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I read the status of this forum.

Wouldn't it be useful if questions in Facebook groups like Lingva konsultejo, Duolingo Esperanto Learners or others were asked here on this great platform which has great advantages over other discussion forums (the structure of questions, comments and answers is clear, questions are easily looked up in search engines, they do not get lost in all the content around, and so much more, you all know it:-)

Well, I should pose a question. Hence:

"First of all: Which Esperanto discussion forums could be transfered here? Next, how should the text of a post look like, in which one would persuade/motivate people using other platforms to write their questions here? What arguments should be used? How to formulate it in Esperanto?"

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  • Stack Exchange sites aren't forums. If you are redirecting to a Stack Exchange site users used to a forum, you will get many posts written as answers that aren't answers at all, but new questions or comments. Q&A sites are quite different from forums, for the fact an answer is just for answering the question, not asking another, possibly related question, or asking a user who answered what exactly his answer meant.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Feb 7, 2018 at 18:50
  • @kiamlaluno There are great knowledgeable people on those forums who are very capable of asking and answering questions. My intention was to encourage them to be active here. Sure, they would have to understand the difference between the platforms. It is clear that Esperanto language SE needs to attract people to survive - and my last paragraph is asking for help on how to do that. Instead, I see discouragement from SE users.
    – wondering
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 2:51

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There are reasons people prefer these various groups to Esperanto Stack Exchange. Getting posting rights is often difficult, and I know of a few cases where some true experts have indicated that the barrier was too high for the occasional participation that they are interested in and available for.

I have attempted to cross-pollinate between Lingva Konsultejo and this site on several occasions. Very few people follow the trail here, but where appropriate, I've gathered the information and written up a summary here.

It seems to me that Duolingo Esperanto Learners has a different goal than this group. That group functions more like a classroom. Really basic questions are encouraged. I, for one, am opposed to using Esperanto Stack Exchange to ask for things which could be found in a dictionary or should be learned in a basic Esperanto course like FEC. There's also at least some expectation here that questions will be of general interest.

One approach you could take would be to post links of these questions to appropriate FB groups. Most of the comments will be on Facebook. That is, very few people will follow the links here or even read them, but some might.

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  • As for Duolingo Esperanto Learners: it's true that I only follow posts where people like Bertilo Wennergren answer (which is a rule of thumb question-quality standard for me), and I can tell you these are usually not trivial or basic questions. I don't know what is the percentage of them among all questions, but these are usually perfectly suited to be asked here. And I think it is a pity that they will get lost in the Facebook group after some time (I am actually not sure if they can be googled like questions here, can they? I don't think so.) That was the motivation behind my question.
    – wondering
    Commented Jan 25, 2018 at 23:13
  • To raise the meta level up a bit here, I have a meta-meta concern about answers getting lost. One thing I like about having a monthly blog is that I can write about common questions - and then later, the questions come up and I can refer to my prepared answers. What will happen to all this effort, though, if this Stack Exchange gets closed? What will happen if Duolingo folds? The FB answers generally are not google-able, but the Duolingo answers are. I'd like to underscore that you introduced the word trivial here. I said basic, which is different.
    – Tomaso Alexander
    Commented Jan 26, 2018 at 13:58
  • Occasional partecipation is not what is going to help this site. It needs users who keep asking questions, or answering them. A user that initially participated actively can later partecipate occasionally, but the important is that the user is replaced from another user who asks questions or answer them in a more active way.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 7:58
  • Differently, chances are that not even 100 experts who occasionally answer questions are enough to "sustain" the site, also because the site needs users who ask questions too, and experts normally tend to answer them.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 8:01

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