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)?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] BarryZuckerkorn@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.