The importance of adding a language pick option in Steemit

in #steemit4 years ago (edited)

Guys, it's SO obvious, I still can't understand why it's not implemented.

ing

I don't know Korean, Chinese, and all the Eastern languages. I don't want these posts to fill in my feed, as I don't understand them, and I won't translate them. I need filters.

I want to be able to filter posts in specific languages (important thing here is that filter should allow picking: my set of languages, only one single language, or "all the blockchain").

Some cryptoblogs already did it! Check this out scorum has a language option right near the LOGO (although, it's also not perfect): https://scorum.com/en-us vs https://scorum.ru/ru-ru etc. etc.

Another point, the most popular blogging engine - Wordpress, has languages support out of the box (not perfect, but at least something). It's also possible to add a plugin to Wordpress that makes posts multi-lingual. As well this is the case for Joomla, Drupal, and others. They realize importance of making content available on multiple languages along with making an easy filter system.

Funny enough, Golos.io as well as Golos.id has a language switcher on the top, but it does The Wrong Thing. It switches the language of the user interface (which doesn't actually matter that much!), rather than filtering content based on languages. UI language is cool and nice, but what really needs language support, is the CONTENT ITSELF.

The three options that we need

Option #1. Your language choice. There should be a new setting in the options that should allow me to add languages to my personal preferences. For example, I want to read English, Russian, Norwegian and Spanish posts. Somebody might choose 20 languages, others might choose two.

Option #2. Only one language. That's clear. Let's say I need for just a second to find a post that I recently saw and it's in Norwegian. I just pick NO in URL or in language picker and here I go!

Option #3. Show all blockchain or blockchain-explorer mode. This should show a similar screen to what we already have right now.

Without this BASIC option, steemit is doing TWO WRONG THINGS that are basically killing the audience:

  • wasting it's audience time (+traffic + money) on seeing the posts that they don't need (the feed looks like a garbage bin)
  • bouncing away users that are not registered (let's say I'm native English person, I open the steemit.com for the first time, I see 50 Chinese posts, and I close the website without even touching it!)

If you add language support with these 3 simple options, you will definitely save people who are using steam as well as attract others.

How to add language support?

It can be done like this:

  • Posts get a new option "language of the post", where user can add as many languages as he actually used in his post
  • By default, post language (without manual changes) = equals = to the language of user UI settings or if unset, it's English
  • Posts receive a special service tag (example: #steemit-lang-en for English) so they can be easily filtered!

Maybe there are more clever ways to do it, but that's THE FIRST THING I would actually develop while making an international web blog. This is REALLY, REALLY INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. Steemit users ARE SUFFERING without this function! Making the FEED LITERALLY UNUSABLE. Yes, I am SCREAMING. Because this should be made 5 years ago. I don't know what developers are thinking, actually.

image.png

Sure thing, it's not a steemit-only problem. This is related to each and any cryptoblogs, and sometimes even classic blogs. But I believe steemit developers have power and will to improve it!

Please DO COMMENT on this as it is VERY, VERY VERY, VERY-VERY-VERY important.

I don't actually know how to reach developers with this message. If you guys know how to reach them, please write down in comments also.

Thanks

D. from O. aka @sxiii

Sort:  

I think the option #1 is very good and usability.

The idea wasn't choosing between one of these options. The idea was to realize them all. Or; okay; at least for the beginning; do a language picker for posts. At least where you could filter out one language. It will be a nice start! @ladyzarulem

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.17
TRX 0.16
JST 0.029
BTC 60754.63
ETH 2349.52
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.53