Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
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Most people will not bother actually setting the language on their posts. To be fair, the UI for doing so is a little weird, and mostly, people tend to just type the title and content and be done with it.
If you deselect "unspecified" you're now relying on most posts having a language tag. Because this is never going to be true, you'll be missing out on a lot of content.
The warning is there to make sure you know you'll be limiting your content for no reason.
If you deselect “unspecified” you’re now relying on most posts having a language tag. Because this is never going to be true, you’ll be missing out on a lot of content.
If I am understanding correctly, that feels like a weird way to do things. I would think that posts that don't have a language set would be visible no matter what language you set in the profile settings, and if you did set a language, it would exclude any post that does have a language set.
By default they're visible. By deselecting "unspecified" you're voluntarily making them invisible. The warning is precisely to point this out.
So, just to be explicit, selecting some language, x, will only show posts that are tagged with that language, thereby hiding all posts with tags for other languages, while also hiding posts with no language tag?
That depends on wether or not you keep "undefined" selected.
If you select English, and nothing else, and remove "Undefined" from your selection... Yes, you're only going to be shown posts and comments explicitly tagged as English. If you keep "Undefined" you'll see posts in English and posts where no language was set.
If you want to see posts tagged as "French" you also need to have "French" selected in your language list.
That depends on wether or not you keep “undefined” selected.
If you select English, and nothing else, and remove “Undefined” from your selection… Yes, you’re only going to be shown posts and comments explicitly tagged as English. If you keep “Undefined” you’ll see posts in English and posts where no language was set.
Wait... I can select multiple languages, simultaneously? How do I do this? I tried clicking multiple things in the language list, and it just moved the selection to that other language.
Yeah the UI is pretty bad at the moment. You can select multiple items by holding the Shift key and clicking them. I don't know how to do it from mobile.
Most content does not have a language tag. Anything without a language tag is treated as if it has the "undetermined" tag. So if you have not listed "undetermined" amongst your list of languages, then you won't see most content, because most of it isn't tagged.
I’m assuming the most common language that is used on Lemmy, currently, is English
The most used? Yes. The most tagged? No.
You can select multiple languages in the box. The "Undetermined" option is for all posts without a language set. Most people do not set a language on their posts. So unselecting it will hide most posts from you.
This might be desirable if you, say, only speak French and don't want your feed clogged up with unmarked English-language posts. But it also means that if someone made a post in French but forgot to tag it, you won't see that post either.
If you're, say, bilingual English/Spanish, you would probably want Undetermined, English, and Spanish selected in the box.
Most content here doesn't have a language set. indeterminite language is just the default.
There are posts older than the language option. Those posts don't have a language set and ate therefore undetermined. You won't see those posts if you deselect this option.
Just make sure that Unspecified is selected as a language in your settings, in addition to whatever languages you can read. Don't un-select "unspecified."
Most content here doesn't have a language set. indeterminite language is just the default.