[FR] ▶️ Proposition de réactivation de l'espéranto
[DE] ▶️ Reaktivierungsvorschlag für Esperanto

[EN]

Dear members and friends of ipernity,

Ten months ago, we had decided to further maintain the ipernity website only in the seven main languages of the western hemisphere. This cut the software maintenance effort in half so we could achieve twice as much with our limited programming capacity. Despite this limitation, we do reach 99.3% of all club members in their native language.

Since then, there have been several requests for us to at least unlock Esperanto again. Unfortunately, it is not done with a simple unlocking. Nearly 250 html files, some of which have been extensively modified, would have to be transferred from English to Esperanto. This means: not only translated, but also coded, tested and implemented. We have neither the language skills nor the time resources for this. Even with the help of an experienced Esperanto translator, the coding and testing would take several months in which all other projects would be left behind.

Recently, even the president of the World Esperanto Association (Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA), Aleks Kadar, made a request. We have therefore carefully reviewed the situation again and would like to share the results with you.

Current Situation: On June 16, 2020, nine club members were registered as Esperantists according to the language setting in their accounts. Four of them live in a country where one of the languages offered by ipernity is the common language. Only five Esperantists are not reached in the language of the country of which they are residents. Moreover, there are currently 278 guests registered as Esperantists. We address 117 of them also in their mother tongue. We do not reach 161 guests with the seven languages offered. Only five of them were active in the past 12 months. So in total we actually fail to reach 5-10 Esperantists in their mother tongue.

UEA's proposal:
We were informed that the UEA would be willing to promote the use of ipernity within its association, and 22 Basic subscriptions (22.90 EUR) firmly to book in order to pass them on to UEA members themselves. This would increase the number of users of the Esperanto version of our website to 27-32 and contribute 504 EUR to our annual budget.

Financial assessment: The proportionate operating costs (excluding IT projects) this year amount to 32 EUR per Standard subscription and 20 EUR per Basic subscription. The 22 additional Basic subscriptions would therefore only generate a small increase in revenue above costs. But that is the case with all Basic subscriptions. In this respect the offer from the UEA is fair. However, as we already have uncovered IT project obligations there would be insufficient money to buy the programming hours needed for the reactivation of Esperanto externally. The workload for this is estimated to be 200 hours.

Further assessment: Ipernity was rescued three years ago mainly by photo enthusiasts. The core function of our website is the visual and verbal communication with each other in the whole range of our common hobby. Our website is the virtual forum of our community, so to speak, where guests are also welcome.

Apart from a few exceptions, where members of our community cultivated both photography and Esperanto as hobbies, the Esperantists used and still use ipernity primarily as a service provider for the interests of their cultural community. There are pure Esperanto accounts where Esperanto music, papers or books are presented. There are pages of Esperanto museums and other things that are not very enriching for photo enthusiasts, but very much so for the Esperantists. For the cultural community of the Esperantists, the reactivation of their language at our website would certainly be very gratifying and a great benefit.

For the majority of photographers in our community, reactivating Esperanto may have little added value. Except perhaps that photographers from countries whose language we do not offer, especially from Eastern Europe, might also be attracted. In this respect, reactivation could create an additional unique selling point. On the other hand, it would put a permanent strain on our programming resources for all future software updates by an additional eighth (eight languages instead of seven).

Appraisal by the ima team: Financially, the offer from UEA is fair, but only cost-covering. In addition, only a small part of our community is enriched in terms of content. Possibly the additional language could attract some photo enthusiasts from Eastern Europe. On the other hand, there is a high unsettled one-time effort of about 200 programming hours, as well as a subsequent permanently increased maintenance effort of the software by one eighth (12.5%).

From today's point of view, the modernization and technical upgrading of our website will require all our programming resources for at least another 12 months. If the reintroduction of Esperanto were to cause delays over several months to other important projects, this would be more damaging than the small potential benefit to the Community. Therefore, after careful consideration, the ima team could not yet agree to the reactivation of Esperanto.

Further consideration: As elected representatives of a community that operates in a niche without any profit interests, i.e. which is itself a minority, we have a heart for the Esperantists' cause, beyond all effort-benefit considerations. In this respect we have a wider leeway than traditional commercial enterprises. We have therefore considered whether any modifications of the UEAs’ offer would allow us to go further along the road.

1) Commitment of UEA: Currently more than 200 ipernity club members have committed themselves to a 5-year subscription. We think it is only fair that the UEA would also commit itself for 5 years. That would not only be the expression of a real commitment, but is also completely normal in cooperations where high efforts have to be made at the very beginning. We would therefore ask the UEA to do a one-off payment of EUR 2,500 at the beginning. The amount would still only cover costs. But the UEA would show that they really have a serious long-term interest. Our gain as a community would be that we could use this pre-payment to finance some software projects that we can only manage with external support. We would have the benefit sooner and would not have to wait until we had saved the money.

2) Programming support by UEA: Furthermore, we would ask the UEA to organize the translation and coding of the html files with their own people. For an organization very much larger than ipernity, it should be easy to find appropriate experts in their association. They could rent a small AWS server and do everything on their own. The remaining effort for us to integrate the finished html files into the ipernity software would be significantly less than the total effort.

3) Integration of the Esperantists: Thirdly, but also important, we would expect a better integration of the Esperantists in our community. Because ipernity is no service provider. We are a community! We do not offer a website for making profit. We operate it for our hobby. We would expect the Esperantists, for example, to formulate the descriptions and rules of their groups also in the supported languages of ipernity. Furthermore the UEA would need to nominate an English speaking person (or team) who is (are) available at short notice to clarify tickets concerning Esperanto accounts, because nobody on the ima team speaks Esperanto. She/he/they would need to be sufficiently present, should supervise the above mentioned integration and the Esperanto groups (clean up abandoned groups, deploy appropriate administrators, monitor rule compliance, etc.) She/he/they would have to maintain the Esperanto version of the FAQ. Last but not least she/he/they would have to support us as translators with later updates after the reactivation is finished.

Conclusion and plea: On this basis, with a better balance of burdens and benefits and a long-term perspective, we could imagine reactivating Esperanto. But before we do, we would like to hear your opinion. Please tell us if we have forgotten anything, or if you can think of better solutions. Because the final decision is so important we want to make it only after we have consulted the community.

Please note that if we officially submit a proposal to the UEA, the UEA will be in a similar situation to us. It, too, will have to weigh up the effort and cost elements against the advantages of an Esperanto interface at ipernity. The result is completely open.

Your ima team