Just joined Lemmy...not a fan of the language settings. - lemm.ee
lemm.ee
In my profile settings, I can choose my languages. A couple gripes with the web interface of this setting: * I have to hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple languages. While this was clear to me since I use this keyboard shortcut a lot in other contexts, this would definitely be confusing or unclear for most users. * This setting should be split into two. As of now, it determines what content you see, with all other content completely hidden…AND it determines what languages will appear in the language selector when making a post or comment. There should be separate settings for which languages are displayed and which appear in the language selector for a new post (because I don’t want any content to be hidden, but I want to be able to easily select English for any new comment). Or at least a setting for a default language for new comments.

Content is hidden due to not choosing the languages in the settings.

Making the language settings opted in by default should solve this initial struggle, opting out should be done manually. Putting check boxes next to the languages on there for selection should make things easier too.

This has been an issue long before the guy in the linked post reported it. I’ve had to face this same issue on other instances as well so it’s obviously a Lemmy issue and not instance specific.

Please understand that these sorts of small but very visible troubles are what keep people away from this platform. You sign up and go to any community only to see no posts or only those not tagged with a language (You could even miss those if you don’t choose “Undetermined”). Any new user would be confused “Are there no user at all?” “Is this community banned?” “Is this instance defederated?” Each of these doubts would just push any new users out.

Edit: This PSA was over 9 months ago now.

Edit 2: It seems to be instance specific, lemmy.world and lemm.ee both have this issue as far as I’ve seen.

Edit 3: Thank you everyone for your help.

  • nutomic@lemmy.mlMEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    I cant really how such a problem could happen and only affect those specific instances. Can you check through the api which languages are enabled on a new account? The info is under /api/v3/site in the field discussion_languages, it should contain numbers from 0-183 which are all the language ids.

    • Value Subtracted@startrek.websiteEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      I’ll chime in here - I don’t know if this is OP’s issue, but I have experienced issues in the past with being able to clearly tell which languages in the list are selected, and/or the selected language settings saving properly.

      I haven’t played around with it in months, but at the time I thought maybe it was just my browser theme/system colour settings that were making it hard to tell exactly what was selected.

      I agree with those who are saying that a list of possible languages with accompanying check boxes would be more intuitive than the current implementation.

      • nutomic@lemmy.mlMEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yes contributions to improve this interface would definitely be welcome.

    • Nom Nom@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      I’m not very savvy but I tried it on lemmy.world since lemm.ee is taking awhile to confirm the new account.

      spoiler

      "discussion_languages":[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143,144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177,178,179,180,181,182,183],

      There’s another entry for discussion_languages under my_user but it’s entirely empty.

      The JSON goes upto 183. Another screenshot of the settings for the new test account (none of the other languages are selected by default either).

      • nutomic@lemmy.mlMEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Right my_user.discussion_languages is the correct one. And it being empty means that all languages are enabled (to avoid storing lots of unnecessary db rows). Im testing with a new account on ds9.lemmy.ml and can see posts marked as English without any problems.

        • Nom Nom@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          It sounds like it’s working as intended. I’ll mark the OP as solved then, thank you for all your help.

            • Nom Nom@lemm.eeOPEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              I tried testing with a new account on ds9.lemmy.ml aswell and it seems to be working well. Tried 2 different languages and both showed up correctly without touching anything in the settings,

              Im removing this as part of the PR to set new user languages from accept-language header, it doesnt make sense anymore with that.

              ^This is a good idea.

              Also from the settings “Warning: If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content.” comes off as if you need to select it to view things while it’s actually a language filter to only show the selected languages only. Renaming it from “Languages” to “Languages filter” and rewording the warning may help further.