I think we need a flag for non-English speakers [duplicate]

Question

It would help everyone if we provided a mechanism that people could use to flag their post if English is language they are not comfortably fluent in. A lot of non-English speakers have to go to English forums for tech support and find it embarrassing to ask questions in broken Englis.

Worse, people reading a post often cannot tell if a badly-worded post results from a poor English or just laziness and sloppiness on the part of a native English speaker. Personally, I will take the time to puzzle out a poorly-worded post if I know the author is struggling with English, but if I think they're just lazy and careless I won't bother.

A simple check box could flag the author as a non-English speaker and allow everyone to adjust accordingly.

Edit01:

Some answers below have accused me of being 'elitist'. I'm not sure where they got the idea that I was sneering down at anyone because their abilities at either English or coding. That was not my intent.

When I said I would not bother with post that appeared to incoherent owing to laziness or carelessness, I am not being elitist. I'm giving priority in my time budget to people who are respectful enough of my time to spend the their time writing as clear a question as their grasp of English and coding allows. Why should I spend time answering a careless and slapdash post when I could spend that time helping posters who took more of their time writing their questions?

I am perfectly willing to burn a lot of time helping someone struggling to write code in their non-native language. I have a hard enough time coding myself in English that I can't even imagine what a dog's breakfast I would make of it if I had to code in, say, Korean.

I have seen many instances in which questions have been downvoted when a quick glance at the poster's profile gives a strong hint they are not native English speakers. I would like a system that would spare those posters from being downvoted or ignored by using an interface element that clearly communicates in a standardized way whether the poster natively speaks English or not.

I don't see what's elitist about that.

Edit02:

This is the kind of post (original unedited) I'm talking about:

Hy, I have a childe view that put it self over other brother views. The problem is that when i touch it the brother also reacts at the touch event. How can I disable touch propagation on the underlieng brother views?

I'm not even exactly sure what he is describing. I can guess that he has a sibling view that extends over its siblings but I'm not sure. If I edited it, I might not end up asking the same question the poster intended.

To answer the question, I will either have to (1) first ask for more detail and then keep checking back until I get it or (2) try to answer what I think the question is and possibly mangle it then have to come back and edit my answer all the while risking a downvote because I answered the wrong question.

I will take the time and the risk of down vote if the poster is not a native English speaker (or is a child) and the confusing question represents their honest best effort. If they're just being lazy, I have other people to help.

I would like a mechanism that would help me decide how to allocate my time and would protect the non-English speaking posters from unjust downvotes.

Answer 1

A simple check box could flag the author as a non-english speaker and allow everyone to adjust accordingly.

Jeff has always turned down ANY sort of rating/flagging system that reflects the user. Only posts (questions, answers, comments) have any sort of voting/rating/flagging system.

While one could make the argument that the "Not Fluent in English" flag is meant for the post, the reality is that it is a direct reflection of the user.

How do we judge one's proficiency in English? Many foreign speakers believe they have a very poor grasp of English when, in fact, they are nearly perfect in their written communications, while others believe they are fluent, but others still struggle to understand what they mean, even if their grammar is perfect. How would we instruct them when it's appropriate to check the box?

If someone doesn't deserve our time or attention because they aren't making a 'reasonable' effort, what will prevent them from checking that box to get more attention?

Lastly, sadly, there are still people who hold racist or simple protectionist views that would use this 'feature' in direct opposition to your stated goal. Once we start attaching language, nationality, race, etc to posts in an easily readable way, the community will invariably form cliques around certain behavior regarding those indications of differences. While the reason for such a flag may be pure, it may have an overall negative effect. Even today there are many technology workers who have no racist views, but may feel they lost job opportunities due to offshoring. It would be nice to believe that isn't really going to be a problem, but it's actually souring people who are otherwise very open and accepting, and it would give them a wedge on SO to note their discontent. Even at a low level this undercurrent may drive away international users.

This is a social problem with no good technical solution.

Answer 2

Well, they could just add something along the lines of the following to their post:

Please excuse any spelling or grammatical mistakes, English isn't my first language

which, being in the text, might be easier for readers to spot than some flag or tag on the post.

I originally suggested prefixing the post with this, but it has been suggested in the comments that it's added at the end. Personally, I've got no problem with that - I just thought of prefixing first.

Having said this, in the forums where I've seen this used, it's usually those whose command of English is better than that of native speakers who say this.

Answer 3

Whenever I see a post that is badly worded because of a poor command of English, it still pains me to see the number of 2000+ rep users who then participate in a character assassination of the poster.

Rather than wasting all this time and energy on unfunny and often caustic remarks, they should be using their edit rights to try and fix the post instead.

