What exactly is the "language" dropdown in creating comments/posts? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by BarryZuckerkorn@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

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Three questions:

What does the language dropdown actually do?
What does the "if you deselect Undetermined" warning banner mean?
Are we able to tag our comments as being in whatever specific language across the board, by default (e.g., English)?

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[-] ffmike@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

The dropdown lets you select the language of your target audience (or at least I find that the easiest way to think about it). If you select "English" then only people who select "English" in their settings will see that post.

But because most people leave their settings at the default "Undetermined" those people won't see a post that's marked as "English".

So for the moment, the best practice is to just ignore that dropdown and leave everything as "Undetermined".

The warning banner looks to be duplicated from the Settings page, where it actually makes sense.

[-] BarryZuckerkorn@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

But because most people leave their settings at the default “Undetermined” those people won’t see a post that’s marked as “English”.

I don't read the settings screen to be limited to selecting only one language, but the interface isn't entirely clear. Ideally, I'd think that all comments would be labeled by language, and that anyone using the service would select many languages they'd be willing to see (including Undetermined), so that correctly labeling a comment by language(s) wouldn't actually reduce the meaningful audience for that comment.

Of course, that also raises the question of what's supposed to happen with comments that have multiple languages.

[-] ffmike@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, both the settings and post language selections are multiselect. But it feels like there's a chicken & egg problem here: until something is done to encourage users off the default (which I would guess many don't even know is an option), changing post language will severely limit its reach.