this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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In another context I thought about the possibility for links in foreign languages as long as they are marked, and maybe summarized by a sentence to help people get the context. I think in todays time with browser being able to translate, that should be a feasible approach. I didn't find time to debate that with the other mods, yet.
To me, coming from a moderation perspective, the idea of whole discussions in a plentitude of languages is problematic. In my opinion, we would need to have more mods being able to at least police content if need be.
Please remember non browser people as well.
For my browse behavior pattern it would be basically removing the community if it's more non English then English (or my native tongue but I'd vote against allowing it for the same reason).
I screen the titles for things where I feel I can contribute or benefit from in Voyager.
Think of the classic room scrolling.
Engaging with foreign languages means spending either one second deciding to ignore it or like 15 seconds to copy pasted it into a translator, switching tools in between.
I'm realistic enough to know that I wouldn't do that, especially if it's an outlier post in s plethora of English ones.
Allowing link to websites in any language, accompanied by a quick explanation in english, seems like a good option IMO. (And I say this as a non-native english speaker)
Level. Allow German, French and Spanish. You should be able to get mods that speak at least one of those languages. And I'm saying this as someone who speaks none of those. But I think it would be good if English didn't have such a dominance. Might even motivate people to learn one.
Well. The point is, that this approach could be a disfavor for all the eastern European countries, which users may also discuss in their native languages.
Also the server rules state, that they are in for German/English communities.
Adding Italian. Our northern neighbors probably have fewer problems with English than their southern neighbors.
Adding some languages arbitrary without a clear guideline might open up discussions for other languages. For example: if we accept as a guideline that (Mandarin :-), English and Spanish are the most spoken languages in the wolrld and we accept that, we might unsettle French people. If we go with western/southern languages only we might loose the other people who turn for local serivces.
It is no easy debate to have.
LLM are able to do pretty good translations nowadays, even where former automatic translators did badly (example: Japanese to English sucks on Ggle Translate, but is much better on LLM). So I think it's manageable for occasional moderation. You can use DuckDuckGo's duck.ai for a free and safer access to different LLMs. I don't know what's the quality for languages with a smaller amount of content on the internet, though.
Well, are you ready to moderate non-English post?
Yeah, I thought about it when I created my tiny food community and decided to allow any language in the rules.
No, I'm really asking. if you would be willing to moderate contents in this exact community. I mean, we need to know the means at our disposal to debate the request.
Sure I could moderate French, English, Spanish and maybe Japanese a bit, and use LLMs for the rest. Although, I am uncertain about the point of having both BuyFromEU and BuyEuropean, is there a discussion about this topic somewhere?
Yes, the topic dropped on or two times.
I commenced a vote if people want to stick around after I received mod status, then made a post about what to expect to discuss/find here. After the vote I commited on finding mods and setting up this place. Lets see where this leads.