English only, please (was: Pooomooocyyyy ;()

Bob Johnson fbsdlists at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 07:03:48 PST 2006


On 1/15/06, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Sunday, 15 January 2006 at 16:49:27 -0600, Don Hinton wrote:
> > Hi Greg:
> >
> > On Sunday 15 January 2006 16:28, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> >> On Saturday, 14 January 2006 at 20:02:02 +0100, Karol Kwiatkowski wrote:
> >>> vocativus wrote:
> >>>> Witam!
> >>>
> >>> [...]
> >>>
> >>> Cze¶æ vocativus,
> >>>
> >>> Nie wiem w czym tkwi problem, ale spróbuj zapytaæ na polskim forum
> >>> systemów BSD:
> >>> 	http://www.bsdguru.org/dyskusja/
> >>
> >> As I said a couple of days ago, this is an English language list.  In
> >> a case like this, it would be appropriate to *not* copy the list on
> >> the reply, despite the policy to the contrary.

Why?  So other people who speak Polish cannot search the archives to
discover that there is a Polish language BSD support forum that they
can go to?  Are you really so elitist that you believe people who
speak other languages are not entitled to information?

> >
> > Where exactly does it say that this is an "english only" list?
>
> I suppose you have a point.  It's implicit; it should be spelt out.
> At http://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists.html you have a
> choice of "Mailing Lists" or "Non-English Mailing Lists".  -questions
> is under the former link; the Polish mailing lists are under the
> latter.  At

I've been subscribed to this list for nine years, and for most of that
time it was explicitly NOT an English-only list.  It was stated
policy, whenever anyone raised the issue, that postings in any
language were welcome, with the caveat that you are far more likely to
get help if you post in English.  I don't understand why, for the past
two years or so, there has been a campaign to convert this to an
English-only list.

> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/freebsd-questions/
> there's a reference to an inability to speak English.  But we should
> really do something about writing a charter that makes it clear.
> Anybody feel like having a go?
>

What purpose would it serve?  Would it do anything other than reduce
communication among the BSD community?   This is, after all, the email
support address that is published with FreeBSD.

- Bob


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