I open this topic in continuation to the discussion we have in "2,500 members at the MRC" news artilce.

snout asked "You think a ru.msx.org might help?"

Here is my answer:

1) Opening russian version of msx.org may help to attract russians, but still most of the things discussed on the forum will continue to happen in NL or ES. Fairs, software houses, famous people from the past, TV translations - everything happens there, and most of the time the site doesn't give the feeling of an international auditory-oriented. Even debuggers and text editors people speak about sometimes look for me as they were made on another planet.

Think about it - maybe the same reasons prevent Japanese people to join us here (and not just the language)

2) russian MSXer in 90% means Yamaha MSX/MSX2 user without floppy drive and with green monitor, who never saw cartridge even on the picture or even heard of existance of such.
You cannot grab his interest by speaking about MSX sound cards, even SCC - he never heard about this kind of MSX hardware.
Making a memory upgrade for a diskless MSX is a nonsense - how would you load it ?

So, either russian MSXer is an enthusiast who wants to find a way to load software into his machine (like tnt23 or myself) and connect it to a color TV,
or an emulator user.

3) Russian MSXer usually has no money for buying MSX hardware or flying to the fair in Europe - only if he is a russian-speaking American, Finnish, Israeli citizen and such.

4) Well, as you already said, the language is also a big constraint for many people (my English is not perfect too). We can try to open a russian section on the forum for a limited time - and let's see whether it helps.

why not jp.msx.org?

i think that MSX news in RU and JP is a good idea!

...if there are enough people that have access to internet and know (this is the big problem) about language.msx.org.

does it really matter if they have no diskdrives? with the help of an msx community they may do well! if not, they still can be interested in MSX related matters in their own language.

DarQ:

What I was talking about is that most of the discussions we currently have on the forum are out of the scope of interest for an average MSX user in Russia in particular and ex-USSR in a whole.

On the other hand, they have their own MSX-related problems and points of interest that can be interesting for others if shared.

I agree with you that advertising is a vital thing for language.msx.org project.
We should find some ways to make them know about it.
A couple of publications in news sites for geeks (like cooler.irk.ru) should be enough, I think.

(Once my MSX site was mentioned on the resource above - http://cooler.irk.ru/cl180904.html - and I got 600+ unique visitors in just 3 days)

and that's why i didnt mention the forum but just the news... i think the news is more interesting than the forum.

How about a frysk.msx.org?

Let's keep fr.msx.org for the francophones, ok?

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How about a frysk.msx.org? Let's keep fr.msx.org for the francophones, ok?

Of course ... VIVE LA FRANCE !

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How about a frysk.msx.org?

Excellent idea!

Another one who wants to push Frysk into everybody's throat as a language. Why don't you just declare independance and get it over with?

Aside from that, I feel that Russian and Japanese news might attract more Russians and Japanese to MRC, but I fail to see the benefit if these users can't interact / communicate with the other users anyway. It would be just a "I can now shout a larger member number" type of action or not?

Well, there's a point yeah.. those people might be helped more with a local msx site in Russian where they can talk with fellow-Russians.. The fact is -and we can see that by clicking on those flags above- that the non-english parts a kinda silent .. perhaps the people living in Portugal, Spain, Brazil, NL do read the news, but I rarely see interaction with the rest of the scene, and when there *is* interaction, then it's in English after all ..

MrRudi, of course not. As you can see on the Spanish, Brazillian and Dutch msx.org sites, all news is being translated. Adding fr.msx.org or ru.msx.org has nothing to do with the user base, it only means that the news is available in those languages. if new users join because of a new language site, that's great, but it's not the purpose of the translated sites. The purpose is that people who cannot read English will still be able to keep up with the latest news in the MSX world....

@Wolf, the translated sites have much less activity indeed. But from our statistics we can see amazing growths in people visiting MRC since it has become available in their native language. Which means we get a lot more visits, but not all those people join. Which probably is because they're not capable enough to participate in English (or think they aren't)...

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Another one who wants to push Frysk into everybody's throat as a language. Why don't you just declare independance and get it over with?

I like very well the Soepfiskje demo !

And there was a time that I look, very amazed, at the Frysk TV sessions on Nederland 1 (or 2 ?) ....

Yes, for a French speaking guy, Frysk is a very exotic language : it seems a mix of English, Dutch, German and Danish ... as in rock music, I like strange associations

MrRudi - I think the potential Japanese and Russian MSX users will have plenty of interaction between each other on the general discussion forums in their language on their own. The Spanish, Portuguese and even Dutch forums on the MRC are not as active as the English forums, but they are far from inactive and do serve a purpose for getting MSX users in those regions together. If the voluntary translators spot interesting news on the forums, they can report about it on the frontpage in English (and thus in all other languages the MRC is available in). Of course this will not lead to direct interaction between Russian or Japanese MSX users that cannot read or write English, but it will certainly get us many steps closer to eachother than we currently are.

I think a Japanese and Russian MRC will not only get the worldwide MSX news to more people, but will also get us more news on what is going on within the MSX communities in Japan and Russia. The Portuguese and Spanish MRC also got us quite some news submissions in those languages. News we would have missed out on if the MRC wasn't available in those languages. I expect the same to happen with potential Japanese and Russian sections. Besides, wouldn't it be cool to have some previously unknown Japanese or Russion freeware in the downloads section?

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Another one who wants to push Frysk into everybody's throat as a language. Why don't you just declare independance and get it over with?

Because without all the financial aid from The Hague Fryslan will rapidly turn into a second Albania or something. That's why they don't really want to become independant.