Is there any “official policy” on using other languages at LW site? If there is, perhaps it should be more visible. If there isn’t, let’s think about some guidelines.
I think it would be nice to provide a place for people speaking other languages, but on the hand, we should not fragment the community unnecessarily. Good new ideas that arise in non-English discussions should be translated back to English.
People speaking other languages than English should be encouraged to write an article in their language. The title of a non-English article should start with a ISO 639-1 language code, like this: “[sk] Môj článok”. This convention could be later used by software to provide a list of articles in given language, or use a correct HTML language tag.
The discussion should be in the same language as the original article, if possible. If someone has only a passive knowledge of given language, they can answer e.g. in English, but generally it is preferred to answer in the same language.
If the article and the following discussion is just a translation of existing English content, or it is wholly related to use of the given language (for example discussions about LW wiki localization), or if it has very low karma, then it is not important for English speakers. In other cases someone should later translate the article in English, perhaps also with selected parts of discussion.
The author of non-English article by posting their article implicitly consents to anyone later posting the English translation of their article, on LW. I hope it is safe to assume that people who post on LW in English also wouldn’t mind the translations of their texts, if the translation is published on LW.
Is there any “official policy” on using other languages at LW site? If there is, perhaps it should be more visible. If there isn’t, let’s think about some guidelines.
I think it would be nice to provide a place for people speaking other languages, but on the hand, we should not fragment the community unnecessarily. Good new ideas that arise in non-English discussions should be translated back to English.
People speaking other languages than English should be encouraged to write an article in their language. The title of a non-English article should start with a ISO 639-1 language code, like this: “[sk] Môj článok”. This convention could be later used by software to provide a list of articles in given language, or use a correct HTML language tag.
The discussion should be in the same language as the original article, if possible. If someone has only a passive knowledge of given language, they can answer e.g. in English, but generally it is preferred to answer in the same language.
If the article and the following discussion is just a translation of existing English content, or it is wholly related to use of the given language (for example discussions about LW wiki localization), or if it has very low karma, then it is not important for English speakers. In other cases someone should later translate the article in English, perhaps also with selected parts of discussion.
The author of non-English article by posting their article implicitly consents to anyone later posting the English translation of their article, on LW. I hope it is safe to assume that people who post on LW in English also wouldn’t mind the translations of their texts, if the translation is published on LW.