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Greek, English Or Greegklish in Forums?


Antonis_GR

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Hello geocaching friends!

Because Greek section in geocaching forums is new, I think that it will be good to put some rules for posting messages.

 

The facts:

1. It will be much easier to write in greek, but we have the following problems:

a: Greek characters in posts use large size of forum's database, because of charset (iso-8859-1). Each letter is translated to something like this: "&928;&929;&927;&931;&922"

b: When a new message is posted, the forum sends an e-mail for this. The included text is again: "&928;&929;&927;&931;&922" and nobody can read this.

c: The primary goal for Greek forum is to attract geocaching players from other countries to Greece. I think that Greek messages don't achieve this.

 

2. It will be much better to post messages in English, but:

a: Maybe there are some Greek players with poor English, (like me). They will avoid posting messages because the language.

 

3. There is the option of Greeglish, but:

a: Players from other countries can not read them!

b: Smaller size of Database, accebtable language for mail notifications.

c: Most of us hate Greeglish (me too!)

 

I think that the best is to post our messages in English. The whole geocaching.com site is in English, so all users can read and write in this language (more or less :ph34r: )

 

Waiting for your opinion,

Reagards, Antonis

Edited by Antonis_GR
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The most logical option is English, for the reasons Antonis_GR mentioned already. Besides, geocaching.com lists all geocaches in English, and geocaching is a worldwide activity, so it doesn't make things worse for the people who are not so familiar with the language. That is in my humble opinion, of course.

Edited by eliasbats
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I think some posts who concern us, the local Greeks should be posted in Greek.

Not all themes are important to non-Greek geocachers.

 

On the other hand if you visit the French caches you will see than most of them are in French...also if you visit the caches for Switcherland, you will see that the majority of them are in German language.

I have read all the 176 (until now) pages of the Greek caches and NO ONE of them is written in Greek.

Shouldn't be some rule to the non-English speaking countries to post all their pages for the caches in English? Or should we start here in Greece placing caches with only Greek descriptions and hints?

At least I have postponed a geocaching travel to France because most of the caches descriptions are written in French that I don't speak...

 

As my grandfather said:

"All the animals are equal, but some are more equal that the others" <_<

 

YanniG

Edited by YanniG
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I, as an English speaking American, appreciate the English you have used here in the Greek forum. ;) I was searching for some information or recommendations on caches that someone familiar with the area of Vouliagmeni might be able to give me. This will be my base for my stay in your wonderful country of Greece when I visit in May.

Any recommendations on one or two caches that you might say were a "must do"? I prefer traditional caches as opposed to multi-stage, due to the time limit I'll have.

 

Thanks in advance for any recommendations,

 

Pedal

Georgia, USA

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I agree with YannisG that cache descriptions should be in English. I encourage comments to be in English too.

 

Posts at this section of the forum is something different. I think that if a greek geocacher is more comfortable writing in Greek then he/she should post in Greek.

 

I noticed that under the Geocaching Groups by Country section there are subsections based on language (French Speaking, German Speaking) and subsections based on country (Belgium, Canada, Greece etc).

 

In the Belgium subsection most posts are in English but there are quite a few in French.

 

My suggestion would be to leave the choice to the user to start his thread in English or Greek. Follow-up posts should follow the language of the first post.

 

Have a great (cold) week

 

zakis

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My suggestion would be to leave the choice to the user to start his thread in English or Greek. Follow-up posts should follow the language of the first post.

Hi zakis,

I agree with you, I am not very familiar with english language too, but what we can do for the facts 1.a & 1.b ?(see my first message - database & mail notifications).

As moderator of this forum, I receive a copy of every posted message on my PDA with the text, to check it. The notification system does not support Greek characters. So, every time a greek message is posted, I have to go online to be sure that this message is O.K. for staying posted (no bad words e.t.c.). The solution of Greeglish solves this problem, but our forum and search system will be a mess.

