Is English the official language of the forum?

Question

Efforts are being made in the IRC channel to limit conversations to English (speakers of other languages are encouraged to spin off their own language-specific channels, such as #webplatform-ru).

I understand the differences between a website and an IRC channel -- but does this philosophy extend to the website, as well?

Answer 1

I would think so somewhat, since non-english speakers should still be able to use the forums like the rest of us.

Answer 2

I think the answer should be a "No".  Otherwise this site would not be encoded in UTF-8.  However, in order to have our questions answered quickly, English is the language to go because we'll be reaching a larger audience.  That said...

誰も理解できない言語で質問すると中々答えてもらえないでしょう。

Comments

Well I think everybody uses UTF-8 now.  It's better than seeing a bunch of random ugly characters in the event that some unrecognized symbol or letter from another language is introduced to the system.

Answer 3

Not in all cases, eventually our "Docs" pages will be translated in many different languages, we are actually looking for users to help us out with translating.

If you speak another language and would like to be involved, please e-mail: public-webplatform@w3.org

I might be speaking out of term, but as for the forum and IRC, it's best you speak in English just so most users can understand you.