Suggestion

I've a suggestion for this and other Devshed forums:

When a user completes the sign-up process, they should be presented with a page that shows them how to ask a question, pointing out the differences between a "good" question and an inarticulate, broken-english, malformatted structure, and sheer "obviousness"

Perhaps have some kind of "timer checker" to ensure that the user has read the page.

If you want the admins to see this, then you should submit a ticket
to esupport [link at top/bottom of page]...

moved to the Suggestions&Feedback forum, this looks like nice suggestion although I doubt it would help much. newbies tend to spend as little time in registering as possible, ask whatever they have to ask and take off... but even if only few new members would read such rules and obey them, it's worth such effort.

The only downside to this would be to exclude those who don't speak (or rather type) good english. Mostly, that would affect those who have english as a second or even third language.

Then maybe the page should state:

"If English isn't your native language, PLEASE speak in your native language, we have people from many countries here who can help you better than if you speak broken english"

Or something similar.

Besides, its so much easier to cut 'n' paste stuff into web-based translators to get the general gist of their point, rather than them doing it the other way around. At least it would stop me getting irritated.

Although I am surprised that there are people who know languages like C++ and VB without knowing english... unless Microsoft or Borland has released localised versions of these languages (or someone's made a #DEFINE set for their language?)

No that's not good. This is an english speaking comunity. There is
no guarantee that anyone could translate posts made in any other
lingo, so people could write anything they want.

This is an english speaking community, If people can't speak english
then they need to find a forum in their own language.

As for people who don't speak english well, that's another matter;
that's down to us as contributers to work out what they want, by
either asking them questions, or suggesting solutions to what we
think the problem is. It's not that hard, and if it irritates you that
much, then maybe that's your fault, not theirs...

I tend to disagree, if you can't understand what is required, either ask for more details or take you best guess. You will either be right or wrong



Given how *good* some of the online translators are, I wouldn't be suprised if some people were already doing that when they post.



Although most programming languages sort of look like English, they are not, not even COBOL which comes close in some respects.

Personally, I have the greatest respect for anyone who has even a basic grasp of more than one language as someone who has constantly failed to get to grips with any language other than English. I can pick up programming languages fairly easily, but Human languages are a whole other ball game.

Chief - how do you get your posts like that?

Majik.

Majik you say, I wonder if you
don't just use the quick reply
screen and just press a lot of
enters while you are posting

The lines are the width of the reply box on the reply page.

I usually use the quick reply though, so I have to guess the width,
which is why it differs sometimes...