My oppinion is to post our messages in English (good or bad doesn' t matter), to avoid all problems.

 

Υ.Γ. Φοβάμαι μήπως σε τελική ανάλυση μας "βάλουν χέρι" από την εταιρία ότι εξαπλασιάζουμε το μέγεθος της βάσης... :)

 

Friendly, Antonis

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We agree! English should be the universal language for Geocaching not only in Greece but worldwide. However, if you try looking for caches in countries such as Germany, France, even Holland and Russia you will find that the cache descriptions are in the native language! What is even more frustrating is when people (for some reason mostly Germans) log their finds in their native language even when the cache is located in Greece and the cache description is in English!

 

We are not suggesting that we should post cache descriptions in Greek (given the extremely small Greek Geocaching community that would not work) but we feel that, at least here in the Greek forum, people should be given the chance to write in Greek or at least Greeklish (to avoid database storage issues) if they feel like it.

 

Our best regards,

Shrek & Fiona

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Hello Greek Cachers,

 

I am a German Geocacher and I love Greece. I think I had more than 30 stays in your country (especially in the Pindos-Mountains, the North of Greece and the Ionian Islands).

I am glad to find the Greek Forum and ask you very urgent to talk in English. You will hear soon more from me!

 

Best regards Border

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Hi Border !

 

I have thought many times of going to a geocache travel to Germany or cental Europe, but searching for the caches, the majority of them has information ONLY in the german language (or the local language - not english) that I don't speak and not willing to learn for now.

Do you think it is fare for us here to only write in Greek compared to what you write in the German (or the local) caches descriptions? And please note that not a single cache description here in Greece is written in Greek.

 

Nothing personal, just confused of balances.

Thanks for your understanding.

Yanni

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Hello Border, welcome!

• I am very glad for your attendance to Greek Section and for your love to our country. I am sure that here, you will find a friendly place.

We had a long conversation about the language we will use in Forum and finally, we decided to post messages in English for various reasons. And we will keep it!

 

• My friend Yanni, I agree 100% with you for the cache descriptions and you did well starting the new topic:

Language In Cache Descriptions, Why such differences in Europe?

 

Please, let's separate Forum posts from Cache listings.

I think that for the first (Forum posts) we have make our majority decision.

 

For cache listing, let's talk about it to

Language In Cache Descriptions, Why such differences in Europe

 

Thanks, Antonis

Edited by Antonis_GR
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We had a long conversation about the language we will use in Forum and finally, we decided to post messages in English for various reasons. And we will keep it!

 

I think that for the first (Forum posts) we have make our majority decision.

Dear friend Antonis_GR,

 

Regarding forum posts, please keep in mind:

 

- The Greek Geocaching community is larger than the four people who attended the 2006 First Greek Geocaching meeting, so the majority that you claim may not be valid!

 

- This is not an organisation with a manifest where members can vote for this or that. This is a forum!

 

- If you look at the PROSKLITIRIO topic you will see that people were perfectly happy writting messages in Greek and/or English.

 

Please don't misunderstand us, you did a fantastic job creating a Greek geocaching forum where geocachers from Greece can come together to talk and discuss things.

 

However, *** please do not impose restrictions on people ***

 

Trust people to use their common sense and use whatever language they believe would get their message accross.

 

Happy Geocaching!

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Dear Shrek & Fiona, thanks for the reply.

 

"- The Greek Geocaching community is larger than the four people who attended the 2006 First Greek Geocaching meeting, so the majority that you claim may not be valid!"

• Of course I know that Greek Geocaching community is larger than the four people, that's, why I consistently asked from Groundspeak to create Greek Section. Talking about "majority decision", I mean just this forum. As you can read above, most of the posts ask for English language.

 

"- If you look at the PROSKLITIRIO topic you will see that people were perfectly happy writting messages in Greek and/or English."

