This site’s categorization by language doesn’t seem to be useful

Yes, switch to “Ask in Any Language” do not make moderations harder then the current arrangement.

Having said that, I think it is still good for ASK to have Moderators covering as many languages as possible - such that when there are language specific issues, we know who we can speak to when needed.

Mmh, if you can post in any language in the same category, the concern is all about aesthetic. It could look ugly to see a list of titles in different languages all in the same place.
It could be like (well, not really) a mailing list where everyone write in their language.
Now we have 5 “allowed” languages. If your language is not here, you are “forced” to use English. But after, when you are allowed to use any language? But this is only a concern. Let’s see how it goes.

In any case, I think that it would be nice to inform people about local community channels, when they exist, would they be forums or chats (Telegram/Matrix/IRC), like the ones listed here https://fedoracommunity.org (yes, this site should be eventually updated to the current status), but this is another story.

I agree with this 100%.

In addition to everything pointed out by @guiltydoggy, there are many other Linux forums that successfully help people in other languages without dedicated native language speakers or moderators signed up to help.

I personally have helped many people solve problems in languages I can’t read.

While it is true that many people won’t break out a translation app to participate, we don’t need everyone to be willing to do it. It only takes a handful of people who can communicate natively or are willing to use a translator.

the primary difference is this:

  • without moderators, people may or may not engage with languages they don’t speak—there’s no guarantee because there’s no one who has volunteered to take on the responsibility of looking after these languages
  • with moderators, there are at least 2 (if we say we want 2 mods per language) people who have agreed to take this responsibility. So whether others do or do not engage, at least the moderators will. It just ensures that there’s someone accountable.

If someone can somehow guarantee that someone or the other will engage with languages they don’t speak for sure, so that queries do not go unanswered, there’s no need for the mods. I just don’t see how this can be done.

I only suggest this because FOSS communities tend to have a high turnover rate. People join and leave all the time, people get busy all the time. The only way of ensuring that something is going to be looked after is find a few individuals who agree to take on the responsibility. It’s how package maintenance works, it’s how QA works, it’s how infra works, it’s how the magazine work—there needs to be a core team of people who will prioritise whatever responsibilities they’ve agreed to take on. It doesn’t usually work when we go down the “someone will do it” route. We’ve seen that again and again in the community over the years.

…Is it really the same, though? Let me ask: Are there English-language mods for Ask? Are there people who have taken on the responsibility of ensuring that someone engages with every post made in English?

If there are, then I’m curious how they keep up with the load.

If there aren’t, because they’re not needed / because engagement isn’t a problem for posts made in English, then at the very least that makes this entirely unlike packaging, or infra, or the magazine, where there are people on the hook for every commitment, and nothing happens without those people.

Ask is just not the same thing, because it’s user-driven, not moderator-driven. The site will still experience activity with or without the participation of any of the responsible parties. Which is completely untrue of packaging, infra, and the magazine.

The entire justification for the language sections seems to be predicated on the assumption that posts made in other languages will by default be ignored unless there’s someone who’s responsible for “handling” those posts. And honestly I agree with that assumption, while non-English posts are ghettoized into language subcategories.

But are we so sure that non-English posts would be ignored by the entire user community, if they were posted into the same category/categories as the English-language posts? People seem to engage with those posts plenty. To assume that they’re only doing so because the posts are in English, and that not a single one of them would do the same for non-English posts… feels like a bit of an unproven conjecture, at a minimum.

There are, yes—we don’t necessarily engage with each post because with English most get some sort of response, but when a post is flagged etc., we actively look at what needs to be done. Again the difference is that most mods (even ones that are meant to be mods for other languages) do speak English and so the load is very well spread out.

Well it’s all conjecture. The assumption that people will engage with every single non-English post is also an unproven conjecture.

We won’t know until we run an experiment. We know that there will be two possibilities:

  • people do engage with every non-English post
  • people do not engage with every non-English post.

If the former happens, all’s well and good. But what if the latter happens? Are we willing to allow for the possibility where some non-English speaking users will not be responded to, making them feel (even more) left out? So, if that does happen, what is the plan?

The site shows the number of views & responses on each thread. The existing mods can watch that and if a non-english post sits for more than a day with no response then they can reach out and respond (even if a translator is used) if someone has not already done so. Does not seem to me to be rocket science to possibly even set up some kind of alert if desired for posts that seem to sit stagnant with no response at all.

This is true of any post in any language. No post is guaranteed to get a response in any language, including English.

That being said, if we look at forums of other Linux distros, we can see that while there is certainly less attention paid to non-English posts, most do get responses. Further, the same is true here, even with moderators in place.

Again, having moderators doesn’t guarantee that either.

This doesn’t seem logical to me. The fact that their is high turnover is the reason that relying on a small group of dedicated people doesn’t make sense. Instead, make those posts more visible to everyone and rely on the community to help.

Maintenance, package management and the magazine all seem very different from an internet forum…

I guess my counterargument to this is that it works well for many other Linux forum communities, what makes this one so different from all of those?

It isn’t fully conjecture. It is based on seeing what has worked well for others.

Since we are already “making most non-english speakers” feel left out since we don’t have a place for them to post, this seems like a non-issue. Even if it turns out to be an issue, we can do what every other organization in the world does when a plan doesn’t work. We can make a new plan.

For what it is worth. I would be glad to commit to spending time answering and/or moderating non-English language posts.

To be fair, this has already failed. There are many unanswered posts in all language categories (English included). Have those moderators been held accountable for not answering those posts?

