New PUG Needed

Polish User Group.

http://www.plus.net/pl/

Already included on the new Community Site http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?board=20.0

Heh. I wonder why they chose to rollout in Polish? Was it a full blown business decision or is someone Polish and just thought it would be fun to do a bit of localisation in their spare time?

Seems a bit daft if you ask me.

Many other more common languages in use in Britain ... yet they chose Polish ....

Any chance to spin eh

bs0d.

Given the number of very good Polish computer specialist available relatively cheaply I suspect it was because they have the resources to do it.

Perhaps because Polish has become synonymous with the word cheap in the UK, as has Plusnet. Although the latter does not have such a good reputation for quality of its workmanship. It seems like a perfect choice for attracting more cusomers.

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Jun-07 17:37:56)

Obviously much more important than answering questions about the report

Hi there,

We do have a few Polish people working here at PlusNet and they decided to undertake this project. They would have had no ownership in the responding to queries regarding the report.

It's a fair point that there are other larger communities within the UK that are non English speaking - I've seen references towards those of the Cymru dialect earlier today, but unfortunately I don't believe we have anyone here fluent in Welsh!

I don't really see how this could be seen as a negative thing.

No, I think it's quite fun to be honest And a nice way to have people working for a company be involved and able to be proud of their language.

Thanks for the explanation of how it came to be. Hopefully some more languages will appear in time!

In reply to:

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I don't really see how this could be seen as a negative thing

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I'm not saying it's a negative thing, in fact it's a positive step forward. I was just pointing out that it appeared to be higher on the agenda than answering the questions, and thereby reassuring your current customer base.

The impression was given that "everyone" was fully committed to Project 20:08, resulting in the slippage. Apparently this is not actually the case.

And I thought it was because of the email breach.
PN was told to polish up it's act, and that's the outcome

David, that's awful!

No, I agree, an innovative and productive step that could mean some good gains for plusnet. Nice to see them thinking out of the box again after years of playing catchup with the market.

And to quote Wikipedia, "monoglot Welsh speakers are now virtually non-existent". I would guess with the huge amount of technical terms for an ISP that translating it into Welsh would be a very half-hearted effort at best.

But I like it!

Well, if it's on wikipedia it must be true!

Welsh is still a very common language, sure, not as much as many languages, but there are a lot of Welsh people who hold onto their language, use it daily and many who were brought up with it as their primary form of communication. I'm sure there are also plenty of Welsh-language supporters who'd also gladly step forwards and give up their time to localise parts of the PlusNet site.

Not to say that this would actually give any huge gains for PlusNet, but you could say the same of having a Polish website for a British ISP whose main language of communication and suport is English. But it's fun and probably makes the staff who did it happy and a few Polish speakers may be attracted by the gesture.

I do see some negatives, but it really does not worry me if they do it in Outermongolian.

The negatives seem to me to be that some longer term resident people, say like the Chinese, asian or indeed the Welsh may feel left out and it could foster some bad relations between long term residents and new immigrants.
Secondly comments recently about local authorities translating everything into many foreign languages discouraged integration and encouraged entrenched feelings
Thirdly wonder how much time will be spent with serious problems having to be translated back into English so that they can be resolved by people further up the tree?

I'm guessing though that this is a good "get them in" sales strategy as the rest of the portal and other tools/announcements won't be available in polish?

Maybe the answers are in there, in Polish?

This was already well underway when I last visited PN Towers, tbh I thought it was quite a good idea.

Bear in mind that they have been asking for developers for a long time, and have already employed several polish staff. Its pretty well known that poland seems to be a good resource for certain IT specialists. I believe that because they already have a fair few polish staff they realised there was a gap that could be put to good potential.

TBH I too wondered why start with the polish community, but it makes sense when they already have so many people there whose first language it is anyhow.
I actually asked "why not say one of the Indian languages". The reply was along the lines of they dont actually have that many staff who speak that particular language.
I suppose you do have to start somewhere, so why not utilise what resources they already have. If it bombs, no big deal. Most companies try something new at some point or other.