• You are absolutely right! I prefer writting in Greek too. I starded "Prosklitirio" topic with a message written in Greek. Even the title was in Greek, I turned it later in Greeglish. But please read the first message of this topic. I mean that: Because geocaching is mostly family hobby, we MUST keep all posts in clean language. It will be very bad if a kid joins in the forum reading "bad words" or links to porno sites, photos e.t.c.

So, I decided to be always OnLine to this forum via GPRS just to check for this situation. I receive a copy of EVERY message just the time it has been posted. If the message is in Greek, this is unreadable at the first time because the geocaching.com mail notification system does not support Greek characters. In this case, I have to find a computer connected to Internet or pay a huge amount of money to visit the forum from my PDA via GPRS, just to be sure that this message is O.K. for staying posted (no bad words, e.t.c.). I am volunteer moderator. I like this a lot, I am trying to do my best, I do not care about the cost, but please help me to keep it low...

 

"*** please do not impose restrictions on people ***"

• I never do it in most cases, but all communties must run under some rules, or we move to anarchy. Do you think that posting without rules is better? Can you protect this forum from advertising-, porno-, racism- or whatever else links or messages without restrictions and edits? Sorry, but I can not! Let me remind you that joining geocaching community at the first time, you have to accept the guidelines:

Groundspeak Forum Guidelines

• Additionally, I quote just a small part of Groundspeak's mail to me for opening Greek forum:

"...We would be happy to create a section for Greece in our Forums if you would volunteer to moderate it. Here is a link to the forum guidelines, which you would be responsible for ensuring that the community upholded:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?act=boardrules

If you would agree to taking on the job of enforcing the guidelines and making sure that users stay on topic, we will create a section for you. You would be given moderator status, which would give you the capability of locking threads, editing posts, etc. in the Greece forums..."

 

So, in this case, there are restrictions. We have to take them or leave!

 

"Trust people to use their common sense and use whatever language they believe would get their message accross."

• I trust you and most others. As you can see, I have made only ONE edit to all user's messages, just for correcting some coordinates that I gave them wrong.

 

Thanks for understanding,

Antonis

Edited by Antonis_GR
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Dear Antonis_GR,

 

Thank you for your message! All of your points are very logical and valid. Please consider the following points also:

 

This is the post we were referring to:

"Finally, after a long discussion at the First 2006's Greek Geocaching Meeting, we decided with 4 votes to 0 to write our messages in English. "

 

"but all communties must run under some rules, or we move to anarchy. Do you think that posting without rules is better? Can you protect this forum from advertising-, porno-, racism- or whatever else links or messages without restrictions and edits? "

Of course we are not suggesting that there should be no rules! Rules and restrisctions should be in place where they are needed and enforced accordingly. But don't forget...rules and laws are made to serve people not the other way around!

 

Keeping the forum clean is extremely important and this is the best argument for writting in English. As you pointed out there is a solution to your problem and that is Greeklish: If someone posts a message using Greek characters you could simply remove it from the list and ask that person to re-submit their post using latin characters (Greeklish). Is this something that could be done?

 

How about these general guidelines?

 

1. The official languages of this forum are Greek and English.

 

2. All Forum Topic subjects should be in English (to make searching easier

and compatible with other forums).

 

3. For technical reasons people who wish to converse in Greek must do so using Greeklish. People who use a Greek character set would have their posts removed and asked to resubmit using a latin character set. (This restriction can be later removed if the language character issue is somehow resolved in the future.)

 

If the whole Geocaching community used English in their forums that would be very helpful. But you have German speaking, French speaking, Spanish speaking etc forums...so it seems unfair not to allow Greek geocachers to converse in their own language. Are we the only two Greek geocachers who feel this way?

 

Best regards,

Shrek & Fiona

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Hi my friends,

 

• In the middle of my sentence "Finally, after a long discussion at the First 2006's Greek Geocaching Meeting, we decided with 4 votes to 0 to write our messages in English. ", there is a big laugh smilie ( :o ) , meaning that this sentence is written under the sence of humor.

