Is “stackoverflow em Português” for Brazilians only?

Question

Why is the URL for stackoverflow em Português (or Stack Overflow em Português?) https://br.stackoverflow.com/ rather than https://pt.stackoverflow.com/?

br is the language code for Breton. It's also the country code for Brazil. The language code for Portuguese is pt. When I see br in the URL, I understand this to mean for Breton speakers or for Brazilians.

Is the title misleading and is the site reserved for Brazilians (excluding people from Portugal, East Timor, Angola, etc.)? This would seem bizarre. I expect that the site is actually intended for all Portuguese speakers. It feels unwelcoming to non-Brazilians to have a URL that explicitly excludes them.

In this particular case, there's a low potential for confusion, since I don't expect to see a Stack Overflow in Breton. However for other topics and other languages ambiguities will arise, and potentially clashes. Are we going to have br.stackoverflow.com (programming in Portuguese) and br.homebrew.stackexchange.com (cider making in Breton)? Will ar.stackoverflow.com be in Spanish (because Argentina) or in Arabic (because Arabic)? Is stackoverflow.com really en.stackoverflow.com or us.stackoverflow.com?

For the sake of automated processing, I can't find any sense in not using ISO language code. Humans aren't so concerned (they hardly ever look at the URL anyway), but at the very least the SE language designations should be consistent across topics. Using country codes risks creating political friction.

Why was the (seemingly obvious to me) decision made not to use standard language codes?

Answer 1

We discussed this and we're going to change it to pt.stackoverflow.com to be consistent with the name.

We can't do that until the end of private beta because it will log everyone out and in private beta you need a special URL to get back in.

Answer 2

Even a significant part of the brazilian site users (including me) prefer pt. instead of br., but unfortunately it seems that it was an internal decision, not a community oriented one ^{(see note below)}.

Also, the current site title is "Stack Overflow in Portugues", matching the original area 51 proposal that people commited to. "br" is inconsistent with everything else.

At the moment of my original posting, the only reference I had about it seeming to be an internal decision was the response of our moderator. I'm glad to hear from @David Fullerton they agreed to change the site's url to pt.

Answer 3

Translation of the official answer by Gabe

By parts:

• Maybe we can get stackoverflow.com.br, but at the end it would be just a redirection (by a series of reasons, like login sharing with other sites of the network).

• The choice as to when/where use BR or PT was topic of more conversations that I'd like throughout the project. We had to weight many factors about who's our taget audience, what are our plans to other languages, how are the comunities going to compare themselves, ... Basically, it was not by chance.

• Brazil has around 80% of the Portuguese speaking population. If we consider the programmers population, the proportion would probably be bigger. So it's only natural that the site has a familiar feeling to Brazilians (I'm from there, the localization was done clearly for PT_BR, this sort of things).

• The number of programmers in Brazil that don't know English, and that do not want/can/will learn it is bigger, in absolute and relative terms, that in Portugal. Obviously, SOPT is open to any Portuguese speaking person, but the site wouldn't exist if every programmer from Brazil and Portugal spoke English... So it's not any secret that Brazil is our main motivation for the project.

• The idea is that this will be the first site using a "foreign language", so things like standardization are important, unless it doesn't interfere with the points above.

Stack Overflow Brasil?

Brazil is the main target of the site, certainly. Hence the need of avoiding any decision that would affect Brazilians entry. We need to make the site welcoming of anyone that speaks Portuguese, but to make it plain clear to Brazilians that never heard of SO that they are the main motivation of this idea. We don't want to make a green and yellow site (first because it's tacky...), neither call it Stack Overflow Brasil because these are too much exclusive, but this is a site thought to the Brazilian public.

The decision to orient the site to Brazil was taken when the localization process started. All site texts are PT_BR, some small things were thought to Brazilian culture. Doing all of this and saying that "it's an equalitarian site for all Lusophones" makes less sense that having a br in the URL.

Answer 4

:), we can think of Winter Bash is designed for users in the North Hemisphere, but it is summer here in South and I feel welcome to participate in wearing hats.

I believe, it is just a question of which public the main target is.

If you propose the site to have the URL changed because of language standardization (to be coherent to Portuguese and not Breton) I support your idea too.

However, this question is more about if the site is only for one specific country.

Gabe's answer states there are some minor issues purposely customized to Brazil's culture because it is the main target public, but he also emphasizes SO Portuguese welcomes everyone who speaks the language, wherever is the user location.

Most important is the moderation (community and moderators) on that site to be friendly with all users, so they can create and keep a real healthy environment.

_{@David Fullerton glad to know you will change the site's url.}