So I was thinking: what if we make "language threads" in the "Countries" board? They would be like the regular threads there, but instead of being limited to the people living in the same country, everyone that speaks a given language would be able to join in. That way you would encourage conversations between people that live in regions that speak the same language (e.g., Brazil and Portugal; France, Quebec, Wallonia, Switzerland and Morocco; Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, and the south of Brazil; Spain and most of Latin America; etc). As a nice plus, people interested in language learning (such as myself) would have a nice way to practice their skills in a foreign language. We can even throw in some conlangs if we're feeling rebellious enough.

Now, I'm aware that threads like that pop up every now and again, but I think that without them being made "legitimate" by the Countries index, they're all pretty much doomed to fail. So really, what I'm actually suggesting is to either include these language threads in the Countries index or to create another post to index them.

What do you guys think?

Funny (or sad) that I shot down a thread with this exact concept a few months ago, a thread where Spanish speaking folks could gather and discuss. Not specifically a language learning thread, but you get the point.

Its on the grey area of posting I suppose, that's why I could still have the confidence in shooting it down. Like Pie has said, "You can be a dick and die on that hill you're so proud of."

But enough of that, it is actually a good idea now that I had a clear mind with a clear view of it. We probably should make a room for another entry in the Index, explaining some rough guidelines for anyone who wants to make a specific language thread.

Like, people should also only made a language thread where it is used in a lot of countries, one case I could instantly think of would be Spanish.

I can kinda see a problem arising when some mad Indonesian came barging here and started making their own language thread local to their region, they could've just used their own country thread if the language speakers wasn't widespread enough around the world.

What else?

Hm, yeah, it kind of crossed my mind that it could be a bit complicated whenever a language is only present in one country. The problem is where to draw the line exactly, a cursory look at the Japanese Thread tells me that there are just as much people interested on the language (or that have Japanese ancestry, but that's besides the point) than actual Japanese people (even though Japan is pretty much the only place in the world where Japanese is actively spoken), which I guess would be one of the points this measure would try to address.

So at any rate, multi-country languages (except for English because, you know) would probably be acceptable, like, let's say for example: Spanish, Arabic, German, French, Portuguese, Tamil, Bengali, and Russian (maybe Chinese too, but that's a different problem altogether —hell, maybe even Dutch depending on who you're asking). And after that, I suppose we can go on a case-by-case basis: check if there are people from different places interacting with the thread, and if that's not the case, shut it down and direct them to the appropriate country's thread. I guess that, at the end of the day, it would depend on the amount of people we may get from different parts of the world. Even if the languages I listed above have lots of speakers from more than one country, it doesn't really make sense to keep a thread for it if none of the speakers visit this place.

Then again with the rate of activity we're going with these days, I don't think much policing would be needed to begin with. If someone made a new thread, we either list them into the Index or redirect them to the existing ones.

I'd say we give the members a portion of our trust, as a community. They will be the one to decide whether the language of their interest will be worth having its own thread, the process will almost exactly look as this oversimplified flowchart about something else.

If a thread is listed but didn't fare as well, we can just let it die and collect dust on the archive. Countries board is truly a spammy board to begin with, from what I realized at least. Dupes are everywhere and I haven't even bothered asking the mods or admin to delete them.

You can see some country threads that haven't even reached 100th posts even when they had been conceived since 2013 or even earlier, all due to the low amount of Dollars member in their area which affects how often the thread gets bumped.

Next one would be figuring out "What do we call these threads in general?"

Language Specific Threads?

>>4 Hm, yeah, that seems like a good name for the index. It basically tells you all you need to know upfront.

As for the names of the threads themselves, I suppose that we can give something like "[name of the language written in that language] [however you may say "thread" in that language]", so that they stand out among the other threads there (e.g., "Hilo español", "Deutscher Thread", "Fil français", and so on). Of course there's bound to be a lot of variation in practice, but I think that's a good enough approach.

Now for the supplies, you need demands.

I suppose you could just start small, make one with a language of your interest. Japanese wasn't it? Its also a good coincidence that the current Index is almost over, we'll be able to update it very soon.

That's it I guess... We can get this going now.

I actually think it's a safer bet to start with Spanish, since we seem to get quite a lot of Spanish speakers and you yourself said that one of those threads started unprompted in the past. I also know Spanish myself, so I could easily handle that.

I would definitely enjoy having a Japanese thread, but I'm not sure if it would ever take off. We don't seem to get enough natives, and nowadays the average weeb (not using this as an insult here, I do consider myself one as well) does at best know a few words and idioms and is rarely able to read Japanese script. Not to riff on them, Japanese has insane barriers to fluency for non-natives; just pointing out what I see.

But yeah, let's see how this whole thing is received and act accordingly.

Are we going to start this when the next Countries thread comes out?

I'd actually thought Hito would do it when he's ready to make one, but I think he's really waiting that one to end.

Don't know, haven't seen much of him lately.

Yeah, haven’t seen him in a few days :C

But if the language thread(s) come out after the Countries Thread does, should we put it in the Index?

Yeah, but since the index almost reached max limit, it will get renewed either way.

Oh yeah lol