We now have various sites in other languages. That's great, and I am quite pleased to see this diversification. However, that raises some problems with chat flags. Since the chat network is site-wide, flags are shown to all high rep users and mods of the network. This can be an issue if the flag is from, for example, SO.jp and one doesn't understand Japanese.
Not only can we non-Japanese speakers (or Russian/Portuguese whatever) handle them, there is a real danger that we mishandle them. Either because a user just goes "Wot?" and dismisses a flag off hand as noise, or because of misunderstandings inherent in any attempt at crossing the language barrier.
So, could flags raised in chat rooms associated with a non-English site only be shown to
- Mods of that site
- High rep users of that site (or at least, high rep users with an account on that site)
We currently have sites, and associated chat rooms, in
Arabic(failed beta)- Chinese
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese and Japanese SO
- Portuguese, Portuguese SO
- Spanish, Spanish SO
- Russian 1, Russian 2 and Russian SO
I may have missed some but, in any case, more are coming.
I think that would be better for everyone since it would mean the flags get the attention they deserve and the rest of us are not distracted by flags we can't really judge.