Se inició el trabajo para que los controles y el texto del sitio estén disponibles en español.

Is there a story behind this? I've searched in MetaTalk and don't seem to be able to find any discussion of this.
posted by ssg at 4:15 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

This month's P&L report shows spending on contractors/consulting is about half what it has been in recent months ($9k versus ~$20k). Does that reflect a reduction in spending or just something that crossed over into the new year?
posted by ssg at 4:33 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Thanks Brandon.

ssg, I think it's a combination of incomplete information due to some recent banking changes and new-year crossover; we've seen something similar when payments for one month dropped only to double up the next reporting period. 1adam12 has been rerouting the payments; I'll ask him if he knows the exact cause.

As the update mentioned, we had a meeting today with loup and some of the mods briefing about some of the ongoing volunteer efforts for community oversight. frimble and kirkaracha also attended and discussed both work on the existing codebase and the transition to the new site. I think kirk already sent MeMail invites to people who expressed interest in testing. As for the existing site, we've been workshopping the implementation of select classic userscripts into the site to add new features for everyone, regardless of device. There have been a few technical hiccups, but at worst they can serve as a model for additional features to pursue in the new codebase, which promises to make development much easier and open to the community (the source code is already on Github).

More context on account closures: it was something that was originally implemented pretty hastily as a safety measure, and left a lot to be desired. Brandon collected some stats earlier this month, but basically it shook out to three options:

- close account
- close account, soft-delete all posts (still accessible via link and with searchable comments), hard-delete all comments and Ask posts (inaccessible even with link)
- close account, hard-delete all posts and comments (including thousands of other people's comments on those posts, which weirdly still showed up in search but created lots of broken links)

The second was incomplete, the last was pretty rare but *super* disruptive, and there wasn't really an option for people who were satisfied with anonymity without removing things wholesale. Better to give people more flexibility:

- close account
- Anonymize everything
- Anonymize everything but delete specific posts/comments/subsite areas with sensitive info (like all Ask posts)
- Anonymize everything, hard-delete all comments and Ask/Projects/Music/Jobs posts, replace all other post bodies with a generic placeholder, [deleted], etc.

This approach preserves the value of existing MeFi/MeTa/FanFare discussions, and allows people to remove their own personal content if needed in a more reliable way, which is important for people facing stalking, harassment, doxxing, etc. (And of course any particular posts/comments from other users revealing or linking to personal information can be handled on a case-by-case basis.) This will likely prove automatable in the new site (which is looking mighty fine, btw), but until then we on the board felt it important to give people more specific and secure options -- especially now.

That said, it's important to be mindful of information security on the internet and know that anything posted here is publicly available to the world. There is a minimal profile option in your preferences if you want to hide your account details from non-members, and the site robots.txt blocks various AI crawlers, but ultimately the best protection is to be cautious about posting or linking to personally identifiable information here (or anywhere).
posted by Rhaomi at 4:55 PM on January 22 [4 favorites]

Se inició el trabajo para que los controles y el texto del sitio estén disponibles en español.

Does this mean the site is going to be entirely bilingual? If so, that's quite cool.
posted by Violet Blue at 5:09 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

I'm going to have to learn Latin to read the front page?

Well that's just fucking great.
posted by Lemkin at 5:17 PM on January 22 [6 favorites]

Is there a story behind this? I've searched in MetaTalk and don't seem to be able to find any discussion of this.

Kirkaracha is adding language localization to the site, starting with Spanish.

Does that reflect a reduction in spending or just something that crossed over into the new year?

The latter. December payroll came from the Foundation's bank in the beginning of January (we timed the transfer of funds, expenses, payments so that the LLC wouldn't have any transactions in 2025)
posted by loup (staff) at 5:20 PM on January 22 [4 favorites]

I'm going to have to learn Latin to read the front page?

Abhinc menses nuntiavimus.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 5:25 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]

MetaFilter activity stats update: added a chart breaking down users by activity level.

In the last completed month, December 2024, across all subsites:
- 2,800 users made one or more comments or posts
- 1,000 users made 5 or more
- 500 users made 10 or more
- 200 users made 25 or more
- 83 superfans made 50 or more
posted by Klipspringer at 5:38 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

Kirkaracha is adding language localization to the site, starting with Spanish.

Personally, I'm cool with the site becoming bilingual (or more!), but this does seem like a big change. Are we expecting people to be posting and commenting in Spanish and eventually other languages on the same site? Or are we launching MetaFiltro? What's the thought behind translating the site?

Making the site localizable while rebuilding makes total sense, but actually translating it (a big job!) seems like a whole other story.
posted by ssg at 5:40 PM on January 22 [7 favorites]

but actually translating it (a big job!) seems like a whole other story.

I have several translation apps attached to my browser. My favorite appears with a highlight and a click, but the apps also allow for the translation of full pages at a click. I've used them for a couple of years to translate from languages as disparate as Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian and Portuguese — and the translation is, generally speaking, flawless. The only languages I've had trouble with are German and Finnish, probably partly because speakers of both languages tend toward high fluency in English, so there's less call, but also because both invert the order of words in sentences in the ways that English does not — and that seems to currently be beyond the skillset of automatic translation.

kirkaracha would have to say for sure, but I suspect adding a translation/bilingual feature really only amounts to some code or a widget these days.
posted by Violet Blue at 6:29 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Having localized UI is pretty awesome for inclusivity!
posted by sixswitch at 7:08 PM on January 22

Will there be a way for users to manually delete posts without closing their account?

I have some stuff I’d like to clean up for opsec as a trans person and don’t want to have to wipe my account to do if, but neither do I want to have to message a mod about each individual instance.
posted by brook horse at 7:19 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

I’m still holding out hope for BIPOC Board minutes…
posted by Vatnesine at 7:37 PM on January 22 [3 favorites]

Sorry, to clarify, I don’t have social anxiety, I’m just busy. Thanks for the reassurance but I’m asking for a UI solution rather than having to gather links to a bunch of individual posts/comments.
posted by brook horse at 8:38 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

- Anonymize everything, hard-delete all comments and Ask/Projects/Music/Jobs posts, replace all other post bodies with a generic placeholder, [deleted], etc.

