of this post is dated August 6, 2005 and my message is really a continuation of a discussion that began February 27 of the same year in another thread. It is true that my efforts for trying to improve the forums in Spanish had started much earlier than that, but I will ignore that previous phase, as it was not public, and involved some unpleasant incidents, of which being excluded of a non-working private group for quoting its coordinator to explain why it wasn't working, was the most unpleasant.

I have been treading mills for my whole long life, so not getting any results in four years wasn't as discouraging as it may seem to some. However, the chaos introduced in all the Adobe forums by the new UI that we have been imposed by force and without listening to our complaints and requests for improvements has transformed the forums in Spanish in a completely useless appendix of the forums in English. Eighteen posts in the last four weeks, and only two in the past week, are certainly not an indication of a healthy, active forum for a language that has a larger number of native speakers than English. And my sad conviction is that, if in months Adobe has not been willing, or has not been able, to do anything visible to diminish the chaos in the forums in English, it is really more than Quixotic to expect it to do anything to rescue the forums in Spanish from their at present inevitable doom. Certainly not if it has neglected and ignored them completely for years.

One powerful reason for foreseeing doom is this: all Adobe products, including all the ex-Macromedia ones, have now been housed in just one single forum in Spanish, without even a couple of sub forums to make it easier to find one's way through the different topics. Considering the really large number of Adobe products, it would be insane to consider this is a good or practical idea, or that it can contribute in any way to improve those Forums (that Forum nowadays).

However, the main reason for not having any faith in seeing the Spanish forum grow and bloom is that it seems to have been closed to newcomers, specially if they do not know any English. It is the newcomers who feed any forum and keep it alive; without them, any forum becomes just a nice meeting place for old timers. Although it is true that many of them keep asking the same old questions, it's the talented ones who bring the challenging new questions that, especially in technical forums such as these, open interesting, far reaching and enlightening discussions that make all the participants understand better how the programs they use work.

I invite you to consider how a Spanish-speaking user of an Adobe product who never heard of these forums is supposed to obtain help in them. (In what follows I will speak of a "he" not because of my machismo, but just to keep the text simple). His obvious first step in trying to obtain any kind of help would be to visit one of the Adobe sites in Spanish, such as Adobe Spain. He will find there a button labeled "Soporte" (support) with a dropdown menu where he may or may not notice a "Foros" (forums) link. Assuming that he does, and that he knows one can obtain free and quick help if forums, if he clicks on it, he will be taken after a considerably long time to a page that is fully in English, as it is in fact the index page of these forums, http://forums.adobe.com/index.jspa.

Obviously, he is in trouble, but we will assume he is not one to be easily defeated. So, as his question is related to Photoshop, he clicks on the blue Ps icon, only to be taken to another page fully in English. And the story will repeat itself if he tries to proceed any further. So if he finally finds his way to the right forum, he will be faced with just the two following alternatives: he either gives up, or he posts his question in Spanish -provided he can get through the login procedure for first visitors.

Assume now that he still doesn't give up (or that his question was related to one of the Adobe products not having special icons). He may notice there is an INTERNATIONAL FORUMS link down in the non visible part of the page, which perhaps looks to him sufficiently close to FOROS INTERNACIONALES as to guess its meaning and click on it. He will find four countries listed there (with their names in English!): France, Germany, Japan, and Spain. He may be learned enough to know that Spain is English for España, and click on that button in relief. However, he might not be, or live in one of the many other countries where Spanish is the official language, and so think the Spain button is not for him.

Well, let's now assume that, by whatever means, he finally manages to press the Spain button.  Marvel of marvels! At long last, a page with a large fractions of its texts fully in Spanish! But wait... there are some disturbing factors. "Last post" (in English) is from "5 days ago" (again in English; and I am quoting from the page where the above process took me some minutes ago, which is the opening page of the forum in Spanish). And the 7th thread, from "1 week ago" has 0 "Replies" (in English). Not really very promising.

At this point, exasperated by the number of things on the page he can't decipher, he may notice a button at the top that reads "United States (change)" (all in English), and he may be clever enough to guess this may be a way to get everything written in Spanish. So he hopefully clicks on it, only to be taken to a new page fully in English where he is supposed to know what he has to do. Assuming he goes through the long list of places - languages (fully in English), he may be clever enough to notice there are only two entries associated with "Spanish" (quite a different word from Español!). If he chooses one of them, he will be taken out of the forum and to one of the Adobe Store sites -for example, back to Adobe Spain.

Well, never mind, you think, at least he will now have everything in Spanish. Unfortunately, not so. Assuming he manages to find his was back to the forum in Spanish, on getting there he will see that everything is just the same as before. Even the button in the top row still reads "United States (change).