>> Thirdly wonder how much time will be spent with serious problems having to be translated back into English so that they can be resolved by people further up the tree?

I guess thats the whole reason they chose polish in the first place!
Theres already sufficient staff in various positions not for this to be a problem.

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As regards to the comments regarding questions unanswered re the mail that has been brought up several times, then this doesnt really wash IMHO.. because in all companies there are certain people whose responsibility is for certain areas.
Some peoples job wouldnt come near other areas. Therefore the fact that person B is responsible for doing XYand Z, doesnt mean that person A knows the first thing about X,Y or Z as is beyond what they were employed to do in the first place.
This project has been underway for a while, and has I believe simply been a case of translation. Theres even a member of CS whose first language is polish who I believe will take the majority of responsibility for any queries that come in. No disrespect to that person, but they probably wouldn't have, nor never will have anything to do with the email system as that ownership will belong elsewhere.

I know its not the same, but say if it was a hospital and an urgent case came in needing heart surgery, then youd get all the heart specialists running, but you wouldnt expect the cleaners to drop their mops and pick up a scapel to join in would you. Therefore CS/certain web developers etc etc just wont ever get involved in something which belongs to Networks.

Just be easier to screw them over with constantly changing packages and webpages with ever-so-confusing information (I don't think it's clear enough in English, yet alone any other langauge) which most of your regular forum-ers won't be able to double check for accuracy on PlusNet's behalf as they've been able to with the standard version during the past few years.

I wonder, does Ofcom have a Polish specific team which can deal with broadband complaints?

Are you not going the opposite way to what the government is trying to achieve and that is to get immigrants to learn English? Sorry but it seems a damn silly idea to me.

Hi guys,

I appreciate your opinions, and we take them all on board.

This is essentially an experiment, if it works we'll look to do it in other languages too.

We chose Polish as we have quite a few members of staff whose first language is Polish, who suggested the idea in the first place, and have committed a fair bit of their spare time to launch this project.

We don't have any Welsh-speaking staff, otherwise I'm sure we'd have a Welsh portal too. If anyone who speaks Welsh would like to come and work for us we may give them a bit of work to do in that area!

IMO offering things like Tech Support in Polish will encourage people to join communities, by giving them access to things like study websites, and join groups which interest them, which in turn will encourage them to learn English.

If someone wants to move here but not learn the language etc, let's not pretend that our portal will change that person's mind, nor will it persuade people who do want to learn these things not to bother.

As I've said I think it's a fun and generally positive move. Shame that good old Neil Armstrong had to play the PR spin game with it though I'm sure he causes the company as much bad press as the good press he tries to generate. But then again, I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity!

Well, I hope they're doing it in their free time, and that someone's ticket isn't waiting in the queue because staff are busy designing a Polish website! I wouldn't rank translation services as a very high priority at all, for a UK ISP, selling to a UK market.

Of course there will always be customers or potential customers whose first or preferred language isn't English, but unless you are going to spend more time and money translating things than on the actual core business of the company, I don't see how you can ever fully address this. Every time you provide a translation for one community, there's bound to be another one crop up, saying: "Where's ours?". I don't know where it stops. This is how my local council ends up publishing everything in 40+ languages, even though it's not a particularly cosmopolitan area, and I'd be surprised if we had more than a couple of dozen speakers of some of them!

T.

In reply to:

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This is essentially an experiment, if it works we'll look to do it in other languages too

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I assume that as the portal is live, and no doubt will accept orders in Polish, that the T&C's is also in Polish?. After all the T&C's is the legal binding Contract.

Hi

Signups are currently done over the phone, and the T+C's are communicated to the customer.

We'll be looking at automating this depending on the reaction, however as the project has been done out of people's spare time at the moment we decided not to translate the whole signup journey initially.

I reckon there's got to a be a geek up at PlusNet HQ who speaks klingon, if it's good enough for Google it's gotta be good enough for PlusNet If you need some tips, pop over to the Klingon Language Institue.

