[jaydles]

Fragmenting has always been a concern, but eventually, we realized that there are LOTS of good developers who are much less likely to participate (type) on a site in a language other than their primary one.

(Japan is a great example of a place where there are very few devs who even want to consume programming information in English, let alone exchange it that way.)

As a native English speaker, I imagine myself at a professional meetup or cocktail party where everyone else is speaking French (which I studied in college). How many jokes would I tell? How many would I even understand?. The point is, I can function, and understand all the words, but I can't really feel like a fully-integrated part of the group, and the whole thing is hard work. Can I get mission critical information? Yeah. Do I want to hang out there and try to help others? No - even though I may have mastered the topic, the language gap makes me feel less excited and less qualified than I would in an all-english group.