To be clear - is this hard-delete the user's own comments and posts, or also the comment responses to a user's post?

Given the site is being reworked, it seems to me there should be a way to anonymize/delete posts without having the comments to that post being deleted. A user should not be able to delete other users' comments via deleting the post the comments respond to - especially without providing any reason why that's necessary.
posted by saeculorum at 8:53 PM on January 22 [6 favorites]

Thanks for the update - great to see things moving forward :-)
posted by dg at 9:46 PM on January 22

brook horse, would flagging the post/comment with a note work? That notifies the mod on duty and I think they can see who's flagging what, so it shouldn't be abusable.

saeculorum: "To be clear - is this hard-delete the user's own comments and posts, or also the comment responses to a user's post?"

It kind of varies by subsite -- MetaFilter posts by definition are not supposed to be about your own work, and both FanFare and MeTa discussions are more topic-focused, so Anonymizing the poster and erasing the post body are generally sufficient to protect privacy (MeTas about sensitive issues directly involving the poster are an exception but could always be targeted for selective deletion if needed).

Projects/Music/Jobs threads, though, are explicitly about things the poster created themselves or have a direct stake in. So while it's good to avoid deleting other people's comments, in those cases erasing everything is a safer bet since the discussion is about something the requester is personally involved in (plus the threads are usually shorter, which limits the damage). IRL is kind of a wildcard -- meetup posts are undeniably personal, but also communal. Would Anonymizing and/or removing all username mentions of deleted users in old threads be enough? I've only ever been to one meetup, so idk how attached people get to keeping memories of them here.

As for Ask, those definitely involve more personal matters and should probably err on the side of hard-deleting whole threads if requested. Any "human relations" questions, for example, would need to be nuked from orbit. I could maybe see the argument for retaining select broadly popular questions like "what's your favorite dessert" or "recommend places to visit in London" or "how do I fix this goddamn printer" -- provided the poster is Anonymized, their own comments are deleted, any mention of their username removed, and the question itself zeroed out or replaced with a nondescript summary -- but imho even that would need to be the exception rather than the rule. Respecting everyone's stake in community discussions is a valid concern, but the most important thing is to ensure people can reliably remove their own identifying information (or direct discussion of it) if needed.

This is all in the context of account closures ofc -- deletion of comments for still-active users is a trickier question. For safety reasons yes, that should definitely be done, but making any comment deleteable automatically/on-demand could have downstream effects on moderation and how people behave that need to be considered pretty carefully before embracing.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:21 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Making the new site open-source is very cool, thank you for doing that! I'm mostly a front-end gal so I don't really have the knowhow to set up a test copy, but maybe I'll look into it someday.
posted by one for the books at 12:34 AM on January 23

Having localized UI is pretty awesome for inclusivity!

If the rest of the site remains an English language discussion site, it seems more like virtue signalling than actual inclusivity to me, but as an anglophone, I admit I am not in a great position to know whether that is true or not.

Unless the intention is to provide translation tools that enable actual non-English content and conversation?
posted by jacquilynne at 5:59 AM on January 23 [4 favorites]

But if you're going to provide those translation tools for the content, they can work equally well on the UI. There's no reason to translate the UI for an English-language discussion site.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:46 AM on January 23 [4 favorites]

I was thinking in the sense of what Facebook et al do when they detect that a post or comment in your feed isn't in your language, which is provide an opportunity to view a translation. It doesn't affect the UI, just the specific bits of content that aren't in the user's chosen language, so having the UI also be adaptable would be helpful there.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:50 AM on January 23

the most important thing is to ensure people can reliably remove their own identifying information (or direct discussion of it) if needed.

Everything you said can be accomplished by at least requiring a reason for deletion and preferably specific identification of posts. MetaFilter's ad hoc policy of allowing wholesale deletions with no reason and no specific identifiable information selected has caused me to reduce my activity on the site. I consistently see my answers on AskMeFi deleted due to account wipes even when they answers have no identifiable information at all. This doesn't improve user safety at all, but does have an impact on contributors to the site.

A norm for high quality content needs to be matched with a norm that content is preserved at least if possible.
posted by saeculorum at 6:51 AM on January 23 [9 favorites]

It doesn't affect the UI

It doesn't, but it COULD. If we can automatically translate long interpersonal drama questions in Ask, and their responses, in a satisfying way for non-English speakers, then it's trivial to translate "post comment" and "posted by jacquilynne at 11:50am" and "Archives" automatically. There's no need to invest human effort in doing that translation.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:57 AM on January 23 [2 favorites]

I think maybe we are talking about slightly different things. I wasn't really considering who would do the actual translation of the words in the interface -- people vs. machines -- just whether or not the actual coding necessary to enable a localized interface was useful without also doing the coding to enable translation on the content itself.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:15 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

Ah. The key is that there's no coding necessary to enable a localized interface, if it's being machine-translated. It's only necessary if it is a human translation.
posted by bowbeacon at 7:24 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

I would imagine there's still some coding that's likely to be necessary to distinguish things like usernames, which probably shouldn't be translated even where they may be translatable, from things which should be. If it's just full-page machine translation, I am not sure what that would bring that users can't already get from the built-in translation tools in their web browsers.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:44 AM on January 23 [1 favorite]

So the translation seems like a bigger deal that probably needs more planning. Tabling for now.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 8:05 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

Isn't mefi an English-language site? Aren't we also a smaller user base than ever? How is encouraging people to use a different language lead to anything other than a fracturing of an already shrinking audience?
posted by Dysk at 8:22 AM on January 23 [7 favorites]

Tabling for now.