Now I would like to ask the patient reader who has followed me to this point the following question. Assume for a few seconds that Adobe was a German company, with all original versions of its products in German, with an excellent set of sites and forums in German, and you were trying for the first time to get help in English about how to use one of its products. Would you survive through the process I have just described if you change "English" to "German" and "Spanish" to "English"?

One last thought. In the above, I was careful not to say anything about the extremely abusive price policy Adobe applies outside the USA, simply because this is a problem affecting every such country, and not only Spanish speaking ones. But it is another factor to consider.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Your post takes me in an entirely different direction, Claudio, namely the choice of languages in which to offer forums.  This applies not only to Adobe, of course, and it underscores the difficulties encountered by corporate or governmental entities dealing with customers in a multilingual world.

Let's see… Not being privy to Adobe's sales figures broken down by region or by language, I'd be faced with the task of choosing languages to service based strictly on the number of speakers of the language on this planet.

Going by said numbers, the four most "popular" languages would be Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish and English—in that order.

Now, how do we justify serving Spanish speakers when we leave out Mandarin and Hindi?  How does French even get on the list?  Or German?  Merely by virtue of some European-centric tradition that is no longer a given in the mainstream?

Are we even sure that Adobe has more sales in the French-speaking world than in Portuguese?  Or Italian?

I'm not advocating any position whatsoever, I'm just thinking out loud and wondering…

Claudio wrote:

Assume for a few seconds that Adobe was a German company, with all original versions of its products in German, with an excellent set of sites and forums in German, and you were trying for the first time to get help in English about how to use one of its products. Would you survive through the process I have just described if you change "English" to "German" and "Spanish" to "English"?

Well I. for one, would.   Hehehehe… 

[Claudio_González1]

Well I. for one, would.   Hehehehe…

Ramón, you don't count in this. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if you also did even when substituting "English" by "Japanese"

Coming back to topic, I completely agree in that providing services in other languages cannot be based on the number of people who are native speakers of each language. I am also fully aware that commercial companies have to satisfy their stockholders, and see nothing wrong in that per se. And it would be childish and grossly unfair to forget the rights of speakers of Mandarin and Hindi. All I said was that 18 messages in the last month and only 2 in the previous week are not signs of an active and healthy forum for such a widespread language. By this, I wasn't blaming Adobe, but Spanish speaking users of Adobe products. Although for reasons already explained, I fail to understand how a newcomer could possibly get to post a message in the forum in Spanish.

Just in case I have been misunderstood, I have never asked for a set of forums in Spanish like the ones in English, with all their divisions and subdivisions. No, it would be a waste. As you imply, the importance attached to localized forums depends heavily, as it most probably should, on the size of the maket share of that language. And Spanish speaking users of software, specially Latin American ones, have gained a reputation for being pirates, which may or may nor be true. It would be interesting to know Adobe's statistics about the number of copies sold per language; we could have some surprises. Regardless, my hunch is that sales of Spanish versions of Adobe products are on the low side of their scale.

So, then, what has been my battle, why did I fight it for so long, and why am I surrendering now? Well, I stumbled upon the forums in Spanish almost by accident, probably in late 2003 or early 2004, and was horrified by the mixture in their fixed text of a very few phrases in more or less correct Spanish, too many in horrible Spanglish, and high number directly in English. I was also very worried by the extremely low number of participants. So, being a born mill treader (sorry if I invented this expression), I have been struggling all these years to correct both things.

I was very successful in the early beginnings, when with a very willing and efficient JC,  we changed a not negligible amount of the fixed text to a more decent Spanish (my own) without telling anyone. Sadly, this process ended with the takeover of the Spanish forums by "Adobe Fenwick", a hit of a name we owe to you. Then came this shadow committee that never worked (and I think never existed) from which I was vetoed after several months, and then... nothing, nothing at all for months that turned to years.

Until the present debacle. As I explained above, we ended with "all the cats in the same bag" (please give me a hand with this idiom, Ramón), and with an impossible labyrinth for newcomers to pass through to get into this one and only Spanish forum.

I am aware that the same thing happened at least in the forums in French (by the way, Pierre shows no recent activity whatsoever), and I know that, with the recently implemented new forums (I wonder if anyone foresaw what a chaos this was going to turn into), there were at first much more pressing matters than worrying about this mouse that never roared. And when the magnitude of the chaos could be more accurately gauged, such a small matter must have been dropped.

So why am I surrendering? Simply because, even with my inherited optimism, I cannot see the slightest hope of any positive change in the forum in Spanish until the forums in English work as they should. And, even in my more optimistic moods, I cannot foresee any effective measures to achieve the later and therefore none at all of achieving the former.

Waiting four years for some improvement when there was a very slight glimmer of hope is one thing; waiting another four years when there is none at all is quite a different matter. In any case, I will miss you all, and very much, although I am not locking the doors for ever. Coming back several times per month, at least to the "Discussions..." forum, will be unavoidable; I'm simply not the type to discard an old love as an old shoe.