I enjoy it here as good as it possibly gets.
I think you and other international users of this forum - can post into Russian part (it's up to you and Lev as moderators to decide if it's appropriate to post there in other language than default.) I'm 100% sure everybody would get quality feedback from our folks. And THAT will make others less shy.
We almost all speak English for obvious professional needs.
Hi Sundance,
It is certainly not forbidden to post in other boards in a non-board language but I think it would confuse people and wouldn't work out very well. But if you ever have a thread running that would be more picture based like "Show your xyz picture" then it would be great if you could post a link-invitation to it on another board, like the English one.
Perhaps it is time to tell a bit how this forum was planned and how it developed, and where it might go in future.
I guess a lot of you know me from other forums, I am a communication freak so to speak ;-) When I was looking at other microstock related forums, I came frequently across a post saying "please apologize my English" or "I can't express xyz as good in English as I could in my own language" That was point number one for me to consider for a new forum set-up: Making sure that people could express themselves in the language they were most comfortable in. Point 2 developed directly out of this: Having an international forum in several languages at the same time to encourage people to cross post language boarders. As I thought about how to set-up and organize such an international forum the only viable way was organizing it by language-specific boards and then give each language board the child-boards the moderators wanted. Some boards like the English and the Russian ones have a more detailed set-up then for example the French one for this reason. Third point (pointing a bit in the future) Out of my work as a reviewer, for Lucky Oliver, came an awareness that some peoples less perfect key words were actually the result of language difficulties rather then of bland key word spamming. I would quite often send them a link to the only Russian forum I knew of (if they were Russian) at
http://www.zastavkin.com in the hope that someone there could help them with their key wording problems ;-) But obviously not everybody speaks Russian ;-)
So at this time I had some spare moments and I set up this forum to allow people to communicate in their preferred language on specific boards and by encouraging people to cross post into other languages help the exchange of ideas/ tips etc between artists from different linguistic backgrounds. I felt it would be easier for most people to post in another language if they have a home-board in their own language where to feel "safe". At a very early stage I contacted Lev and asked him if he would like to moderate the Russian forum and he agreed, for what I am very thankful. For practical reasons (back-ups etc) he became also a forum admin, as it is better that to people in different locations back up the database and also to cover for me server side issues when I would go on longer holidays.
Regarding the key word problems quite a few people have, I am looking at possibilities that we all together can develop a wiki, list or similar to help each other. But that is still a bit music for the future. So give me a bit more time to check things out and if I found ways of doing this I will certainly invite everybody to give their input and ideas as it should be a project "from everybody for everybody" and not something that a few people decide on their own ;-)
More things: There will be more added "parts" to this growing community in the near future like a gallery app so that people can upload photos for evaluation by the members (like for the "which 10 shall I send to Shutterstock"). So stay tuned for more things to come ;-) My goal for this year, regarding this forum, is to develop it into a place where people find help (personally or by tutorials etc.) to improve in this industry. Many words, so if anything is unclear please ask, as English is also NOT my first language. SY