I guess this should be localized, perhaps automatically, for us non-Americans.

If we can automatically translate long interpersonal drama questions in Ask, and their responses, in a satisfying way for non-English speakers, then it's trivial to translate "post comment" and "posted by jacquilynne at 11:50am" and "Archives" automatically. There's no need to invest human effort in doing that translation.

I'm glad this is being tabled/shelved for now and hope we can have a community discussion before moving forward with something like this, but wanted to note that this isn't how translation works. Translating full sentences and paragraphs is something that computers do quite well. Translating isolated words or phrases well is harder, because the context is missing. So computers tend to be worse at translating menu items, making human translation more valuable for UI. Maybe a machine translation would still be good enough in this case, but it's not really clear what we would be doing here or what the goals would be, so hard to say at this point.
posted by ssg at 9:54 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

I just looked at this page in Google Translate in Spanish and, while it is certainly understandable, the header and footer are definitely weird (Campo de golf for Links, etc).
posted by ssg at 10:01 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

Campo de golf for Links

This is the funniest machine translation fails I've seen for a while, don't know why this cracked me up but it did.
posted by Dysk at 10:09 AM on January 23 [17 favorites]

Aside from the "golf" interpretation of "links", another reason interface localization is still a thing separate from machine translation is that there are historical UI conventions that differ by language that are way outside the "translating bulk text" wheelhouse- including selectively leaving some interface words in English that became pervasive before localization and/or machine translation became widespread.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 10:32 AM on January 23 [8 favorites]

To me this sounds like a really positive update with a lot of steps in the right direction. I'd like to thank everyone who has been cranky and annoying for helping to light the fire to make it happen, and also thank everyone doing the work.
posted by phunniemee at 10:32 AM on January 23 [10 favorites]

Brandon,

You haven't mentioned the moderation log since -- actually, you haven't mentioned the moderation log at all since you rejected my proposed MeTa about it, except in an email to me. I had replied and said you could post the message of the email in the MeTa that was going on at the time, but after about 8 hours passed I did it myself.

Can you please confirm (and possibly edit the post at the top) that a moderation log is in fact one of the features of the site redesign?

#pleaseanswer
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:08 AM on January 23 [6 favorites]

(Do we actually know to what extent cranky and annoying behavior contributed to progress, or is that one of those plausible but non-falsifiable I-know-it-when-I-see-it things that confident people understand and doubty people doubt?)
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 11:58 AM on January 23 [6 favorites]

Can you please confirm (and possibly edit the post at the top) that a moderation log is in fact one of the features of the site redesign?

Since I'm too late to edit my request: He did actually put it in the notes from the December 2024 Site Update: "Frimble is working on a simple moderation log for the current site."

I'll modify my request to ask: What is a "simple" moderation log, in comparison to, for example, the moderation log Lobste.rs has kept since 2012?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:22 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

The extra options for account closures is well thought out. Thank you to all who are working on it.
posted by gwint at 1:28 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

Honestly, it seems like creating a moderation log as part of the existing site structure would be a colossal waste of time at this point. That doesn't mean a log can't be created, but it should be simple and use existing tools with no development - a manually-updated spreadsheet would be enough. The only development work that should be done on the existing site is bug fixes and any absolutely necessary updates to keep the site working.
posted by dg at 3:40 PM on January 23 [6 favorites]

My vote would be to not worry about a mod log in the current incarnation of the site. It hasn't existed up to now anyway, and it's worth waiting for the new site if it can be gotten right the first time around in the new environment (or iterated towards right shortly thereafter) rather than spending resources on it at this point.
posted by pdb at 5:28 PM on January 23 [6 favorites]

brook horse, would flagging the post/comment with a note work? That notifies the mod on duty and I think they can see who's flagging what, so it shouldn't be abusable.

That'd be an improvement but still require copy-pasting the explanation in each flag, which is tedious on mobile but I could save it for a PC day. But I also would feel like I need to go back and follow up with each post/comment to make sure it was actually deleted, which negates a lot of the time saved. Given they're making changes to how things are deleted already I think a UI change would be a more usable option for more people than just me. Many trans and otherwise vulnerable folks may have changed their mind about how out they're willing to be given the radical shift in our expectations for the future.
posted by brook horse at 7:06 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

From experience, if you start off with multi-language support, it's fairly easy. The actual translations can easily be fixed or changed later, usually just by editing some kind of resource file.

But if you start off one-language only, it becomes a big pain in the ass to go through later and start localising it all.

So I would say it's well worth including localisation from the start. Even if the translations are stupid or flat-out wrong, that's easy to fix later.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:07 AM on January 24 [4 favorites]

deletion of comments for still-active users is a trickier question. For safety reasons yes, that should definitely be done, but making any comment deleteable automatically/on-demand could have downstream effects on moderation and how people behave that need to be considered pretty carefully before embracing.

With respect, this was called for years ago when the first account wipes (also due to safety issues for trans folk) were implemented. I accepted this answer then—I don’t now. Things are suddenly, radically worse, and I’m sorry that the previous years weren’t used to consider carefully, but we’re out of time for careful consideration.

There may be downstream effects on the site but frankly I care far less about that than the impact on trans people right now. If client-side deletion isn’t on the table, then for many people the alternative is an account wipe. We’ve already lost a lot of folks like that, and we’re in a position to lose a lot more. I’ll be honest and say I’ve been considering an account wipe for years and getting closer every day since the election. I don’t mean that as a threat or a flounce or whatever but just to let you know what the reality has been being a targeted minority right now.
posted by brook horse at 7:04 AM on January 24 [15 favorites]

And to clarify, I understand the feeling that a mod needs to look before letting something be deleted, but this necessarily reveals that comment deletion “requests” will be up to mod discretion and judgement. I do not want any one else deciding whether my comment deletions were justified, as I know far more about my situation than the mods. In some cases I’ve used a phrase that’s very specific to a small group of people in my field, for example, and mods wouldn’t see any kind of identifying information in my comment, but I would. So either mods delete everything no questions asked ever, at which point we should just have a client-side delete button, or anyone requesting deletion has to contend with potentially needing to justify themselves to the mods. Which is the last thing anyone wants to deal with when in an unsafe situation, even if the request is ultimately honored.

