Are Stack Overflow (in language x) proposals actually viable?

Question

There are so many proposals entitled: Stack Overflow (in language x).

• Stack Overflow (in French)
• Stack Overflow (in German)
• Stack Overflow (in Bengali)
• Stack Overflow (in Hindi)
• Stack Overflow (in Italian)
• Stack Overflow (in Portuguese) for Portugal
• Stack Overflow (in Turkish)
• Stack Overflow [In Chinese]
• Desarrollo de Software en Español

My question is - are these proposals actually viable?

For example, if these sites reach beta, will the SE team implement a completely separate site for them?

e.g. http://stackoverflow.fr (for french), http://stackoverflow.de (for german).

Or will they have a similar take to this question. - For example, if you post a question with the german filter on (de.stackoverflow.com) - metadata is added to that question to say that it is in german, and then that question will only appear on de.stackoverflow.com - but all the sites use the same users and everything else as stackoverflow.com?

If these sites are going to be implemented, how will they be implemented?

Answer 1

First of all, English is not my native language and I'm not a big fan of using it. Even given that I'd say those proposals are doomed - they have no chance of creating a site as useful as original StackOverflow.

There're two reasons why I think so. The first reason is: if the site is not in English you lose most of the current top users. The second reason is those site will dilute effort. I speak English and Russian - I would now have to participate in two sites and answer the same questions twice.

And finally it is not really necessary, because currently you can't be a qualified developer unless you can write and read in English at at least some intermediate level - it is just impossible, because most of the blogs, documentation and new books are in English.

This is why I firmly believe that currently StackOverflow in any language except English is destined to languish in poverty - it will have little traffic and be mostly useless.

Answer 2

They're as viable as any other proposal in Area 51, and just like any other Area 51 proposal, if the proposal has sufficient support from a community, it will get created.

It's a bit premature to discuss the specifics of a hypothetical site, but the thinking right now is that language-specific sites will NOT be created as a filtered version of — in this case — Stack Overflow. They will be created as independent communities with their own subdomain, their own users, their own tags, their own meta, their own moderators — in short, their own community with their own norms.

Beyond that, the actual implementation details will be for the dev team to decide as they work out the localization issues.

Answer 3

I believe that country and/or language specific sites are indeed viable, not as much because of contents (I agree English is the lingua franca of software development, and refusing to learn it is stupid) but mainly because of culture.

A community is defined not only be its objective properties (ex. what subjects are on/off topic) but by subjective ones as well (ex. how strictly you have to stay on topic, how much duplicate questions are tolatetad, how personal/impersonal the questions can be, etc). Two or more groups of people may have similar goals (ex. develop software) but wildly different means of collaborating with each other to seek those goals.

I believe this Wikipedia article about Low Context Culture vs High Context Culture might be relevant to illustrate my point. Certain behaviors that feel "natural" for a high context individual can be seen as "annoying" or "disruptive" by a low context one. Conversely, normal behaviors by the latter are seen as "cold" and "unhelpful" by the former. A site with similar objectives but different culture may cater more to large niches of people who otherwise would have trouble "fitting in" a different one.

At last, I'd like to point out that just because someone has knowledge of a foreign language it doesn't mean s/he has the fluency and vocabulary to be productive in that language: I often find myself wanting to know about a subject, and while I know precisely the concept I'm interested on I can't translate it to the right English words to google it. Trying to ask other people is equally clumsy, and when I'm finally able to explain myself the retort is usually like: "oh, so you mean X?" ...and I realize that searching for X would have given me what I wanted in the first hit. This situation is embarassing for me, wastes other people's time, and is much more prevalent than a native English speaker might think it'd be.

Answer 4

There are many questions that are country specific, like the calculations of taxes amount, and implementations of business rules modeled on the laws of a country. As computer programs often solve specific questions, it would be a good thing to have localized sites.

A good partition of questions could be:

• Technical questions go to English Stack Overflow
• Questions that are specific to a country go to the Stack Overflow of the language spoken in the country.

Of course, if a language is spoken in many countries, like French, this partition does not work very well.