 

• I do not want to delete messages written in Greek. I love them! One of the dangers is that maybe a "bad" message will stay posted for some hours. An other one is the searching system. If all of us want to take the risk, no problem! I never be shocked of sexy messages and images and my daughter is old enough :o

 

"...so it seems unfair not to allow Greek geocachers to converse in their own language..."

• Nobody says that it is not allowed. We may post messages in Greek. English posting is just my oppinion to keep the place friendly to foreign geocachers, clean and easy searched. :mad: Do you really believe that I like to spend a whole hour to write this small message in English? :o

 

At the very end, the target for all of is just to have "Happy Geocaching"

 

To prove that I prefer Greek language, I wil post a poem in Greek:

 

Μια φορά κι έναν καιρό,

πήγε η γάτα στο χορό

 

Και δεν χόρεψε καλά

και της κόψαν την ουρά!

 

:(;);)

 

Regards, Antonis

Edited by Antonis_GR
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Αγαπητοί φίλοι, δυστυχώς αναδείχτηκα σε μάντης κακών (ή απλά προνοητικός) :huh: .

Με χαρά μας όλοι, είδαμε στο νέο, αγαπημένο μας forum να έχει ενεργοποιηθεί η "Αναζήτηση".

Οι ανησυχίες μου επιβεβαιώθηκαν ως προς τις δυσλειτουργίες του προγράμματος: Δοκιμάστε να κάνετε αναζήτηση με Ελληνική λέξη. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι να μην επιστρέφει αποτελέσματα! :huh:

Αυτό συμβαίνει, όχι επειδή οι τεχνικοί της Groundspeak δεν κάνουν καλά τη δουλειά τους, αλλά κάποια "τεχνικά" προβλήματα που δημιουργούνται στα πολύγλωσσα forums που χρησιμοποιούν php. (Το "έχω δει το έργο πολλές φορές" - είναι η δουλειά μου άλλωστε).

Αυτός ήταν ένας από τους λόγους που επέμενα τα μηνύματά μας να είναι γραμμένα στα Αγγλικά, γιατί το κομμάτι της "Αναζήτησης" μπορεί τώρα να φαίνεται ανούσιο, στο μέλλον όμως θα μας εξυπηρετήσει ώστε να έχουμε πρόσβαση σε παλαιότερες καταχωρήσεις.

 

Θα ήθελα να σας ενημερώσω όμως, ότι ήδη γίνονται προσπάθειες από μένα σε συνεργασία με τους τεχνικούς της εταιρείας να διορθώσουμε αυτό το "ελλάτωμα". Το μέλλον όμως είναι αβέβαιο... :) Κατά πάσα πιθανότητα, θα φτιάχνουμε το ένα και θα χαλάει το άλλο... Η γλώσσα μας βλέπετε είναι "διαφορετική" από τους απλούς ASCII λατινικούς χαρακτήρες.

Επειδή όμως σε καμμία περίπτωση δεν θέλω να γίνω κακός με κανέναν, κάντε ό,τι νομίζετε. Το Ελληνικό Forum άνήκει σε όλους το ίδιο. Εγώ απλά τη γνώμη μου λέω! Το πολύ πολύ να μην μπορέσει να λειτουργήσει ποτέ η "αναζήτηση" στα μηνύματα που έχουν γραφτεί στα Ελληνικά. :o

 

Φιλικά,

Αντώνης

 

Υ.Γ. Αν κάποια στιγμή λειτουργήσει η αναζήτηση στα Ελληνικά, μην με βρίσετε. Αυτός είναι ο στόχος μου, να λειτουργήσει. Δεν σημαίνει ότι αν πετύχει θα είμαι ψεύτης. :)

 

Notice to all non-Greek speaking friends: This message is just for Greek message posters, useless to English spoken ones. Sorry for the disturbance.

Edited by Antonis_GR
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