Last week I was calling homeless shelters to find one that would accept a trans woman fleeing domestic violence from another state, so I’m sort of in a “you should be able to do this on your phone on the bus while fleeing across the country if you need to” headspace. Because that is the actual kind of danger a lot of us may find ourselves in.
posted by brook horse at 7:20 AM on January 24 [13 favorites]

At the bottom of every MetaFilter page (including this one) are the words "All posts copyright their original authors."

If someone wants to one of their posts or comments deleted, and the site refuses or impedes them, is that not a violation of copyright?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:40 AM on January 24 [2 favorites]

I'm with brook horse on this one. Us needing to plead and petition the mods for the grace of a deletion is just bullshit.

We need a delete button, or a hard guarantee that all requests for deletion will be processed immediately and without question.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 7:52 AM on January 24 [4 favorites]

Just wait til the mods hear about GDPR
posted by june_dodecahedron at 7:53 AM on January 24 [8 favorites]

If someone wants to one of their posts or comments deleted, and the site refuses or impedes them, is that not a violation of copyright?

Not necessarily. On most sites that leave the copyright with the author, they make you click an agreement that gives the site permission to display the comments in perpetuity. The author owning the copyright just means that you can do want you want with the comments elsewhere, and that the site can't try to publish the comment elsewhere. It doesn't mean the site has to take the comments down whenever you say so.

Metafilter though doesn't make you click through any legalese. Presumably if it was tested in court, Metafilter could claim that you have implicitly given them permission to display the comments in perpetuity. Not having agreed to any kind of official contract puts an element of risk there though.

The reason that Metafilter started the complete comment wipes is basically that people started filing DMCA takedowns with the hosting provider claiming that Metafilter was breaching their copyright on their comments. It was cheaper and easier to just start doing bulk deletes rather than challenge this in court.

The thing is that there's a whole ton of potential legal issues that Metafilter could be falling foul of: GDPR, copyright, DMCA, whether the mods actually count as contractors, maybe even the UK's Online Safety Act. If you consult a lawyer about any of them, the lawyer will tell you to comply with the law. Not having infinite resources, somebody should really be trying to identify what are the biggest or most real risks and dealing with them first.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:25 AM on January 24 [6 favorites]

So I would say it's well worth including localisation from the start. Even if the translations are stupid or flat-out wrong, that's easy to fix later.

Hell, even if we only set it up with a resource file for English, as long as the code is there to support files for other languages, it can be added at a later point. And since this is an open source project (meaning someone in another country can set up mismofiltro.co.es or something), support for localization makes sense even if we don't wind up implementing any other languages here.
posted by thecaddy at 8:34 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

And since this is an open source project (meaning someone in another country can set up mismofiltro.co.es or something), support for localization makes sense even if we don't wind up implementing any other languages here.

Doing a lot of work that you're unlikely to take advantage of for customers who may never exist and who almost certainly won't be paying you doesn't seem like the best use of resources.
posted by bowbeacon at 9:15 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

The work is mainly using {{ trans('Next') }} instead of "Next" (for example) and a little time in Google Translate.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 11:07 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

We need a delete button, or a hard guarantee that all requests for deletion will be processed immediately and without question.

I am strongly in favor of having UI options to anonymize and to delete individual posts and comments, in addition to a UI process to broadly perform those actions across the entire site as part of an account closing process. And I say this as someone who would probably never use either, and value the history of discussion here.

Anonymization would reassign the post or comment to the anonymous user. Delete would, in addition to anonymizing, replace the text of the post or comment with "[Deleted by user]." In addition to keeping the flow of the discussion readable by making it clear that something was removed (while keeping other comments available), this also reduces the risk of accidentally "undeleting" something "soft-deleted" via a value in the database.

Making it easier to anonymize or delete specifc posts and comments should reduce the frequency of total account wipes removing posts across the board. To prevent end runs around moderation or readability, there should be some minimum amount of time after a post or comment before you can remove it via the UI—maybe you can't do it for 30 days or until the post closes, whichever comes first; maybe the waiting period is shorter or longer. (Account wipes would still cover everything, anything more recent you could flag to a mod.)

There's a lot more to discuss around specific policies—e.g., how to handle deleting posts from Ask vs from Fanfare—and if we want to debate those we should probably queue up a separate post.

But the core functionality should be included. We shouldn't rely on "have a mod do it" because we don't know what the moderation team is going to look like in a year or in five, and if we're modernizing the site code the ability to remove your own content is critical.
posted by thecaddy at 11:34 AM on January 24 [6 favorites]

how to handle deleting posts from Ask vs from Fanfare

I might be missing something obvious, but... what's the issue with deleting anything from any of these subsites, let alone from Ask or Fanfare specifically?

This is a web forum, not the Vatican archives.
posted by june_dodecahedron at 11:48 AM on January 24 [3 favorites]

I think people have an exaggerated idea of the difficulty of localisation.

All it means is that instead of typing in literally "Everyone needs a hug" and "Flag this comment for moderation" you put something like:
message="labelEveryoneNeedsAHug"
message="hoverFlagThisCommentForModeration"

Then you have an English file with stuff like:
labelEveryoneNeedsAHug="Everyone needs a hug"
hoverFlagThisCommentForModeration="Flag this comment for moderation"

Then if you ever want a Klingon-language version of Metafilter you just create a Klingon file with:
labelEveryoneNeedsAHug="not Hoch vilo'chugh"
hoverFlagThisCommentForModeration="quvHa'wI' chenmoHbogh"

Bonus benefit: if you ever want to change the text "Flag this comment for moderation" you can do it in one place, instead of having to search the whole site and change it everywhere.

