We need to change our behaviour here at NethServer Community

Thank you for invitation to this discussion.
First regarding to your words about logged in vs. active (posting) members ratio. Have you ever ponder It can origin from there are so many helpful topics here, so they simply found what they need and so it doesn’t found it necessary to write anything (except polite reply to your kind welcome message for new members)? It is only indication you are on the right way guys - the more helpful and solved topics are here the more “passive” members you get - be proud of you.

This community is one of the best I ever logged in to. All team here is very helpful and they are anticipating to reply to your post so sometimes you get the same response from 3 persons in the same moment :smiley:

Some members are feeling uncomfortable because of lack of english. I don’t think this should be issue. Have you ever read some microsoft tech article when the webpage force you to read it “translated” to your native language? Awful. But if somebody like Microsoft can use this type of translation, why not you if you are not comfortable with english? Why should you feel ashame because of it if Microsoft not? I don’t think there is need for long essays, I suppose in most cases polite “Hello guys, I need help. I installed NS7, install this module, click here and get this error. Print screen and log attached. Please help. Thank you very much.” is enough. Trust me. Or you can use some pictures if not comfortable with english like @alefattorini do :wink:

Don’t worry, this team will support you:

You were talking about some how-to’s or wiki. Personally I like Mikrotik wiki - wiki.mikrotik.com
There are so many manuals and simply how-to’s like this one (for inspiration): http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/VPN_(any_type)_between_2_Mikrotik_routers_and_no_static_IP_addresses

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Yes, I don’t have much time too. But I am taking in note, I am getting something from this team for FREE now. They can say the same “I don’t have time for you” but they don’t. So giving them a feedback, test some new features and functionality, giving suggestions for improvement is at least we can avenge them with for their effort :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:.

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You’ve raised a good point of language being a potential barrier. Having worked for a company which had a presence in 30 different countries and English (which was the “common” language for communication) being the either the 2nd, 3rd language (or even 4th or 5th language in some cases) and usually the ability to read English was better than their ability to write or speak it which also brought up issues of confidence as well.

For me, it begs the question and the challenge: How can we create an environment which helps people who find English a challenge to have the confidence to contribute?

I know for myself, it is a case of carefully phrasing the posts that I make so that the language, terms and phrases used would hopefully be understood by the majority.

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I can tell that I understand over 95% when I read or listen in English.
Because I don’t speak or write often in English, I use Google Translate to verify myself.
I hope that what I write on this forum is well understand by everyone. If not, please be indulgent and patient. Of course, if you realy want my opinion and if don’t mind, please ask for clarification.:blush:

@GG_jr, a bit patience, Google Translate and clarification question are good things to have in many scenarios! :wink:

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I see your point! It might be a good explanation of this behaviour, we have so many good readers around:
http://community.nethserver.org/badges/125/bronze-reader
I always hope they step up and jump directly into the action, as you know participation counts.
The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us influence the future of this community and the product by choosing to start (and engage in) discussions that make this community an interesting place to be!

Someone calls it “Time to comfort” the faster community members become comfortable and the faster begin to engage :slight_smile:

I know, I already tried to explain my point of view, here and here
I’m still open to suggestions

My answer is: make people comfortable and make them feel safe. We should help reduce the discomfort with a different language.

Has been somebody ever mock or punished because of his level of English knowledge here? I don’t think so. It is only lack of self-confidence in this, but without a real reason I think. In my opinion, everybody here are doing their best, so if the English is the issue in some topic, they are asking for clarification or suggest a remote access to server to be able to help. Nobody here is impeccable (except me of course :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ), and we all know it and try to be understanding and helpful.

@alefattorini Do you think something like national flag next to user avatar will help them to be more self-confident without need for apologizes like “Sorry for my bad English” in their topics?

And I think, something like “log collector” inside NS could help to made support requests. Simply collect logs to one 7zip package, upload it to topic and write simply “I click here and get this”. I think anybody who is able to read and understand to topics here written by others is also able to write something like this.

It’s already there, in your profile :slight_smile:

Yes, I know. But I am thinking about something integrated into avatar like this masterpiece :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I forgot to update my avatar! So I am taking my selfie…done :innocent:

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Is it really usefull to have this information integrated to the avatar?
I don’t think so.

