Title. The language of a post or comment is never displayed, nor can it be defined when writing posts or comments.
This leads to posts/comments with the language set to “undetermined” which leads to them appearing to users that didn’t select the actual language.

Edit: Additionally some communities seem to have started disallowing “undetermined” as a post/comment language, leading to Jerboa users being unable to post/comment. I’ve encountered [email protected] so far.

  • root@u.fail
    3·
    1 year ago

    Tbh I feel like the language attribute is poorly implemented in lemmy, or at least in the client interfaces I’ve used. Why is it necessary at all?

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 year ago

      Why is it necessary at all?

      I feel like they planned for it to be a bigger feature and then put it on hold for more pressing stuff. The idea that I can only pick 1 language to see posts in is ridiculous.

    • ChaisOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s not absolutely necessary, but I think it makes sense. It allows users to select which language posts they want to see, but that requires the language to be set correctly. Alternatively they can block these communities altogether, which feels heavy-handed. I agree it’s poorly implemented and there’s an open issue where I made a suggestion how to set reasonable default values.

      • root@u.fail
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m struggling to see how it even makes sense. Personally I can read 2 languages and kinda a couple more if I try. And google translate can do the rest pretty well. I struggle to think why I wouldn’t want tonat least see posts regardless of language, seems like separating people for a silly reason. Maybe I’m weird. It will be interesting to see how this part works out.

        • ChaisOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          And google translate can do the rest pretty well.

          Only if one of them happens to be English and the other isn’t too “exotic.” Beyond that it’s a crapshot.
          And relying on Google, or any centralised translation service, feels somewhat counterproductive on a platform that tries to break away from the centralised approach.

          And ultimately this discussion is entirely beside the point, because the point is that Lemmy flags the language of content and I argue that any client app should properly handle these flags.