It's a very small short-term cost for a great long-term benefit. And don't worry, doing it this way also benefits English speakers whenever the text needs to be changed.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:11 PM on January 24 [11 favorites]

I still don't understand how helpful translating the interface is when the content is in English. What am I missing?
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:43 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]

I might be missing something obvious, but... what's the issue with deleting anything from any of these subsites, let alone from Ask or Fanfare specifically?

People tend to be a lot more personal in Ask, and the site is designed such that all comments on the post are directed back to the user's question. When you delete the post, there could still be identifying information in the comments, so those should probably be deleted as well.

For Fanfare, the user who posts the original post is often just putting in a description of the movie or episode and maybe some links to some recaps. So even if the original poster deletes their initial text, the post itself and the comments should remain for people to continue discussing the episode.

The catch for Ask is that I want the ability for people to remove content that potentially puts them at risk—but at the same time, I don't want it to become common (as on some subreddits) for people to delete questions once they have their answer. Even if it's about, like, how to change a bike tire and has no PII. This was saecolorum's point above—people may not take the time to answer questions if they think their work will be summarily deleted.

Ultimately, I agree with Rhaomi and others that people should be able to delete their own questions! But the community norm should still probably discourage deletion for deletion's sake.
posted by thecaddy at 12:52 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]

To clarify, this conversation (as far as I understand) has been about deleting on a per-comment or per-post level, not account wipes. The goal is to prevent account wipes.

Personally a hard guarantee for this type of deletion (many individual requests rather than a "one and done") doesn't help me because I know how easy it is for humans to miss things, so I'd prefer an actual delete button that gives me an immediate confirmation the post/comment is gone instead of having to wait for a mod to see and delete it to make sure that happened.
posted by brook horse at 1:11 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]

One way to establish a strong community norm that deletion of posts and comments is something to be done in exceptional circumstances and not taken lightly is to have deletion requests go through a mod. If you provide an automated way for users to delete their own posts and comments, you are tacitly saying that you can delete your own posts and comments whenever you want. We can say we have a norm against it, but actions speak louder than words for something like this.

For me, knowing that questions are rarely deleted in Ask is important if I'm going to put the effort in to answering them. I don't think requests for deletion of posts in particular should be processed immediately and without question, because that also deletes a lot of comments that other people made.

Have there ever been instances when someone wanted to delete their posts or content for some even remotely reason and weren't able to do so? It feels a bit odd to theorize about this when we have no evidence it has actually happened. The bar of having to send a list of links to the mods by email or whatever seems pretty low — do we really need to make it easier?
posted by ssg at 1:11 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

It feels a bit odd to theorize about this when we have no evidence it has actually happened.

It's not theorizing, it's saying it's a barrier that people in unsafe situations should not have to deal with even if the request is honored. The bar especially isn't low if you're physically disabled, visually impaired, have limited ability to use a PC instead of mobile (all of these are true for me!), or any number of things that make it take a lot more time and effort. Which is why I haven't done it yet, because I am busy dealing with the reality of being a trans disabled person in America right now, and this is low on my list of danger vectors but it would be super cool if Metafilter made it easier for me to check that off the list without also destroying all the rest of my contributions over the years. Even if I do get around to collecting a hundred links and hoping the mods don't miss any of them, I can't blame anyone who's part of a targeted group right now saying "fuck that, I have more important shit to deal with, just wipe it all." Which is what a lot of people have been doing.

If the panic is about deleting posts then whatever, leave that as something you still have to message a mod for but let me delete my own comments. People with more FPP/AskMe/etc. contributions may feel differently than me on that but at the very least it would be nice if even that scrap was considered being offered.
posted by brook horse at 1:29 PM on January 24 [10 favorites]

As a medium option would it be possible to add a flagging drop down option like "this is my own comment and I want it deleted." Saves having to use the contact form or collect links, reduces the individual friction, but also allows for mod oversight.

My personal dream would be that any deleted comment (personal choice, moderation action, etc) is replaced in situ with text like [a comment was deleted] for readability. Some threads turn quickly into nonsense as soon as comments start disappearing.
posted by phunniemee at 1:52 PM on January 24 [8 favorites]

It'd be better than nothing, certainly. But either we say "all comments can be deleted with no justification whatsoever" and therefore no mod oversight is needed, or we don't and users have to contend with that invisible line/control over their information. It also doesn't handle the problem of users having to wait around or check back later to confirm the comment actually was deleted.

And yeah, replacing it with [comment deleted] and no username attached would be perfectly fine to me.
posted by brook horse at 1:57 PM on January 24 [5 favorites]

I might be missing something obvious, but... what's the issue with deleting anything from any of these subsites, let alone from Ask or Fanfare specifically?

More so than other subsites, I feel that Fanfare commentors share ownership of the post, not just the poster. The few times I have posted a book, I include a synopsis that I did not write, for example, in the post itself. I put my own opinions in the comments. People also trade off posting duties on longer series and it would be a little jarring for 3 episodes to go missing in a season because that user needed to remove their personal info for safety reasons.
posted by soelo at 2:50 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

I don't think this would be doable on the old site, but here's an idea:

let's say a user needs to tidy up their account, but doesn't want to wipe. They ask the mods and are granted access to controls to delete their own comments and anonymise their posts. This may be time bound?

This way the user can see that it's worked right away but there is a little bit of social friction against the "thanks for the answers, I don't want this in my feed any more, delete" Reddit culture.
posted by freethefeet at 3:17 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]

Is there a technical reason this is difficult? I see no reason for the mods to be involved. I've been on Reddit for years, and from what I've seen the norm, for myself and others, is self-deletion is rare.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:30 PM on January 24

Self deletion on reddit isn't rare in my experience at all. As an example, over on the Metafilter subreddit we do not speak of a former mefite popped in to be a very big fan of JK Rowling, and I called them out on it, and they deleted all their comments and ran off. If you say something shitty and hateful I want you to have to fucking diiieeee with it still appended to your name so everyone knows exactly who you are. My take.

