Specify blogging language in user profile

[scemo]

Title:
Specify blogging language in user profile

Area:
profile

Summary:
Have a field in which you select the language/s you speak; people speaking the same language can find each other more easily.

Description:
Say you're trying to learn Spanish - you could then find people who blog in it. It'd be a fun way to help you learn/practise! It'd also encourage lingual diversity (not knowing anyone online who speaks x language doesn't encourage to post in it, I mean).

I see it as functioning just like our profiles' interests: you could click on any of your languages and be linked to a page listing all the users who speak it as well. (Specifying said language/s in "edit profile," though, shouldn't be done with a field in which you actually write; rather, a scrolling list from which you select your language/s. This simplifies everything - no typos, for one, and no confusion as to whether you're supposed to write "français" or "French"!)

Poll #898 Specify blogging language in user profile

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 49

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
12 (24.5%)

Should be implemented with changes.
26 (53.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (6.1%)

(I have no opinion)
8 (16.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[foxfirefey]

I think it would be easier for it to be a page of checkboxes rather than a scrolling list, but maybe somebody else doesn't think that is better? I think it's easier to select multiples that way, but maybe others don't feel so, and the page of checkboxes is actually less accessible.

[azurelunatic]

I'd like a best of both worlds scenario: a textbox, so someone who wants to can add a very rare or silly language without having to get official intervention for it, but with suggestions that will auto-fill into the text box if you click it -- or perhaps a list with checkboxes and a place to put your own if not listed above. Drop-down lists are irritating to work with if it's more than one option.

[yvi]

-- or perhaps a list with checkboxes and a place to put your own if not listed above.

Seeing as there are a couple of thousand languages, I think your suggestion is great.

[yvi]

Though also, for all languages I'd love a text entry box behind them to specify region. While maybe German and Swiss German aren't that far away from each when typed, I hear that that's the case in other languages.

[7rin]

Voting for "with changes", and these are the changes I support.

[cesy]

+1

[pne]

That sounds reasonable to me.

And for geeks, the possibility to include their own tags which include subtags (say, someone who wants to state that they're writing Serbian in Latin script, rather than Serbian in Cyrillic script; or that they write German in the pre-1996 orthography and with Austrian vocabulary).

[zvi]

If we did such a thing, we should probably let people write in their languages. Specifying language names is pretty intensely political (especially if, as you should for it to be useful, you let people specify a "region" for their varieties of $language.)

[kerravonsen]

But there are international standard language codes, couldn't people use that?

[zvi]

The code lists are all long, because people speak many languages. Other people have pointed out above that long lists have bad usability implications. (Also, too many choices make it more difficult for people to make any choice.) Also, also, I don't know enough about the ISO standard to know that they are relatively uncontroversial.

[gchick]

Thirding the suggestion for free-text entry, perhaps in combination with checkboxes or clickable suggestions. Long dropdowns are a nightmare, usability-wise, and multiple-selection dropdowns even more so (and I have one friend over on LJ who regularly blogs in four languages, so it definitely has to be multiple).

[jerico_cacaw]

If you, a student of Spain's Spanish, were to follow a link for someone blogging in Mexican Spanish, or Cuban Spanish, or Argentinean Spanish, I can guarantee confusion. Verbs, for one, are treated differently. Spanish-Netspeak, on the other hand, is more heavily used than in English written posts -- or so I've experienced.

But I agree that being able to search for Spanish speaker/writer users (to use an example) would be great. Following the 'spanish' link in the interests links would not lead me to this currently.

[scemo]

(No worries, I'm not learning Spanish. It's just the first language that came to my mind. :D )

[jerico_cacaw]

(No worries from my side either, I just wanted to expand on zvi's point :P)

[triadruid]

I don't like free entry, frankly, because then you'll have the same problem as interests (do I type Euskara or Basque? Franco-Provençal, Provençal, Provencal or Occitan?).

ISO codes seem reasonably, particularly in a multicolumn checkbox format, like when you're editing your interests.

[trinity_clare]

+1

BCP47

[pne]

BCP-47 language tags would be best in my opinion. (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETF_language_tag)

It's essentially a superset of ISO 639 language tags but also lets you be more precise by adding additional subtags for things such as region (en-GB "English as used in the United Kingdom"), script (sr-Latn "Serbian written in Latin script"), regional variations (hy-arevmda "Western Armenian"; rm-puter "Puter; Upper Engadine Romansh"), orthography (de-1901 "German written in the spelling used before the 1996 spelling reform"), and so on.

And since the main language subtags are based not only on ISO 639-1 (the familiar two-letter abbreviations such as "en" for English) but also on ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3, there are codes for thousands of languages. (Even including sign languages, for example.)

Re: BCP47

[triadruid]

Yeah, good point.