[bnegreve]

> Fragmenting knowledge doesn't give much benefit.

What about Wikipedia? I think they are benefiting from being multi-language.

> English is the standard language for the IT for better or worse.

All programmers are certainly not fluent in english. Reading code/documentation is one thing, having a discussion / asking a question is different.

Most non native english speakers probably don't feel confident enough to ask questions on english speaking forums like SO.

[venomsnake]

I prefer the English wikipedia to my native one. Also wikipedia is not SO. A good answer in English helps the whole world. A perfect in Portuguese helps only Brazil and Portugal. There should be harmonizing effort that at least takes the cream of pt.* and moves it to the main site. And I think there is a fundamental problem with SO and the way they manage the content generated - the current model is not working well for me lately.

[bnegreve]

> I prefer the English wikipedia to my native one.

Yes, but obviously, you can read English. Most people can't.

> A good answer in English helps the whole [programming] world.

There is only about 1/10th of the population that speak English as first or second language[1]. I am sure that there are plenty of people that could use a good Q/A website where they can ask questions in their mother tong.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_numb...

[reubenmorais]

> Most non native english speakers probably don't feel confident enough to ask questions on english speaking forums like SO.

On the flip side, people are feeling too confident about asking questions on pt.stackoverflow.com, lowering the SNR quite a bit. But I don't know how English SO was at the beginning, and I wouldn't be surprised if it also took them a while to establish the current quality standards.

[ufo]

The more restrictive rules came as the community grew and matured. The early days of SO were very different from now. You can see this everytime someone links to a popular old question here on HN: there is always a comment complaining that the question is closed as non constructive and that So isn't as good as it used to be :)

[icebraining]

The English SO was a special place, since many of the users came from Joel's and Jeff's blogs, instead of Google, so I don't think they can be compared directly.