I’ve been tossing around the idea of inviting native Japanese speakers to ask their English questions on this site. I’ll list some pros and cons of doing this, but I’m really interested in getting your thoughts.

Pros

Reciprocation is the key to building a strong community

I think that some people are hesitant to ask a question on our site because they feel that they may not be able to answer another person’s question, thus leading to less interaction.

If more people had a chance to contribute (i.e. by answering English questions), they would feel more comfortable in asking their own Japanese questions.

Native speakers help answer questions

We have some very generous native Japanese speakers that are answering questions on our site (we also have some amazing people on this site who have mastered the Japanese language and are sharing their knowledge!) It would be incredible if we could have more native speakers helping to answer questions.

We have something unique to offer

Most of us on this site are native speakers of English that speak (at various levels) Japanese. I think that gives us some unique insight in helping a Japanese speaker to learn English.

Cons

Tags could get confusing

Right off the bat, people asking questions would have to tag their question as either “Japanese” or “English”. That leads to the next issue – what to do about the other tags. For example, do we need to go from the tag “grammar” to “j_grammar” and “e_grammar”?

Would we be diluting our community?

For example, we would be going from a community of Japanese language learners to a community of Japanese language learners AND English language learners.

Overall, I think that inviting native Japanese speakers to ask their English questions would be a net positive for our community, but I would really like to get your thoughts.

Please voice your opinions.

Thanks!!