Persian - 8/72 (11%) have 0 replies
Simplified Chinese - 3/30 (10%) have 0 replies
Traditional Chinese - 6/13 (46%) have 0 replies
Italian - 6/26 (23%) have 0 replies
Spanish -23/115 (20%) have 0 replies

Even if we decide to keep the current language set up, then there needs to be a discussion on how to achieve these goals because its clear the current way is not.

2 Likes

Sorry, I quote this part just to explain my point of view.

If you are a moderator, it doesn’t mean that you have an answer for every question.
If a person ask a super complicated question about an issue about a super complicated setup about an exotic software, and I don’t know what’s going on. I’m supposed to write an answer anyway, just to reply to the topic?
I think no, just because I’m not a super expert in every field of information technology. And it is valid for every category, for every language. If nobody knows the answer, well, the topic will remain unanswered. Isn’t it?

The point about moderators, imho, is that they should look at bad behaviors, remove spam messages, eventually fix unreadable posts, instruct people how to use the platform. And not to answer to every question.

2 Likes

Sorry, I did not make myself clear there. The later post that showed the number of unanswered threads brought that to light. I agree totally as that is my understanding of the moderator role as well.

They have been pinged from time to time in the necessary channels, and the idea is that if they’re inactive, then the language category will eventually be dropped. We just haven’t got down to doing this—mostly because we’re discussing all of this reorganisation and it doesn’t make sense to do all this work and drop a category if we’ll drop them all eventually anyway.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve set the wrong tone by using “moderators”. I mean someone who says “if a question turns up in this language, I will try to respond to it”. They don’t have to be a moderator. All I’d like is for us to have someone somewhere that will actively look at non-English language categories. (Even just saying “I don’t know, so maybe we should translate this in English to get more eyes on it” is a response)

This is all I’m asking for. If some folks can come forward and say they’ll commit to answering/responding to questions in non-English categories, then we have some semblance that these questions will not go down a black hold and get lost.

2 Likes

BTW, I want to express a thought.

The issue in language categories is that there is a lack of answers or there is a lack of questions? In any case, IMHO, the point is that language categories are underutilized.
And their presence eventually prevent us to create a different setup of this forum.

1 Like

This is a chicken first or egg first question.

When people see there is less reply in certain language, then in order to have higher chance to get a reply, will decide to write on English instead.

So lack of question in a language, to me, is more about lack of response. Because as a computer, people more or less write in simple English when having the assistance of translation tools.

When there are separate language categories, people will always skip topic not in their language. Thus restricting exposure of topics further.

Once people see a question, the most engaging member will simply use a translation tools trying to help.

I am not sure if Moderator know which topics are first posts of a new user. If they know, I would like Moderator to offer welcoming replies if those topic do not got any responses.

Other than that, I do not think Moderators have any duty to offer replies.

ASK is not a ticketing system. And we should not expect topics will be treated like support tickets with response time limit attached.

1 Like

I guess this depends just on money, when this is liberated and guaranteed there are new ways we can try out.

But anyway @ankursinha also has an important point mentioned:

For this reason I did create a new topic where we discuss (How to manage a non-English category | commitment and ideas)

Everyone who want’s to commit can write in a few lines how her/his commitment could look like.

:slight_smile:

The fact is also that since the begin, there was a low number of new topics in the language categories.

Yes.

As the Languages Categories are created based on available Languages skill set, not due to traffics.

Remember we’re a community members most of us are volunter’s as all FOSS system, one has some skills other has another skills or expertice area, and together we make the community.

1.- Are we trying to find a guilty?

Definitively this is not how FOSS works.,

:100:

2.- Where this static come from?

Let’s take Spanish by example and Let’s start some MATH.

Number of replies by category, all managed by me.

115 Total of TOPIC since we open the FORUM (2019).

27 TOPIC with 36 REPLY in 2019.
55 TOPIC with 50 reply in 2020.
34 TOPIC with 39 reply in 2021.

so, Please check your data, however check by yourself → https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/espac3b1ol/98

As far as I’m seeing the spanish category almost all post have reply and an answer, we can’t have any responsability for $USER who ask and go, and this happen in almost all FOSS forum, also we can’t have a magic ball to know if the $USER’s resolve their issues, but we are making an real effort about that all post have a solve solution.

3.- This post is getting bigger and it’s not leading us anywhere.

Regards.,

I don’t think so. The discussions just shows that we have to prove/test other models too. I think we could do this parallel and see how it looks like after a while of 6 to 12 month. If we see that it gets a disaster the new way, and to much work would rest on the moderators shoulder we could stop the test.

Yes, that’s why i made a new topic to discuss how to organize and manage a new Category. There we also will see who wants to give a commitment and who is ready to help to do it on a new way.

2 Likes

I look at the numbers posted

and see that universally there are a relatively large percentage of posts in the other language categories that seem to not get a response.

While it is certainly not a moderators responsibility to answer questions in subjects they are not familiar with, I have to agree with others that having separate language categories may be contributing to the lack of responses there.

One thing that may help would be to merge everything, then allow the user to post in their native language with the system automatically doing a parallel english translation of at least the title so most could read it. This could include a mandatory tag for language so the automatic translator could work easily. I think many could respond if they were able to read and understand the post/question.

I do not have the time nor inclination to dive into the other language categories and translate every post just to see if I may be able to help and it is likely many feel the same. However if even the title was translated so the general subject/question was easy to understand then I might make the effort to assist even though I needed to translate the rest of the post.