On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 4:26 AM, fnu <vdr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Why are the majority of the users German - and why does it stay that way? > Is it for the greater benefit of VDR? > > This is not the fault of the german users, VDR is historically a "german > speaking project", initiated by a german guy, used by the biggest VDR > community, german, austrian and swiss people. I guess most of them don't > feel save enough to write in english, they don't want to be blamed for not > being nativ speaker and vdr-portal.de is far the better way to find > information and solution. > > You should rather ask why the rest does not join this biggest VDR forum? > There are a lot of people answering in english ... That's no mystery at all. When you go to vdrportal, easily the vast majority of posts are in german. That doesn't make it appear as an english-friendly forum and is an immediate turn-off. How are users supposed to search for what they're looking for? Maybe they should just ask the same questions over and over again, probably getting bashed for doing so and not "searching" the forum for previous answers to the same questions. Next, NA users tend to have questions regarding NA-specific issues, which german users tend to not have answers to since its not something they have to deal with. That's just two of the most common issues, but certainly not all of them. I know TONS of english-speaking users who have visited vdrportal and most of them haven't returned because the little sprinkles of english posts aren't enough to make them feel comfortable asking questions, getting answers, or feeling like a welcome visitor/member. And honestly, do germans want to have to keep translating everything for non-german users when they're asked? I doubt it. As good as vdrportal is as a VDR resource, the language barrier _is_ a problem for english speakers. As far as the mailing list, many users seem to think its for devs only and/or they don't have anything to contribute being users with nothing but questions. There are also many users who simply don't use mailing lists (or forums for that matter) either because they don't want to or because they think others will ask and they can just search for answers. I think it's unfortunate because if they did, people would have a better idea of the types of VDR users that exist, and further they would have some clue about how big non-german/non-european VDR communities exist. Everything above is all common and has been at least as long as my own VDR history started about 10 years ago. Keep in mind, even VDR itself wasn't even NA friendly for most of its existence. _______________________________________________ vdr mailing list vdr@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
