Thanks, Nigel, for thinking about the situation before throwing such advice as "don't use the forums" or "create your own". The lack of supervision is just one of the aspects I habe been asking to be improved.
As far as I can remember been told by people in the know nearly two years ago, the forums in Spanish were created as a service for a small group of Spanish speaking users in some Central American country. When I discovered them almost by chance, I found a site with very bad translations of the original English text in some places, and no translations at all in others, and that was hardly used at all because it was not known or publicized. When trying to find what could be done to improve the site, I was offered the chance of collaborating with the person in charge.
After trying to get in touch with that person for a couple of months (I never did), it turned out that that person wasn't really in charge, that he didn't know or use Adobe products, that he was an extremely busy man in his country, and had only offered to collaborate in this as a personal favour to someone with some influence here, but wasn't really interested in the matter.
I then turned to JC, who had also offered to help in improving the forums in Spanish. His response was very efficient as usual, and we slowly but steadily introduced important changes in the site, which make it much more easier to use now than when I discovered it. Apparently, when the site improved, Adobe Spain began publicising it on its site, and the number of visitors began to increase considerably.
I understand that in the meantime the French and German forums were created, both in a much better shape that the original Spanish one I knew. I also understand that in middle 2004, some still undisclosed European branch of Adobe took at least the French and Spanish forums officially in charge -just by looking at the main page of the German ones, I would guess they were luckier. Everything was stopped then; no more changes. I had just sent JC a proposition for a new, less cluttered, more rational entry page that included a link to instructions for newcomers, that he sent to the new authorities. I understand that even him doesn't know if my proposition has been read.
It is true that in these many months, JC and I have introduced some very minor changes here and there, but his hands are tied and we can do no more than that. Frome some things JC has told me, I understand that at least some pages in the Spanish forums use very old templates, which would explain the lack of some functionalities that are present in all the other forums. For example, there is no "Subscribe to this discussion by email" button at the bottom of the new message box.
So what am I asking for? First of all, I am not asking for any "right"; I think that Pierre's phrase there was unfortunate, as it gave people who don't try to understand the problem, who have nothing constructive to offer, and that in my opinion should take their witty remarks elsewhere, a chance to continue ridiculizing a situation that obviously doesn't affect them and doesn't even interest them.
Perhaps I could sumarize my requests like this. If that unnamed Adobe branch doesn't have the funds, the will, or the intention of doing something to improve the forums in Spanish, why not just leave JC, with the aid of people like me, to at least make the site functional, and have all the pages written in proper Spanish?
In my opinion, doing nothing in fourteen months, preventing anything to be done, and simply ignoring the free help that is been offered is not a wise course of action. Plus, of course,
>Adobe have created forums for use but without supervision. You only have to look at the mud-slinging that occasionally goes on in the lower depths of the English-speaking forums to realise that this is a recipe for disaster.
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