Language and location based content and categories

This Site Feedback
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90

After proposing a “Deutsch” Category, and getting a bit of a resistance, I have an idea, that I want to share:

I imagine the site to feature a customizable landing page, where I see posts, that match criteria, that I have set in my preferences. The criteria are:

  • Languages I can read
  • Locations that I am interested in

These two criteria will act as an AND filter on ALL posts to the site, no matter which category. The landing page will be a news feed, so to say, with stuff I am interested in and in a language I can understand.

This way, there is no need for machine translation, but there is still need for language detection, as this should be automatic, as most users will not tag this.

Probably, additional filters, for categories or tags, that will be ORed with language and location might make sense?

This feed will not have three moderators? I have a hard time imagining how any number of moderators will handle site/world/wide categories with posts in tens of languages anyway


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91

You mean something like this?

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92

No, that is not what I mean. I do not want to drill, I want to browse.

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93

Yes, me too I guess. Based on the above, I check the list of unread threads in English and French and pick the ones I’m interested in. And from there I can start browsing other threads I might have missed earlier.

Doing so I’m protected from messages in languages I can’t read, except when someone hijacks a thread with another language.

94

After thinking a bit more about it, I guess a scalable way of handling multi-language, multi-location conversations, is a special category, that behaves a bit like an issue tracker.

When someone has a question, they do not browse the hierarchy of categories, to find the best fit, but they start a questionnaire, where they get shown tags to choose from.

When the post gets published, people that subscribe to those tags will see it.

Conversation can start.

Bingo :slight_smile:

95

In the ongoing discussion, I have noticed that it isn’t an easy task to integrate big country forums, like those of France, because Discourse currently supports only two category levels.

I would suggest to introduce namespaces for sub-category names, as they are used in programming languages (e.g. Java).

The idea is, to use main-categories only as container for sub-categories. And the sub-categories contain country main-forums as well as sub-forums at the same category level (2). The virtual hierarchical structure is a result of the namespace conventions, if the sub-categories are sorted by name.

In the following visualisation, I use the Windows File Explorer - folders represent (sub)categories (except “Discourse”) and files topics.
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category_structure
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Another point in this context is the layout of the platform’s main-page.

Due to the large number of countries and their sub-forums, it’s problematic to show all the sub-categories on the platforms main-page, because the place there is limited - and I thing, this will probably increase in future.

So, I suggest that the main-page of the platform does not show sub-categories. This makes the surface clean and clearly arranged and the users should be able to easily find the right place for their needs.

For advanced users, it could also be very useful to see shortcuts of their “Watched” and “Tracked” categories at the top of the main-page, to quickly access them.

Surely, the biggest disadvantage of this concept is the long sub-category name, but perhaps this can be a starting point for further discussions.

ps: Above I used “platform” instead of “site”, because I think this project is much more than a (web)site
 :slightly_smiling_face:

96

Hi all,

Thanks for the suggestions about sub-categories. As described in the approved proposal, countries that need sub-categories will be moved to a top level category to allow them to have subcategories. Other alternatives can be tested if this ends up not working well.

Cheers.

97

Thanks for the reply!

Sorry, the top level category approval escaped me - and yes, maybe a suggestion for later
 :slightly_smiling_face:

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98

Is there already a way to contribute to the translation of pinned messages as well as categories and descriptions? Right now, when clicking on a button in another language, the dropdown list content gets displayed in English.

Capture d’écran 2022-04-08 230004_discourse
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99

AFAIK there is no way to translate category descriptions to be shown there. Once there are country and/or language categories, that should not be a problem because those will be the English speaking ones, so no need for translation.

If you want to provide translation to a pinned message that might be relevant to everyone, just post it on the topic and a mod can edit the initial message to include it as we have done with the governance ones.

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100

From what I can gather, with the progress made on the imports of the current forum, that statement amounts to confirm this platform here becoming an almost seamless continuation of what is there right now. Eg. people looking for “Help and support” either post to the international, English language category, or, in their local language, to the local chapter (sub-) category?

101

Communities will have to see what’s working best for them, some might decide a language-based category works better to unify help and support in a given language.

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102

If the language can’t be guessed that way, the browser agent notifies the favorite language(s) of the user.

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103

Did I understand it correctly - language is not a criteria for where it’s welcome to post something?

So, it’s ok to post in languages other than English in the international part of the platform, such as "Help and support” or “This Site Feedback”. Or is it better to do this in language/country-specific categories?

104

I hope, that is not the last word on this subject. I conspicuously parenthesized the “not”, to make the proposition make sense, for me. This would make all the hooray on machine translation and one single community moot.

I consider the local chapters do great work, which, at least in my areas, I can very much identify with. I am not so certain though, that the organisation of the categories here should mirror the organisation of the chapters there. To the opposite, this prevents fertile communication, in my personal view. Actually, I think, the less categories, the better for the experiment. Power to the users! Give them filters, so they can do their own sorting, of what is of interest for them, while keeping an eye to expand the horizons.

Browsing this board, I already noticed efforts to use this to “unify” aspects, that regionally differ. I do not condone this. This forum, just like the old forum, is not the community, at least not yet, however the participants here and there want make believe.

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105

I asked this question (post 103), because I am not quite sure if it’s welcome to post in my native language on the platforms international sections, where communication is mainly in English. Especially as the automatic translation option isn’t available yet.

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106

I’d say it is welcome, even without automatic translation set up. As far as I have been following the various categories discussions, it looks like there will be primarily region-based categories and languages will rather be tags (if necessary at all).

Besides, by the way, it looks like there is auto-translation integrated into Google Chrome which works well for any website anyway and thats the browser that about two thirds of users worldwide are using. So, I see the subject less about the ability to understand each other at all but more about users feeling welcome/comfortable/at home and for that, it is important to convey that it’s completely fine to post in any language you feel comfortable in.

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107

I’d certainly encourage people to post in whatever language they feel comfortable with (and I’ve said that in the past about the old help site, and elsewhere too). It’s a shame that there isn’t yet an on-site automatic translation option, and that the site appears incompatible with standard options such as “Google Translate” of regular links, but we shouldn’t let that prevent people from posting whatever, wherever, in their own language.

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108

Country-based categories will be migrated from the old forums. Also communities will be able to request a language-based space if they need to. See the reference on the decision made.

109

Thanks for all replies! I have seen, the automatic translation option moves forward - it would be great to realize it!