This is not a site for Italians!

Question

It is worth noting how popular questions in English are on this site (this is just a recent example) compared to those asked in Italian. I had always assumed that this site was the Italian version of what EL&U is for native English/American speakers, but I was wrong.

My impression is that the nature of this site is essentially that of Italian for foreigners. Though there is nothing wrong with it, I think there are important implications for the kind of questions and answers that are to be expected here.

It is clear that the use of the Italian language limits the usage and the helpfullness of the site so, probably, all questions and answers should be in English and, for instance, rules about possible translation requests of foreigh expressions into Italian should be less strict than they actually are.

My impression is that some minor changes might attract more users and make the site more enjoyable to foreigners and at the same time increase the "traffic" in terms of "Q&A".

Answer 1

I understand your point but, personally, I won't be interested in such a kind of site. One of the aspects that makes this site attractive to me is the possibility to express myself in Italian and to communicate with other people using Italian. Without this possibility, I'll lose my interest in it (and remember that I'm not Italian). I'll be glad if there are lots of questions like the one you mention in your post that make this site popular but, in my opinion, restricting the language of questions and answers to English would limit the helpfulness of the site and won't be a good idea.

Of course we expect that this site attracts the attention of Italian learners and it may be easier for a beginner to express him/herself in English (or maybe no: once I have learned some Italian, I've always found easier to express myself in Italian rather than in English). But I think that the best way to learn a language is trying to use this language as much as you can. So I'll encourage these learners to write their questions in Italian once they have learned some of the language and not to be afraid of making errors: some Italian speakers will correct them (and this is also an interesting way of learning). In the future, maybe the OP of the question you mention would find useful to write his or her questions in Italian if he or she continues learning Italian and using this site.

This is my personal point of view, of course, but I think it wouldn't be a good idea to apply the changes that you are proposing. By the way, a lot time ago I wrote this question in English. But, if you measure the popularity of a question by the number of views, you can see that there are many other questions of mine that are more popular that this one. Or maybe the point is that my questions are not popular at all, but, do we really want to restrict this site to "only popular questions"?

Answer 2

For the English language, SE network has two sites: ELL for learners and EL&U for native speakers and those who already know English very well and just want to clarify a specific issue. Any other language SE sites (German, French, Russian, etc.) has just one place for both these user groups. It's normal that learners have more questions than native speakers. But we have already discussed and decided that both Italian and English are accepted as working languages - just as it is the case on other SE language sites. The important thing is to ensure that the answers are given in the same language as the original question, so that the OP would be able to understand those answers.

Answer 3

Being the Italian section of SE I find it silly to force people to ask or reply in English. I find it a plus that there is the possibility to ask and receive answers in different languages. The ones that can't write a question in Italian would already use English anyways.

For replies I see it's customary to use the same language as the question but I would specify it as courtesy rather than a rule and would like to see also replies in Italian if that's the only language an user feels comfortable using.

Personally I would accept a question in any language provided they can attach at least an automated English version. It might help people that are not fluent in English and cant write in Italian to ask a question rather than shy away from the site. There's even the chance they might receive an useful answer directly in their native language.

Rather I'd like to see Italian more used in Meta, this part of the site should include everybody, I think bilingual questions (if one speaks both English and Italian) would be a rather unique thing.