In reply to:

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I assume that as the portal is live, and no doubt will accept orders in Polish, that the T&C's is also in Polish?. After all the T&C's is the legal binding Contract.

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Yup... they're here : http://www.plus.net/pl/tani_internet_zasady_uzytkowania.html

Nice one Liam . Don't upset any Polish customers they may want to quote them back at you

It will not be long before the conspiracy theorist claim that this was only done to thwart this guy

Please don't have a sense of humour failure on me folks.

dunno what you mean
*whoosh*

{edit}
best add a

Edited by kitz (Tue 26-Jun-07 17:35:03)

I think the FUP could be clearer though Don

Do you want a one shot check or an xISP line test?

As suggested - maybe it needs a translator to check

He hasn't been around for a while; perhaps he got wind of it and has been taking Polish lessons

Can I ask in all seriousness, are your Polish employees in the CSC?

only one shot?

nah Im greedy I want more than that

No. We do have a Polish girl working in the CSC now, but the others are scattered all over the building.

Shouldn't that be sprayed?

believe theres at least one - or was last time I was there, iirc I think shes taking responsibility for that side of things.

[edit James beat me to it]

Edited by kitz (Tue 26-Jun-07 17:39:38)

Cheers both.

I'm sure I'm missing a joke there somewhere.

scattered all over the building

I'll get my coat

Oh dear.

That's even worse than David's pun yesterday!

I agree it was worse that mine!
Think he needs to Pledge not to do it again!

Be gone! Vanish!

Having thought about my post last night, I'd just like to balance it up a bit by saying that I think it's good PlusNet are trying something else and catering for another part of a (hopefully growing, no matter what langauge) competitive market.

I just "worry" about how the webpages (and overall service) will be monitored in a way that their accuracy and consistency is of a level which the users of the standard site would expect.

I just had a PM off Mr Sheen telling me to clean my act up.

>I just had a PM off Mr Sheen telling me to clean my act up.

and I thought it was from Dusty!

Probably a fair enough concern. If for example, those staff who are currently interested in spending their spare time translating, lost their enthusiasm. Or if those staff able to provide any other part of the backup support to this move leave.

But in the mean time, it looks like a fun idea

Nice of you to mention a banned user without him afforded a means of reply.

bs0d.

Since when has rsharma been banned?

I thought he had started a clean slate... oh wait.. wrong branch of the thread

>Nice of you to mention a banned user without him afforded a means of reply.

??????? The pleasure of me banning him has yet to come.

I did post it with the thought that he would appreciate the joke!

If not, me bad.

If you want pleasure, ban someone and revel in the joy of your power.... then re-instate them and revel in the glory of your secrecy and cunning

I'm sure if rsharma was about he would appreciate the joke regarding new and interesting (or incomprehensible) T&C's to read.

In reply to:

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>Nice of you to mention a banned user without him afforded a means of reply.

... I did post it with the thought that he would appreciate the joke!

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Probably he would appreciate the joke, but if he is living under a ban, I would say that making the joke without affording the opportunity of reply would be a tad ill-judged. Banned or not, he is part of the community and should not have his hands tied behind his back. If he is under a ban, it should be lifted straight away, out of fairness.

Oops , caught in a time warp here obviously.

Appologies all round then i guess

bs0d.

>If he is under a ban, it should be lifted straight away, out of fairness.

No way would I make reference to a member where the forum prevented a response.

You must have missed my ???????????? when it was suggested it was so.

OK, tis me having a moment.

To dispel the myth...I am not banned.

I liked your joke.

"The pleasure of me banning him has yet to come."

I think that is a very sad comment

You could at least be unselfish about this and put the action up for auction, could be worth a lot of money selling that particular pleasure to the right (or wrong depending on your point of view) person, when the need arises ofcourse.

Pożądane plecy

Hmmmm the Polish for welcome back is displayed wrongly. Looks like TBB needs to take a lead from Plusnet

Edited by wingco1 (Wed 27-Jun-07 12:46:45)