It's why I would be most comfortable with a middle option where people who need to delete for privacy reasons can, but it's not easy for shitty people to spread their disease and then conveniently lose the receipts so no one cottons on they have a history of repeat behavior. That makes it less safe for marginalized folks.
posted by phunniemee at 3:45 PM on January 24 [3 favorites]

I'm not 100% sold on freethefeet's foot-related ideology but regarding this deletion issue they are spot on.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 3:53 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Sorry, but that strikes me as overly elaborate. If someone thinks someone else is being purposefully offensive, then it is on the mods to speak to them about it/moderate it.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:54 PM on January 24

But they delete it before it gets mod attention, in this overly elaborate story I'm weaving, so the mods don't know. That's what I'm saying. And if the solution to that is that well the comment change history is kept somewhere so the mods can review it later if needed, then that means the content good faith users want deleted isn't actually deleted, which is a bigger problem.
posted by phunniemee at 4:00 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

Then other people can complain to the mods, I guess. Honestly, we're adults.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:03 PM on January 24

I just put a formal proposal into the queue, so we'll see what happens. The key pieces are (1) deleting means you're deleting the content of the post, but the post itself stays up with the comments and (2) you can't delete posts or comments until a certain amount of time has passed.
posted by thecaddy at 4:25 PM on January 24 [1 favorite]

One way to establish a strong community norm that deletion of posts and comments is something to be done in exceptional circumstances and not taken lightly is to have deletion requests go through a mod.
True, so they shouldn't go through a mod.

If you provide an automated way for users to delete their own posts and comments, you are tacitly saying that you can delete your own posts and comments whenever you want.
Great, that's the goal.

We can say we have a norm against it, but actions speak louder than words for something like this.
True, so let's not have an norm against it.
posted by one for the books at 4:30 PM on January 24

From experience, if you start off with multi-language support, it's fairly easy. The actual translations can easily be fixed or changed later, usually just by editing some kind of resource file.

But if you start off one-language only, it becomes a big pain in the ass to go through later and start localising it all.

So I would say it's well worth including localisation from the start. Even if the translations are stupid or flat-out wrong, that's easy to fix later.

I 100% agree with TheophileEscargot on this. Laravel (the basis of the new tech stack) makes building in localization features really easy, but it's still way easier if you do it up front.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:00 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Can anyone explain what the point of advantage of translating the interface for a site entirely in English is?
posted by Dysk at 3:09 AM on January 25 [3 favorites]

I don't know why translating the interface would be useful, but using the internationalisation features of a framework to separate user-facing text from code is just good practice.

It makes it much easier for people to find and review all the text at a later date, and it makes it easier to verify that some particular text doesn't get unnecessarily duplicated in the code just because it appears in multiple places on the site. (Duplicated text is easy to accidentally update in some places and not others).

A side effect of arranging text in this way is that it's also easier to translate, but that's by no means the only reason to do it.
posted by quacks like a duck at 3:25 AM on January 25 [5 favorites]

I'm not disagreeing with that, but this whole discussion was kicked off with an announcement that the site interface was being translated to Spanish, and I don't think a rationale for that was ever given.
posted by Dysk at 3:43 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Can anyone explain what the point of advantage of translating the interface for a site entirely in English is?

Making the site more welcoming to people who don't speak English as their first language.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:45 PM on January 25 [5 favorites]

Making it more navigable, at least.
posted by Vatnesine at 2:35 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Making the site more welcoming to people who don't speak English as their first language.

But all of the actual content on this website is in English. So if you don't speak English as your first language, then I don't think changing the language of the menus is going to make a big difference to you. Wouldn't that feel like an empty gesture?

I sometimes use the internet in more than one language and I would be confused if any site I visited in a language other than my first language offered to translate the UI for me, but left the content in another language. I can't say that I'd feel welcomed.

Additionally, if you're someone who wants to read MetaFilter in translation, you're going to use the widely available tools in your browser to translate the entire page. In that case, you want the UI to remain in English because you're only going to confuse a machine translation by mixing two languages on one page. So translating the UI would only be useful for people who for some reason can read the posts and comments in English well enough, but can't figure out the menus in English.

And since the proposal seems to be to use Google Translate to generate the translated strings anyways, it's hard to see how this would be better than people just translating the whole page with Google Translate themselves.
posted by ssg at 2:38 PM on January 25 [6 favorites]

"it's hard to see how this would be better than people just translating the whole page with Google Translate themselves."

Others should correct me if this is wrong, but ... I think ... integrated translation allows native Spanish speakers to ask questions in Spanish, and English speakers to read and answer in English, which native Spanish speakers could then read in Spanish — and vice versa.

Thus, it would allow for interactive access automatically — not just static one-way translation.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:05 PM on January 25

Here’s a video of the forums on a game I play that uses Google’s integrative translation. The app is originally Japanese but they translated the UI for English and Chinese players and implemented integrated translation, so if you click “See translation” you get the body of the post translated. The UI is hand translated and tweaked by the team to best fit their vision of the app (for example they previously referred to “cages” that you kept virtual pets in, but changed this to “pods” because it sounds nicer). But anything user-generated is machine translated, and works pretty well—I’ve been able to communicate with people over the forums this way, even enough to participate in a pun-off.
posted by brook horse at 5:16 PM on January 25 [1 favorite]

Others should correct me if this is wrong, but ... I think ... integrated translation allows native Spanish speakers to ask questions in Spanish, and English speakers to read and answer in English, which native Spanish speakers could then read in Spanish — and vice versa.

