It’s really bad how much knowledge are gone with it 
Sadly, last backup tool for a failed dedicated server is web.archive.org. 
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Why not create a sub-forum here for Geman/other language users? As long as they use English outside that subforums.
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There was a discussion about this years ago and it’s not appreciated (to say it politely 
)
To be fair, it’s frustrating to get hits in google for some questions, linked into the official forum, but only to realize it’s not available in the requested language.
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That is a very strong argument against it.
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I think it’s a good idea, too.
I think there are many people who don’t feel confident enough in english and would rather not write anything at all. With subforums for different languages (e.g., de.community.openhab.org), you could reach new user groups.
And as for the concern about cross-language links… you could create transparency with a automatic language flag symbol before this kind of urls and people get not disappointed, because they know before.
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With today’s tools this should not be a problem. Write in German, translate and paste.
Once you add another language, then they ask for French or Italian or whatever language comes along. Even if there is only German as an added language, you make these posts useless for others (as in non-German-speaking people), and any solved issue may never be visible to the non-German forum, and thus be solved twice, in case of an emerging or general issue.
I would strongly advocate against it, as English is the most universal language for this purpose IMHO… also considering the international community.
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In my opinion people who are native English speakers or living in an English speaking country since years don’t understand the difficulties of a non native speaker and thus of course argue against a language specific forum.
I understand people who find it more difficult to ask questions in a non native language.
It’s in my opinion not the inability to ask the question itself as this can really be achieved easily by using translation websites, it is the difficulty to follow the conversation after or to search for an answer to a question but not using the right English terms etc.
I lived abroad and work in a company where I need to speak English 90% of my time, so I don’t necessarily need to have a German forum, still I probably would use it for certain topics as well.
I find it equally important to talk about who would maintain the forum in a 2nd / 3rd language. If there are volunteers, why not have such a forum? If there are none …, the question is answered as well.
This said, I wanted to make sure native English speakers have bit of a better understanding why non native speakers may have difficulties. Maybe one day this is irrelevant as browsers flawlessly translate every input and output … right now this works sometimes for the output and is more cumbersome for the input.
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That’s true, but for many, it’s an insurmountable hurdle. Otherwise, the relatively large openhabforum.de wouldn’t have existed.
I don’t see a problem here. One could stipulate that there has to be someone responsible for this part.
Otherwise, there’s always the danger that once enough people have the problem, they’ll start their own thing. As happened with openhabforum.de.
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And who should that be?
It is really hard to find any volunteers.
We just wait until someone says: I want to maintain this new language.
Until this time, we don’t do anything. Maybe we could create a page where we mention the possibility and describe the procedure to avoid that people doing their own thing and follow our way instead.
Actually I just wanted to know what is going on with the openhabforum or I had hoped that the operator would get in touch and briefly say what is going on.
The discussion about whether a German forum should be set up here or how this should be implemented should perhaps be discussed in another topic.
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I just searched for his name and address in google to get some more details about the domain owner and all of his domains are down. Including his company website.
Looks like there is some bigger trouble. Maybe with him self.
As someone affected, I could imagine that. I’m fine without a German-language forum these days, but it was a huge help to me in the beginning. I searched, browsed, and later also tried to help as a Harka.
Thats a good point. The shut down of all these Website must be caused by a serious incident i think…
Guys, please, this is not F******k where one makes assumptions.
Stay on topic or use Socialmedia for that.
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Hey, do we all find ourselves here?
This story is very annoying, as I’ve always used many bookmarks for help, all of which are now no longer available.
I’ll try writing this in English.
Jepp.
Sorry, but no.
All major browsers support translations. This is not an argument. Maybe you cannot contribute, but you can always read!
But then you have to accept the fact that people creating their own thing like creating this huge openhabforum with thousands of comments. I think if you ignore this, you don’t see the picture from others user perspective. You see only your picture.
The main goal of this kind of user is not that they want to contribute. They want to ask questions in their mother language because they need help and they don’t know how to express this in english in a “correct” way.
To avoid any misunderstandings… the English version is perfectly fine for me. I’m just trying to put myself in the shoes of others who have difficulties with it.
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