Answer 4

It would help everyone if we provided a mechanism that people could use to flag their post if english is language they are not comfortably fluent in.

Herein lies the problem: if someone has trouble with English and users typically don't read instructions at the best of times, how is such a thing going to be read and understood?

A lot of non-english speakers have to go to english forums for tech support and find it embarrassing to ask questions in broken speech.

As Jeff has pointed out, English is the lingua franca for programming so going to non-English sites really limits your options (although such options do exist, particularly for German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese).

Worse, people reading post often cannot tell if a badly worded post results from a poor english or just laziness

Here I disagree: I don't think I've ever seen a post that's ambiguous. It's pretty obvious when someone is having problems with English but here's the kicker: even if it's not clear, shouldn't they be given the benefit of the doubt?

I have a real problem with elitism and obnoxious behaviour in online communities. Before you know it, new users are lambasted for not conforming to 2973482 standards they can't possibly know about and self-appointed elite users start distributing McCarthy-esque black lists and contributors start leaving in record numbers.

So I think the only action required here is by experienced SO users to:

• be more tolerant;
• hold off on mass downvoting posts with poor grammar;
• take the 30 seconds to fix a post rather than closing, commenting, downvoting and flagging it into oblivion (personally I'd rather you do nothing over jumping the gun and killing a post over fixing it);
• be nicer to the newbies (yes, even those who are less than proficient with English).

The problem here is really the judgemental, self-appointed so-called guardians of SO standards, not the non-native English speakers.

Answer 5

Personally, I will take the time to puzzle out a poorly worded post if I know the author is struggling with english but if I think they're just lazy and careless I won't bother.

Consider, instead, assuming that the author is asking in good faith and answering them regardless of their language ability or laziness.

If you can suss out a question from the bad/broken/torn/spindled/folded/mutilated English and you can answer it, then it appears somewhat elitist to help them "only if they deserve it."

The question is there forever, and will help many people beyond the original poster. Regardless of the original poster's diligence, future programmers will benefit from your wisdom. Therefore it's a moot point whether the OP has the 'correct' intentions or not - eventually someone else will have the 'correct' intentions.

Elitism does not serve ANY good purpose on SO.

Answer 6

It's somewhat elitist to assume that someone's origin has to do with their command of language. You can be ESL (English as Second Language) and still write good questions in English. Conversely, English can be your only language, and your text can be crap. There is a correlation, yes, but a checkbox does not really help to fix much here.

We are all willing to help, but the sad truth is that there's a minimum bar of making your text comprehensible. The text below that bar is a lost cause. Either patiently work on your language skills or use a SO clone in your native language. This is not a judgement on the poster, it's a basic breakdown in communication. It takes two to tango and there's only so far you can go by applying a "non-native-speaker-leniency" filter.

Answer 7

No, the post from edit 2 is not an honest best effort. It's woefully lacking in detail. I don't care how inept somebody's English is, they can copy-and-paste tool and version information, not to mention class names. The quality of the English (which actually isn't bad) is completely incidental.

I don't think there's a problem here for people who aren't good at English. I certainly haven't seen one. Almost all of the questions I've seen in bad English are bad questions, and would remain bad questions in perfect English. The good questions I've seen haven't been mocked. I'd be interested in being shown an example or two of the claimed problem, or maybe more, since I don't think it exists in noticeable numbers.

I think the problem is bad questions, not bad English. There are a lot of people with bad English who are, very simply, bad programmers who don't understand what they're doing. Claiming that they are being discriminated against because of their English is an example of cultural hypersensitivity that is both false and unhelpful.

It may be that we should try to change how people who ask bad questions are treated, but that's a different subject.

Answer 8

Everytime you suggest an elitist approach to a feature that involves users cultures/languages, try to think as someone who is inside that niche.

English isn't my first language, I know I'm going to do a lot of mistakes. But if you were a non english speaker, you would understand how difficult it is to some people to remove the fear of posting because of the "language barrier". If you thought as someone that tries hard to write something down in a language you aren't proficiency with, you would understand how forcing someone to use a tag like this would be harmful to a community as a whole.

Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you.

This is in SO FAQ. I don't think tagging like this is respectful to non english speaker's efforts.

Seriously, if you want to know if it's worth answering a question based in user's "sloppiness", check the user's profile. You have other questions made by the user, location, accept rate that you could make a fair comparison.

IMO, It's a good intention, but with a bad solution.

Answer 9

We already pretty much have that option for both questions and answers. (At least... some sort of...)

This is the recommended action if a non-English post is discovered:

• For questions, vote or flag for closure as "unclear what you're asking".

• For answers, flag as "not an answer".