Pretty much. The issue with foreign languages is that they’re impossible for an admin to actually administer. Because the admin has no idea if the posts are breaking rules. For all you know, a foreign community could be focused on sharing recipes, or could be focused on sharing Neo Nazi dogwhistles. And you’d have no way of distinguishing between the two without basically learning a new language.
The issue with foreign languages is that they’re impossible for an admin to actually administer.
Emphasis mine. That’s bullshit. You got at least three resources at hand:
Machine translation.
Context.
Community help.
Note that you should be already doing #2 and #3 even in a monolingual instance or community; failure to do either means failure as a mod or admin.
For all you know, a foreign community could be focused on sharing recipes, or could be focused on sharing Neo Nazi dogwhistles. And you’d have no way of distinguishing between the two without basically learning a new language.
Besides the three resources that I mentioned, remember that dogwhistling Nazi are trying to promote an ideology. They’re likely to beeline towards the majority language of the instance/comm, because they want to be heard. Posting a dogwhistle in a language that practically nobody speaks is pointless.
Right but it has to be automatic. It has to detect that the language isn’t in whatever language I speak and then add a little link I can click to translate it. Like how YouTube comment works.
If I have to copy paste every single comment into Google translate it’s just not worth the time and effort. Especially since they can almost certainly find an instance where the moderator does speak their language.
Pretty much. The issue with foreign languages is that they’re impossible for an admin to actually administer. Because the admin has no idea if the posts are breaking rules. For all you know, a foreign community could be focused on sharing recipes, or could be focused on sharing Neo Nazi dogwhistles. And you’d have no way of distinguishing between the two without basically learning a new language.
Emphasis mine. That’s bullshit. You got at least three resources at hand:
Note that you should be already doing #2 and #3 even in a monolingual instance or community; failure to do either means failure as a mod or admin.
Besides the three resources that I mentioned, remember that dogwhistling Nazi are trying to promote an ideology. They’re likely to beeline towards the majority language of the instance/comm, because they want to be heard. Posting a dogwhistle in a language that practically nobody speaks is pointless.
Putting more work on the admin running the server, that’s a great solution for someone who doesn’t have to do the extra work.
I think that the function of translating posts and messages, as in Mastodon, would facilitate the moderation of foreign communities.
Right but it has to be automatic. It has to detect that the language isn’t in whatever language I speak and then add a little link I can click to translate it. Like how YouTube comment works.
If I have to copy paste every single comment into Google translate it’s just not worth the time and effort. Especially since they can almost certainly find an instance where the moderator does speak their language.