ET feels very very anglo sometimes.
I'm not sure that English proficiency is restraining contributors from France or Italy (make that the whole continent, save the Nordic and the Dutch).
My own suspicion is that people in France, Italy, Germany, etc... are used to discuss on online forums in their own countries and very few will be looking elsewhere. If anything, you'd ask what's wrong with us spending our time in English speaking blogs? :)
That's why I was thinking of linkups with already established forums: we are not going to re-invent places that already exist... Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
I see it as part of a transitionary process. There is no ideal process/platform/site/collection of sites right now. We could start the process and gradually build up better tools to support it. Building a community takes a long time - we have to start from where we are at now rather than waiting for some more ideal future starting point. notes from no w here
How many French or Italian are contributing here, more or less? I've only seen 2 or 3 of each - knowing that I'm not here all the time. How many Greeks ? English is more difficult for southerners. On the other hand, I kind of suspect that quite a lot of people understand French here :)
You may be right about people being used to join their own local forums, and Europe is such a Babel tower that any kind of federative idea about the EU is probably doomed for a long time to come. Which is why we desperately need stuff like Arte, Euronews and the likes, and their blogging correspondents.
That said, I appreciated to see quotations from foreign papers accompanied by translation. Those are allowed and I believe well valued. Personal prose accompanied by a translation would be too, I think. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
'they're all crazy except you and me, and you've been acting a little weird lately!'
cheers ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Point being? :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
...one more like : "Socrates is dead, Einstein is dead, I'm not feeling that well either lately..." :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
both variants are instructive, antidote for solipsism.
your sig sounds like a set up line for another variant. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
There are clones of Digg or Del.icio.us, and some personal blogs with a large following, forums and comments on news sites. But I find the content terribly provincial, petty and factional - there is no place where Spain's policy issues are debated, it's all about the politicking. The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler
