Ask Fedora -> English / Non-English / Common Issues structure

I generally like that idea but how do users then even realize they are allowed to ask a non-English question?

+1

I do not agree, ask and discussion where till now focusing on different audiences. The merge was made to integrate both audiences in one to be more transparent and gain more attention on both sides.

Before the integration, the discussion of structuring was made and the decision felt on what we do have now. I do find it to early to have this discussion again.

First we should get used to what we do have and second we do need to collect some experiences, where we can base on, to make the next changes.

About the mixture of languages we also said that we not want to have this in the beginning. And it also came up, that we will have a auto translation option. But for the moment this not happened yet.

As we experienced already when ask.fp.o was separate, the possibilities of using different languages was very low. As the projects origin is fiscally in the US, the decisions was made that we use this language as default.

Using a translation page as google offers, can be used as an requester and also as someone who wants to help. But it not should be a must to understand, what we talking about here.

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Actually, have we discussed how non-English speaking users will even find the Non-English category? Is it obvious to look under Ask Fedora, and then post in Other Languages?

I took a look around and here is how Gnome Discourse and Manjaro Discourse have solved the issue. They have a top-level category called “International” or “Languages”.

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Yes, If someone comes from/to ask.fp.o, it is needed to select a subcategory to start a topic. Someone who has absolutely no idea of English will not come thru there, he will look for a local group to get help in his own language, or at least thru a page who translates the content.

But anyway, we really should handle this page here a bit like we do handle Fedora Linux ore any other distribution/application.

When someone makes a new distro/application the focus is on a default language and maybe on a locale where the developer speaks. The rest comes normally from the community, when they start to participate and bring in own effort.

“Versioning” would be also important. That we give a time to see how it goes, and make changes regularly in certain time frames. I propose time frames of about 6 month in the beginning.

This is a good idea to have a look what others do. I liked the topic where Manjaro is explaining how to make requests an what kind of information is needed to get an answer:

[HowTo] Request support - Tutorials - Manjaro Linux Forum (this would be an exelent template for our #new-users start here tag in the ask category)

This sums up very well how the guidelines are on Manjaro.
Strict Forum Rules and guidelines - Notices - Manjaro Linux Forum

If we do this, we would need to do one of the following:

  • accept that non-English topics won’t actually ever be tagged with the right language, or
  • create an #english tag which people could select

In the case of #1, we could be aggressive about mods and tl3+ users tagging after the fact, but I’m not sure exactly how that works with notifications — certainly people not expecting other languages will get them (and, from experience, complain to me about it) and I’m not sure if people subscribed to the tag get notified when a tag is added to an existing topic. (I will check into that!)

Did you get a notification? I added a tag laptop to your request below.

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I got an edit notification:

But… did anyone other than the post author who is subscribed to laptop get one?

I get what you mean, the request should get unread to appear again in the list right?
If yes i guess this just happens when we write something new in the topic, changed/added language tag … etc.

And perhaps an email notification.

This you get when the tracking bell is on ?! Not really sure.

A note on this — I do plan to investigate options for integrating the DIscourse Translator plugin. I want to find someone who will give us API access for free. :classic_smiley:

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Users can also post non-English posts into the wrong categories now, no?

In fact, users post English posts into the wrong categories. Sometimes they reply to completely unrelated posts.

Anyway, I understand the other limitations/counterpoints, so I am not going to insist on my suggestion. The language divide (online and offline) is something I’m particularly interested in[1] so I perhaps spoke a little enthusiastically.


  1. I thought we would be sticking alien fishes in our ears by now, not still discussing how to divide a forum by language :smile: ↩︎

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I think mostly they go to the correct place, but of course not always. Since we just changed things around a lot, I can’t really predict — but we’ll see!

I like having it where it is too. Note that this ask page/view is currently set as the primary place for users to get help when they click on the “Help” button on the new fedoraproject.org page (it is the first link that shows up and it is labeled “General Q&A”). I think having the common issues (with the issue description text) displayed prominently there could be very helpful.

Creating a specialized view to link to from there would be fine too if you don’t want that to be the default for the ask category. But let me know if you change that and want me to update that link.

BTW, the “New Topic” button being disabled by default is a problem. I think you said you had an idea about how to fix that at some point?

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I do, but apparently it is difficult to implement with the way the button works now, so it is in the lower-middle of my prioritized pile of RFEs for Discourse. Feature request: "redirect" "New Topic" button to a valid category when user doesn't have permission to post somewhere - feature - Discourse Meta

It looks like we have a strong lean towards moving Ask in English up to Ask Fedora — at least from people who have responded to the straw poll. And a split on what to do with Common Issues.

I’m at this point planning to move the Ask in English posts up to the first level. (I’ll leave Common Issues for now — one thing at a time.)

If you think we shouldn’t do that, now is a good time to be convincing. :classic_smiley:

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A post was split to a new topic: Should we restrict who can create new topics in Proposed Common Issues

Probably it would be a good Idea to tell us, what you expect to get different, and what benefit we will have right now.

I think, you will create your self just a lot of work again, with all the new forwarding etc. Might be better in a time in between a new release of Fedora Linux would be a better choice. Beta testing and new release in general gives a bigger amount of requests and more hassle.

As I mentioned above min 6 month in between changes makes sense. Could we not talk about this kind of time-frames and including my arguments above, not making unnecessary stress while new releases and beta testing?

That’s a pretty good argument. It’s probably best to wait until about a month after the F38 release.

I’m in favor of moving Common Issues up. This came up recently on IRC/Matrix that a Fedora regular was having trouble finding the Common Issues site currently.

The current URL is also a little long and obscure: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/ask/common-issues/82/none