The website is available in multiple languages, but it seems the forum isn’t?
A multilingual forum would be a very valuable resource for non-English-speaking people who wish to ask questions about the site or privacy in general.
Personally, I speak French, so I could help answer questions in French (or ask my own). I’m also trying to immerse myself in German as much as possible, to learn more of it. A multilingual forum would help with this.
The right to privacy doesn’t know languages or borders, so why should we?
Privacy nerds like us are a sad minority of the overall totality of the internet and while I would want the French people to have access to privacy. There would be at least two issues that I can see:
Obsviously the first one is the language barrier, I dont know if its a good idea to just run the post in an offline translator for non-native French speakers (or God/s forbid, Google Translate). Nuances will be lost but its better than none, I guess.
I worry about french speaking bots as well. I’ve been to some forums where the bots are passably human and marinate a bit of time then post some ads/propaganda/misinformation/etc.
Ultimately, I dont think the mods would mind (but I’m putting words in their mouth and I’m obviously not a moderator), its just that it will be extra work for them. Its a Pandora’s box but ultimately, something I think and believe would be a net benefit.
I understand that this change would (most likely) require bringing on more moderators, in order to be able to moderate the other languages. I’m sure there are people in the community who would be willing to do this though, especially since the website has already been translated into many languages.
I also understand that bringing on a new mod requires a level of trust. Personally though, I would be willing to moderate for French (moderating for German wouldn’t really work at this point, since I’m still trying to learn it).
I really hope this idea is at least considered by the team, so we can spread the message of privacy to even more people in the world!
To me it’s not a problem of whether people would use it or whether people could moderate it, but whether there would be enough credible people who could answer questions in those languages. Especially answering “questions about the site” would be less useful without anyone on @team who’s actually reviewing changes to the site being able to answer.
IMO we try and connect people with privacy questions with expert answers here, if we can’t guarantee multilingual experts in other language boards here I worry about them becoming a “blind leading the blind” situation.
Also, without multilingual team members involved in every step of our processes—not solely moderation—I just think it would be difficult to keep everything/everyone on the same page. And if everything isn’t on the same page, then I don’t see the point in us specifically hosting such communities versus them just existing anywhere else.
Anything is possible, but we have a very challenging time finding motivated team members as-is. Spending this level of time and energy for free isn’t desirable to most people.
I understand that. I still really want to see this vision become a reality though.
Is there anything I can do to help get that to happen? As in, applying (however that’s done) to become a moderator (specifically for French, at this point, and later, German, too)-language posts? Or, posting in another language (French, for now) myself (am I allowed to do that)?