FediTips has moved!May 16, 2022

Little headsup, Mastodon developers seem to be testing a language selector in the posting interface (see attached image).

The idea is you set the language you're posting in which will make it easier for other people to filter your post out if they don't speak it.

You can already set your default language in the Preferences/Settings section, but the idea of this new feature is to let you optionally change the setting for each particular message. This is handy if you toot in several languages.

I have no idea if/when this will be rolled out, the developers' instances often get test features like this.

#Mastodon

Show threadFediTips has moved!May 16, 2022

p.s. I'm guessing this is also because a lot of people leave their post language setting as English even if they don't post in English.

There are two language settings on Mastodon: your interface language and your default posting language. The interface language is what you see on the interface, but the posting language setting is what your posts tell the language filter. (So, if you have it set to English the filter will treat your posts as English even if you use a different language.)

As well as helping multilingual people, this feature (if it is rolled out) will hopefully make people more aware of what setting their posting language default is, which will then make the language filters work better.

Show threadFediTips has moved!May 16, 2022

p.p.s. Just to make clear, this is not a translation system.

It just lets you tell Mastodon what language you are using in that toot.

This makes the Mastodon language filter work better, and lets other people filter their timelines more effectively.

There is a translation system in development but this isn't it.

Show threadDragoCubed
@feditips automatic language detection will fix it for reals I reckon
May 16, 2022 at 10:18pmWeb