This sounds like a vision of hell, and a result for disaster, given how often arguments start from word choice and miscommunication even when we're all speaking the same language with no translation layer. And much like I don't want to read LLM output on mefi, I really don't want to be reading machine translation output either.
posted by Dysk at 7:30 PM on January 25 [5 favorites]

The thing is that there's a whole ton of potential legal issues that Metafilter could be falling foul of: GDPR, copyright, DMCA, whether the mods actually count as contractors, maybe even the UK's Online Safety Act. If you consult a lawyer about any of them, the lawyer will tell you to comply with the law. Not having infinite resources, somebody should really be trying to identify what are the biggest or most real risks and dealing with them first.

The person who would be able to do that triaging is the lawyer. A qualified lawyer who focuses on internet law would understand the risk profiles of things like deleting or preserving user data, operating without a binding terms of service, copyright and trademark questions, international registration requirements, etc. I trust that MeFi has that sort of lawyer operating in the background who is telling them what is a crisis (if anything) and what can be solved another day. If not, hiring one — or seeking pro bono services from one given the shift to non-profit status — would help resolve those questions.
posted by moosetracks at 6:47 AM on January 26

I'm mostly a lurker here, but as another person who uses the internet in multiple languages, I am also a bit baffled about the Spanish thing. Do we believe there is a large bloc of potential users who want/need a community like Metafilter but are facing a language barrier and don't already have a place to post and discuss links in Spanish? Will there be a corresponding push to promote the site to these people when the new redesign is unveiled?
posted by btfreek at 1:18 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]

"a large bloc of potential users who want/need a community like Metafilter but are facing a language barrier and don't already have a place to post and discuss links in Spanish?"

According to Forbes:

Spanish is spoken by more than 559 million people globally. Of those, 460 million are native speakers, making Spanish the language with the second largest population of native speakers in the world (Mandarin holds the top title).

In the U.S., 13 percent of the population speaks Spanish at home, earning it the title of the most common non-English language spoken. The U.S. also has the 2nd largest population of Spanish speakers in the world (Mexico has the largest).

I have also heard European mefites say in the past that no such site exists in Europe, which is why they're here and put up with US-centric annoyances. In Europe alone, there are nearly 50 million Spaniards.

Given these numbers, I think Kirkaracha's idea was a good one. It strikes me that coding the build site bilingually provides options, which we can choose not to use, or never to use. But it's always better to start with more options than not and, given the numbers, it's both logical and fair to include Spanish-speakers of all kinds, especially Americans, given that we're an US-based site.
posted by Violet Blue at 10:25 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

That logic is a whole nother level of US-centric. A lot of us are already participating in a non-native language, from outside the US. But apparently it makes sense to include Spanish because the site is registered in the US. I'm sure you're not intending to do a verbal kick in the teeth, but that's how it feels to me.
posted by Dysk at 1:40 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Like, I see this as an international community, with members from across the world, that happens to be registered in the US (because sites have to be registered somewhere) with a membership that is predominantly American because that's what the anglophone Internet is like. Nice to see that some people view this as just an American community, where some foreigners put up with it because they haven't got better at home, and that any member recruitment and retention efforts should of course be about Americans, with any effects on everyone else a secondary concern. Way to treat us like second class citizens here.
posted by Dysk at 1:52 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]

What other language or languages would you like to see included?

When localisation is supported, it's pretty straightforward to add a language. You just need another localisation file. For a small site like Metafilter there won't be that much text to translate. The staff could just send out the file to a volunteer who would translate the terms in it and email it back.

(There may or may not be UI to do it, I don't know this tech stack, but it's not that hard to do even if you're just editing the file in Notepad.)
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:58 AM on January 27 [2 favorites]

Yeah, using Spanish as a potential starter second language was mentioned upthread, Dysk. Spanish is also the world's second most spoken language, as also mentioned in my text, so there are multiple reasons it's a logical starter language.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:11 AM on January 27

"Nice to see that some people view this as just an American community..."

One final comment on this: Your English is flawless, as is the English of almost every self-identified non-American who comments on the site. The result of that is unless you see someone self-identify as not American (and then remember who said it), there are literally no clues as to the numbers of non-Americans here.
posted by Violet Blue at 3:18 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

I think what Dysk is getting at is not to consider languages beyond Spanish but to reconsider offering other languages at all.

I've recently seen a different community/project remove their translations because >95% of users used the site in English, even while a decent portion of them were located in a country for which they offered a translation. (In Europe, country and language map reasonably well.) They were mostly-automatic translations and they just didn't add a benefit compared to in-browser translations.
posted by demi-octopus at 3:52 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]

This is all very exciting news and I'm thrilled that the codebase project is moving along. Thank you, everyone, for all of it!
posted by kimberussell at 6:17 AM on January 27

To be clear, I'm not questioning the choice of Spanish a first-second language, nor am I particularly against the idea of Metafilter in other languages. Maybe I'm overestimating the amount of time and effort this will take on the backend, or maybe I'm underestimating the amount of resources we have to put toward this. (I do think that having volunteers provide the actual translations is a good idea, because it'll indicate at least some community interest in having that particular translation)

I just don't think that anyone will actually use it. "If you build it, they will come" doesn't really fly for a text-based Internet forum in the year 2025. In brook horse's example above, there's a common game that everyone is already playing, that motivates people to communicate with each other. The recent RedNote/xiaohongshu phenomenon was motivated by the impending shutdown of a massive, already-existing platform. What's Metafilter's Thing? Because without a Thing or an existing community (and I think this bit is the reason why this bugged me enough to actually type out two comments about it) it starts to feel like an empty gesture of Diversity without much substance behind it.
posted by btfreek at 10:13 AM on January 27 [7 favorites]

I'm a code idiot but Theophile's comment above looks truthy and informed. If that comment is accurate, then it looks like while this is primarily a language modifying tool it would also build growth functionality into the coding of Metafilter itself, so it doesn't have to take multiple years to change a [!] to a [⚑] in the future. Like I said, I'm a code idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, but I can trust more informed people who say this is a small upfront cost to building a better product down the line.