May not. But @alefattorini want to hear our voice here, and I am earning badges to my profile by typing and reading :innocent:

Sorry but see my face with such flag isn’t appropriate. I just removed it

:sob:

Although many newcomers have signed up our community lately, I’d like to revive this topic
I know that there many expert readers here like @amulyawan @timlg98 @Kim_Sanfridsson @sharpec @Schawy @Ya_Ley @alipk52 @Alessandronuunes @Lennart_Ulvonas @kuhn_michael @sk8erbender @graeleah @vasya @jitkian @Mepata @jimmyc @xcod @cswain they know pretty well our community (reading a lot of things!!) and I’d like to hear their voice!

What have help you to change your behaviour here? What can we change to help you to become more involved with the community/project? Aren’t you comfortable because of the language problem? Would you suggest a category in your own language?

IMHO, the objective of developing Nethserver and the information of Nethserver is the key to attract me to this community.

As for beginning, I need to understand how to use Nethserver and the community is giving a lot of information on how-to install, configure and troubleshoot Nethserver. Besides that, the administrator manual is quite helpful too.

After getting familiar with Nethserver, I may need to have more advanced feature and I hope to develop it by myself instead of submit a feature request and the new developed feature can be contributed back to community. This is where the development information is useful. I have gone through the Nethserver developer guide and it is a good place to start with.

I have to say, the current Nethserver team has done a great job in getting member to be more active, thumbs up.

I believe more organized and refined category of the information and a technical forum may help to get me more involved with the community.

Currently we can see information is categorized in support, how-to, development and etc. In my opinion, it is good to have sub categories such as Firewall, Email, File Sharing and etc. for each of these main categories mentioned above. This is to make information searching more easy for members. As for how-to information, I think it is good to have a template or format to write a how-to, some information such as Nethserver version should be included.

I think it is good that if Nethserver can set up a technical forum consist of a group of gurus that can give technical advice or even some tutorial for the members who like to develop something base on Nethserver. This may help to bring up more new developers to strengthen the future development of Nethserver.

Personally, I don’t have much problem with English as the language for the community. Instead of having a category of my own language, I will be glad to have a category of my own country where I can communicate with the “Nethserverian” of my country :).

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Ehi Chong glad to see you here and thanks for chipping in

Which howto or post did you find more helpful? I wish to collect some links to highlight to newcomers.

:thumbsup:

I’m not a fan of subcategories, currently we’re using tags to do the job but they are optional so people forget to fill them out. I think it’s worth a new topic I’d love to hear from someone on that

I have to said that I am very sensitive to this topic, we have discussed it several times:
How involve more developers?
Explaining e-smith layer - learning by doing
Start learning developing
Workbench to learn the development process

Please check these links above I’d love to hear your thoughts on that at some point. Gurus are already here :slight_smile: Feel free to ask opening a new topic

You’re not the first who have raised the issue, @EduardoGCorrea told me the same a few days ago
I think a topic in Chat would be enough for the moment. Do you want to know just Malaysian people like @james24 ?

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@alefattorini
Hello good Morning. so if you had a topic so for my language would be better to understand, I saw a topic that was not allowed.
I just installed nethserver as a proxy server here at the company where I work, I liked it, it is super simple to set up. I’ve been reading quite topics to set up well it, and so far no problems.
The big problem here is our about proxy control, and the only report possible take WEB is with ligthsquid if I had the option I would be glad SARG.
I do not know much about linux, my improvement is WEB, so php programmer, if you need something of my ability I’m here to help.
Note: my English is very bad, I’m using google translator

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IMHO the nethserver community is too small for subforums in different
languages and I guess nobody cares if your english isn’t perfect. I’d
like to be more involved but my job as a project planner doesn’t give me
much free time. I’ll keep on testing new NS7 releases and speak up when
I think my opinion or experiences are important (as on the POP3-Connector).
So as far as I’m concerned there isn’t anything that should be changed.

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Hi Allessandro. My native language is spanish

Bem-vindo à Tribo Nethserver!

I also used the translator of Google and to get rid of this dependence I worked very hard

and now…

… I’m using the translator Yandex.

hehehe it’s novel, different, handles convenient tabs.

Hey I think that @Paulo_Rodrigues and @alexcsilva can help you with the language.

On the other hand I’m in the same with the Spanish speakers, and opened up a conversation with something more than 21 partners in addition to the guests of other languages. The Shaman @alefattorini is also in that group, and is studying alternatives for the different languages. And my paisano @jgjimenezs is the @translations_team lider. This is a great team.

A very good alternative can be a blog, that place where there is the opportunity to open topics by language … or mix them up!, as in a Tower of Babel. The difference to Babel would be, as a tribe digital who we are, we have the technological tools and the momentum collective to continue the construction of the free knowledge without barriers or limitations for the language.

Greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.

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