I understand the reason for it, but on the other hand I find it very offensive to 80% of the world. Isn't there a better way than saying "we don't accept your kind here" before we find a more permanent solution?
I seriously thought we grew out of that segregation phase in human history.
- You pick accepted languages in your tribe settings (plural again).
- When you post to a group of tribes that are not of a same single language, you must pick the language of the text / snap (no default) and you can't post to incompatible tribes (let say French only and German only).
- The frontpage shows only snaps in languages you know.
Eventually, localized interface but it's a very minor concern.
While being a great solution of which the groundwork is already partially laid out we must consider the resources that a language support system such as this will require, resources we don't yet have access to. At this point the funding needed to spin up more servers and develop a system that manages languages on a platform that is yet to fully develop it's footing is a really difficult task to tackle not to mention the dozens of other things we should be focusing on. What we have now is momentum, and with this momentum we will take steps to expanding our functionality in the order we believe will help us grow. While we hope to have full language support soon, we need to consider other more important functions like giving our members proper content management tools, proper organizational tools, better moderation tools, a monetization system that will fund our hosting bills and let us to focus full time on this platform instead of switching between other jobs that pay the bills. Having said that, we have a great plan to introduce a lot of great functionality over the coming months, and once we complete our scheduled releases we will focus on making sure we have proper language support across the platform.
I get that and I understand it will take some time.
But as /u/Bastou said, inviting people to downvote is not acceptable. Just let people keep off their submissions from the frontpage and you bought yourself some breathing space.
This is great down the road. I was referring to the way the system works now while we wait for these (awesome) features. Simply saying "downvote content that is not in English" is unacceptable to me.
It's not the resources, it's the recommendation to downvote everything we don't understand.
Edit: I perfectly understand that it's a lot of work and I'm more than willing to wait a long time to have any small improvement. The only thing that bothers me is the way content in other languages is treated now. Just changing the recommendation to ignore it instead of downvoting it would already be fine by me.
I understand your point, but the problem is, this is a community: things spread because it's so connected. If I'm posting in German to a German-based tribe, that goes out to all of my followers. If one of them comments on it, then it goes out to all of their followers, and so on; it would be chaotic to say the least, and it could end up driving users away from the site. Until there is a way to filter content by language, downvoting is the only way to prevent that content from spreading.
Well, they should have though about that before making a website available all around the world. Honestly, in 2015, this baffles me.
If it makes such a mess to start with, this should be priority #1. To be fixed in the next month. If not, this site will remain 100% English, and loose its international user base before it can even reach a size worth mentioning.
And if you think this is chaotic, you should see my facebook posts, I speak six languages and I'm connected to people speaking them too. No one ever complained. And neither did I when I saw content in languages I didn't understand. I just ignored it.
We have thought about it, we have thought about it a LOT. Multiple language support is a difficult task for even average sized media companies with dozens of developers, because it's a huge step at a point in time where the service is ready to expand into other demographics. We are not even remotely there yet, we have no outside funding, we have a small team, we don't even have the full-time hours to pull this off and considering there are so many other things we also need to focus on, I find it perplexing how you arrived at the conclusion that we are even remotely capable of creating such an advanced system at what can only be described as the infant stages of this platform.
Well, start ups in Europe usually build their software solutions around this issue, not the opposite, because they live with the problem everyday. There are frameworks that allow this. I know perfectly well that it can be a nightmare to turn around once the core features are set. But the more you wait and put it back, the more difficult it'll become.
I guess my comment came out as a bit more rude than I intended. I don't mean any disrespect to anyone, especially not the creators and admins of Snapzu. But the fact remains that this will be a very important issue sooner than you'd wish for it, whether you like it or not. So we need to all think about a good solution and start to work on it, with whatever resources you do have, when it's still time.
I don't see how you can claim it would "lose its international user base", there are over 1.5 billion English speakers spread all over the planet; there are more English speakers in India than there are people in Canada and the UK combined.