Have we all forgotten: first, be smart from the very beginning?
posted by phunniemee at 10:22 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]

so it doesn't have to take multiple years to change a [!] to a [⚑] in the future.

I mean, let's be fully upfront here: It never took multiple years to do that. That is probably a 10 minute job on any reasonable codebase, perhaps a 1 hour job on a terrible codebase, and a 10 hour job on a codebase so terrible that I can't even conceive of the possibility. Making that more than a week's worth of work was simple malpractice on the part of somebody. I don't know who was at fault, but it was not the codebase.

Theophile's comments are reasonable in some cases, but not particularly in this case. While it is "not hard" to internationalize a new codebase, it's also not easy, and it's not zero-effort. Doing it correctly requires a decent amount of thought and infrastructure and understanding of the potential edge cases, and while that's fine, it's also not nothing.
posted by bowbeacon at 10:32 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

kirkaracha: Seems like the translation idea has spawned a lot of confusing discussion, because no one is clear what you are proposing here. Is it:

1. Storing machine translations of UI strings, so the user can switch the UI to Spanish if they want.
2. Implementing some kind of automatic machine translation of posts and comments.
3. Encouraging users to make posts and comments in Spanish and other languages on the existing site.
4. Creating MetaFiltro, a separate Spanish language version of the site.
5. Some combination of the above.

posted by ssg at 10:55 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

I said in the update (in Spanish), "Work has begun to make site controls and text available in Spanish." "Text" was too imprecise: I should have said the interface text, not the user-generated content. I didn't intend to refer to anything besides the site UI text. Sorry for causing confusion.

I also said I'd table this for now, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The development work is easy, basically as TheophileEscargot noted. Instead of coding a link like this: <a href="#">Home</a>, you code it like this: <a href="#">{{ trans('Home') }}</a>

I use advanced copy-and-paste technology, so using {{ trans('Home') }} instead of "Home" is trivial.

You have a translation file for each additional language:
'Home' => 'Página de inicio' (source for translation)

Ideally a native speaker would do the translations, or I could use Google Translate and have a native speaker verify the translations.

Then you have a widget that lists the available translations and lets people switch between them.

Pages like About could be translated and loaded dynamically based on the selected language.

My rationale for translating the UI text generally would be to be more inclusive and welcoming to (as Dysk noted) "an international community, with members from across the world." Having the UI text in a person's native language reduces the cognitive load of using the site.

My rationale for starting with Spanish specifically is , as Violet Blue noted, Spanish is the language with the second largest population of native speakers in the world. Even if we were to stipulate that MetaFilter is a US-specific site, many Americans speak Spanish as their first language. I also have friends and colleagues who are native Spanish speakers.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 12:39 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Your English is flawless, as is the English of almost every self-identified non-American who comments on the site. The result of that is unless you see someone self-identify as not American (and then remember who said it), there are literally no clues as to the numbers of non-Americans here.
How very American of you. America is not the only country that has English as its native language and the standard of someone's English is not in any way an indicator of whether someone is American.
posted by dg at 2:09 PM on January 27 [8 favorites]

I also said I'd table this for now

For the further benefit of the international community, perhaps you should specify that you mean the American definition of tabling :) (Just teasing. Thank you for the explanation.)
posted by btfreek at 2:32 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

I also have friends and colleagues who are native Spanish speakers.

...so I have direct access to potential translators.
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:55 PM on January 27

you should specify that you mean the American definition of tabling

Your link didn't work for me, but Websters says:

a: to remove (something, such as a parliamentary motion) from consideration indefinitely
b British : to place on the agenda

Those mean opposite things! As George Bernard Shaw maybe said, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language."
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 3:06 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

Having all UI text in one file is not only good for translation, it's good for UI changes. Almost inevitably, when you have snippets of UI text in code files, it becomes a chore to find and change them when you need to.

As someone who's done internationalization, though not recently, I'd note that the external file doesn't solve all problems. Example, one that's repeated here dozens of times: "posted by XX [badge] at TT on DD". Building up strings that way is going to run into problems in one language or another. E.g. how do you translate that "at" into Portuguese? It's às... except for 1 a.m., when it's à. And that passive can be trouble: a post (postagem) is publicada, while a comment (comentário) is publicado.
posted by zompist at 3:29 PM on January 27 [4 favorites]

How very American of you. America is not the only country that has English as its native language and the standard of someone's English is not in any way an indicator of whether someone is American.

How rude of me! I should have named the entire Anglosphere and all 55 countries where English is spoken as a second language in addition to accounting for minority English speakers in countries where English is not a common second language. All this while arguing for the internationalization of the site in a second language. I don't know what I was thinking, certainly nothing nice, unlike you.
posted by Violet Blue at 6:03 PM on January 27 [3 favorites]

the standard of someone's English is not in any way an indicator of whether someone is American

Really? Personally I find that when someone can't spell colour, organise, or aluminium it's a pretty good indication they're American.
posted by automatronic at 6:31 PM on January 27 [7 favorites]

I don't know what I was thinking, certainly nothing nice, unlike you.
You're right - I wasn't thinking nice about someone who likely didn't deserve to be branded with the 'insular American' tag and for that I apologise. It's correct that English proficiency is no measure of where someone is from but, as is often the case, I should have just kept that to myself.
posted by dg at 8:33 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]

Thank you. I appreciate it. Certainly, no offense was intended on my part.
posted by Violet Blue at 8:56 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]

Who is currently on the Metafilter payroll?
posted by Diskeater at 8:25 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

These are the people MetaFilter sends checks to every month and all of them are contractors:
taz
loup
travelingthyme
goodnewsfortheinsane
Kirkarcha
frimble
and me, Brandon
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:27 PM on February 3

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