There’s no forum for language exchange except as a classified forum. At this time posts in Chinese don’t belong anywhere unless you’re learning Chinese. I noticed that tealit has changed it’s policy within the last few months. Before, the classifieds were all in English. Now, there is many classifieds in Chinese as well.
Do you believe that forumosa.com will one day serve not only the international community, but also Taiwanese people who are not part of the international community and hope to become so?
For tealit, there is a clear advantage - if they allow ads in Chinese they can generate profit. As forumosa.com is non-profit, there is no easily perceived gain in allowing local people to have access to forumosa. Also, the added bandwidth will cost money if forumosa was to try to serve not only the international community but also Taiwanese people interested in the international community.
At this time, posts in Chinese belong everywhere. Since ORIENTED.org days, this forum has never had a policy that discriminated AGAINST any language or input system. Now, whether your post in Chinese sparks a lively discussion is a different story entirely. And it is different precisely because we do not control or mandate how people post here (in English or Chinese) - you may post in Chinese and receive a good reply in English or in Romanized Chinese. From my perspective, it’s all good.
But are you suggesting we encourage posting in Chinese?
All that said, I am aware that there IS a problem posting the title of the thread in Chinese. I’d like to change that so that threads can be titled in any languge encoding
I believe that to a modest degree, forumosa.com already serves this purpose. I’ve spoken to owners of restaurants who are Taiwanese and they see the value of the website
But if you are asking whether we would direct any effort to intentionally appeal to a non-English, non-international audience, then my answer is “not likely”. We have enough on our plate handling people from every other country on the planet, I couldn’t afford to add people from Taiwan, too! Seriously, though, we have a clear position as the website for foreigners - I wouldn’t want to sacrifice that
Yep, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Tealit wishes to make money, and Forumosa.com wishes to build a community. I don’t see any advantage – you don’t win or lose if you don’t play, and we don’t play the same game
Seriously, though, we have a clear position as the website for foreigners - I wouldn’t want to sacrifice that