They simply don't have the resources for multi-language support. I'm sure that when they do, they'll implement it.
I don't think you have an appropriate appreciation for just how chaotic this could potentially be. When you follow someone, you see just about everything they do on your Activity Feed. From the Activity Feed FAQ:
Your activity feed is a private news feed of all actions made by you and the users you follow, including their new snaps, comments, submissions, pinups, and other social activity.
If only a few people you follow regularly post/comment in other languages, it can make your Activity Feed all but unintelligible, which is why websites have language filters in the first place.
How many of them have access to internet and use it for leisure?
I meant that there are many similar sites competing for users. People who want to be able to post and read stuff in their native language, whether they speak English or not, will choose a platform where they can do so. Snapzu looks very promising and I which them all the best. They really seem to be going in the right direction and to listen to their user base. But user fidelity to a website is all but an illusion, they will go where they can find the content they're interested in. It's not a threat, it's a reality of the modern market space.
I for one will stick around. But I'm suggesting what I think would be a cautiously wise move because I do care about Snapzu.
And although it feels like I'm repeating myself over and over, I'm perfectly aware of the effort and resources needed for such big changes and I don't expect anything to be flawless in a short time. They already made the easiest and smartest move : they removed the "this is not in English" reason for downvotes, and it satisfies me completely for the time being, while we patiently wait for a better support of foreign language content. I only suggested that the small resources they can spare be put to improving this weakness of their website so it can continue to grow as a community we all love around the world.
Still, what I'm saying is an opinion of mine, and it may very well be that this opinion is not shared with all that many international users. I can't predict what will happen in the next few months if nothing is done towards fixing this issue anymore than anyone else. But I speak as someone who doesn't have English as his first language and who knows many people like him. This is the only advantage I have in predicting what said people might do here.
I understand the reason for it, but on the other hand I find it very offensive to 80% of the world. Isn't there a better way than saying "we don't accept your kind here" before we find a more permanent solution?
I seriously thought we grew out of that segregation phase in human history.
The ideal solution to me would be:
- You pick languages in your profiles (plural).
- You pick accepted languages in your tribe settings (plural again).
- When you post to a group of tribes that are not of a same single language, you must pick the language of the text / snap (no default) and you can't post to incompatible tribes (let say French only and German only).
- The frontpage shows only snaps in languages you know.
Eventually, localized interface but it's a very minor concern.
While being a great solution of which the groundwork is already partially laid out we must consider the resources that a language support system such as this will require, resources we don't yet have access to. At this point the funding needed to spin up more servers and develop a system that manages languages on a platform that is yet to fully develop it's footing is a really difficult task to tackle not to mention the dozens of other things we should be focusing on. What we have now is momentum, and with this momentum we will take steps to expanding our functionality in the order we believe will help us grow. While we hope to have full language support soon, we need to consider other more important functions like giving our members proper content management tools, proper organizational tools, better moderation tools, a monetization system that will fund our hosting bills and let us to focus full time on this platform instead of switching between other jobs that pay the bills. Having said that, we have a great plan to introduce a lot of great functionality over the coming months, and once we complete our scheduled releases we will focus on making sure we have proper language support across the platform.
I get that and I understand it will take some time.
But as /u/Bastou said, inviting people to downvote is not acceptable. Just let people keep off their submissions from the frontpage and you bought yourself some breathing space.
This is great down the road. I was referring to the way the system works now while we wait for these (awesome) features. Simply saying "downvote content that is not in English" is unacceptable to me.
I say let tribes opt out of the front page.
It could be an acceptable temporary fix.
How is saying "we don't have the resources to support multiple languages yet" offensive?
It's not the resources, it's the recommendation to downvote everything we don't understand.
Edit: I perfectly understand that it's a lot of work and I'm more than willing to wait a long time to have any small improvement. The only thing that bothers me is the way content in other languages is treated now. Just changing the recommendation to ignore it instead of downvoting it would already be fine by me.
I understand your point, but the problem is, this is a community: things spread because it's so connected. If I'm posting in German to a German-based tribe, that goes out to all of my followers. If one of them comments on it, then it goes out to all of their followers, and so on; it would be chaotic to say the least, and it could end up driving users away from the site. Until there is a way to filter content by language, downvoting is the only way to prevent that content from spreading.
Well, they should have though about that before making a website available all around the world. Honestly, in 2015, this baffles me.
If it makes such a mess to start with, this should be priority #1. To be fixed in the next month. If not, this site will remain 100% English, and loose its international user base before it can even reach a size worth mentioning.
And if you think this is chaotic, you should see my facebook posts, I speak six languages and I'm connected to people speaking them too. No one ever complained. And neither did I when I saw content in languages I didn't understand. I just ignored it.
We have thought about it, we have thought about it a LOT. Multiple language support is a difficult task for even average sized media companies with dozens of developers, because it's a huge step at a point in time where the service is ready to expand into other demographics. We are not even remotely there yet, we have no outside funding, we have a small team, we don't even have the full-time hours to pull this off and considering there are so many other things we also need to focus on, I find it perplexing how you arrived at the conclusion that we are even remotely capable of creating such an advanced system at what can only be described as the infant stages of this platform.
Well, start ups in Europe usually build their software solutions around this issue, not the opposite, because they live with the problem everyday. There are frameworks that allow this. I know perfectly well that it can be a nightmare to turn around once the core features are set. But the more you wait and put it back, the more difficult it'll become.
I guess my comment came out as a bit more rude than I intended. I don't mean any disrespect to anyone, especially not the creators and admins of Snapzu. But the fact remains that this will be a very important issue sooner than you'd wish for it, whether you like it or not. So we need to all think about a good solution and start to work on it, with whatever resources you do have, when it's still time.
If you don't want to read something in German, why is it so difficult for you to just scroll past it?
I don't see how you can claim it would "lose its international user base", there are over 1.5 billion English speakers spread all over the planet; there are more English speakers in India than there are people in Canada and the UK combined.
They simply don't have the resources for multi-language support. I'm sure that when they do, they'll implement it.
I don't think you have an appropriate appreciation for just how chaotic this could potentially be. When you follow someone, you see just about everything they do on your Activity Feed. From the Activity Feed FAQ:
If only a few people you follow regularly post/comment in other languages, it can make your Activity Feed all but unintelligible, which is why websites have language filters in the first place.
I can see followers Tweets, FB friends posts or Tumblr followers entries that are in languages I don't know... and I just scroll past them.
How many of them have access to internet and use it for leisure?
I meant that there are many similar sites competing for users. People who want to be able to post and read stuff in their native language, whether they speak English or not, will choose a platform where they can do so. Snapzu looks very promising and I which them all the best. They really seem to be going in the right direction and to listen to their user base. But user fidelity to a website is all but an illusion, they will go where they can find the content they're interested in. It's not a threat, it's a reality of the modern market space.
I for one will stick around. But I'm suggesting what I think would be a cautiously wise move because I do care about Snapzu.
And although it feels like I'm repeating myself over and over, I'm perfectly aware of the effort and resources needed for such big changes and I don't expect anything to be flawless in a short time. They already made the easiest and smartest move : they removed the "this is not in English" reason for downvotes, and it satisfies me completely for the time being, while we patiently wait for a better support of foreign language content. I only suggested that the small resources they can spare be put to improving this weakness of their website so it can continue to grow as a community we all love around the world.
Still, what I'm saying is an opinion of mine, and it may very well be that this opinion is not shared with all that many international users. I can't predict what will happen in the next few months if nothing is done towards fixing this issue anymore than anyone else. But I speak as someone who doesn't have English as his first language and who knows many people like him. This is the only advantage I have in predicting what said people might do here.