I got an email warning from this server - after posting in Irish a number of times over the lifetime of my account here and other folks telling me that it is welcome - that my posts in Irish are NOT welcome on Fosstodon.
Irish is a minority language not heard often, it is extremely important to me, and so this decision means this server is not a place for me. Sadly, despite my long career in FOSS.
I might abandon this account and use mastodon.ie. TBD
@mairin
When I was considering which instance to join, being able to write messages in different languages was a priority. English-centrism seems to me to be a lack of perspective towards the multilingual society in which we live.
@kev Thank you for the explanation. I can see that it was a difficult decision and my comment had no perspective on the specific situation of this instance. My sincere apologies.
On the other hand, I understand that people might want to migrate their accounts if for them writing in other languages is important. @mairin
@victorvicpal@mairin absolutely, we totally get that, and no need to apologise. I just wanted to let you guys know that we did put a lot of thought into this decision.
Mairin, if you do decide to move away, we will still love you, and Fedora. 🙃
Sorry about the “warning”. 99% of the time it’s more of a”reminder”, but there’s no mechanism for that in Masto when it comes to managing reports.
would have been nice to get a "warning" or heads up about this some months ago when I started posting in Irish, look at my timeline, there is plenty of it.
I have never caused any moderation issues on this server, I am a good citizen. Too bad that won't be considered.
You need to rethink the phrasing of this email and policy. English is an ugly language w a cruel history.
@mairin the rules are clearly stated when you sign up. There’s a pop up that you have to acknowledge that you agree to the rules. It’s also mentioned on our instance description, so would have been prevalent in apps too. 🤷♂️
@kev Ouch... hey! Yes, running an instance is HARD and WORK, but so many of us are willing to help! It's not an open community by any definition, when its restricted to the primary language of historic colonists and oppressors of the whole world. Says I, an English ONLY speaker. Would you simply need help to moderate in all languages, or is exclusion your intent? Happy to help u organize, if that's all u need. @mairin@victorvicpal
@kev@victorvicpal So you choose to selectively enforce it? Allow someone to become comfortable over 11 months, then stab the knife?
This is not in the spirit of FOSS at all. You need to improve your language and messaging at a bare minimum. My current position as-is w the status quo is that this is a colonialistic server. You need to do better.
@mairin We’re an instance of 60,000+ people. We don’t actively monitor every single post, it would be impossible to do so. We’re reliant on user reports. So it’s likely that your previous posts didn’t get reported.
We’re just going around in circles. If you’re not happy here, there’s nothing to stop you using the power of the fedi and moving server. Like I said, good luck.
@kev@victorvicpal No, it's not a circle. Your language in the policy post and in the email alerts is in dire need of attention. I'm leaving regardless. But you're dealing with 60k users irresponsibly leaving those texts as-is.
@kev@mairin@victorvicpal the blog post you linked above implies the exact opposite: that all non-English posts are (were) auto-translated to "make sure they abide by our Code of Conduct."
@kev@mairin@victorvicpal
one would imagine an instance with focus on open source software would have experience with using tools to make their lives easier.
It like, you have 60.000+ software focused people, and none of them knows about useful software to make this easier?
@kev@victorvicpal I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone involved in FOSS (the vast majority of whom are not native English speakers) use this server with this handling of the issue.
@mairin I’m not telling you to do anything. I suggesting you leave if you don’t like our policies. Sitting on this merry-go-round won’t change anything.
I’m moving on now - I have much better things to do than argue with strangers on the internet. You do you.
@kev@victorvicpal I keep expressing the urgency of fixing your docs and emails. You keep accusing me of going in circles and limit the scope of my concern to my account. My leaving will not fix your docs and emails.
Wow! Your own rules doesn't apply to yourself Kev?
What a response from an admin. I'm glad I didn't join your server and will ensure other won't join this 🐘💩 to get your "So. Leave. Then. FFS." treatment.
@mairin, Mods do not and cannot always monitor and moderate every single post in the local timeline of a very large instance like this. They often act on users reporting violations of the instance rules to them. For example, I always report non-English posts in the local timeline when I see them. But there is a chance that there may not be 100% coverage of moderating every post on this instance’s local timeline. This has nothing to do with selective enforcement at all. @kev
@mairin, And on the other side of the coin, I’ve been “warned” for going overboard with the reporting and reporting a valid sentence with well-known foreign phrase (it wasn’t obvious to me). One of the main reasons that I’ve been here for many years is that it is English-only and every single post can be read and understood by me and everyone else (difficult to imagine users who don’t know English signing up for an account here) and I ❤️ how the local timeline is inclusive because of that. @kev
@mairin, in fact, I report many posts in a day that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was me who reported yours. The instance rules clearly mention the English-only requirement and it is expected that users who sign up understand and agree to that. The admin/mods team will be able to better enforce it if more people helped by following the rules or by reporting. They do a great and thankless job and this isn’t a fault of theirs at all. @kev
@artfulsodger@kev Oh thank you so much for your helpful service of reporting my minority language post that talked about how I really enjoyed the book I am reading. What a service you provide!
The mods could do well without the colonialism. Providing a helpful service doesn't excuse the framing and language towards non-English speakers.
@mairin, the Fosstodon team has a well-documented reason for the English-only rule and it has nothing to do with identity politics or colonialism or whatever people in this discussion conflate it to be. It is not fair to expect the admins of an instance to change a rule that they’ve clearly thought about for reasons that have nothing to do with their reasoning. It is fair to provide feedback but the expectation that they should be accepted isn’t. @kev
@artfulsodger@kev Clearly you believe you have all the answers and know better than I. Far be it from me to disabuse you of that notion. I'm just a simple 20+ year upstream open source contributor who happens to believe very deeply that language diversity is critical and an importat value in our broader FOSS community, which I believe this server no longer serves. Thanks for your part in exposing this issue to me by reporting my Irish tweet. I am working to pull the @fedora account as well.
@artfulsodger@kev@fedora No longer do I believe this server deserves the credibility it's received in the FOSS community. I refuse to legitimize it. Excuse this deplorable policy all you want. It's simply wrong, and against core open source values.
@mairin, just because users like me accept and follow the instance’s rules doesn’t mean that everyone should. And with the way the fediverse is built, one can always go find a home in an instance that suits and matches their ideals. My first Fediverse account was on a different instance where the limited English content was lost amidst all non-English. And that is why when I found about Fosstodon and its English-only rule, this became my home. My wishes for you to go find yours. @kev
@artfulsodger This is an odd take. Mastodon's provided a mechanism for filtering by language since before Fosstodon's English-only policy was instated. Why couldn't you just do that?
@mairin, It doesn’t feel great to be “warned” (I have been warned, as I mentioned already) but there is no point in having rules if they aren’t enforced. The Fosstodon admins, mods teams are doing the best they can, with help from users who report. Fosstodon is a great place and while I am not familiar with most of the posters in the local timeline like I used to when Fosstodon was much smaller, it is still a great place, where I spend the most time on Fediverse every day. @kev
@artfulsodger@mairin@kev "The code of conduct at Fosstodon can be simply summarised as "don't be a jerk"." -- I'm not watching that rule being very well enforced when violated by the instance moderator in this thread. Which rules are chosen as the hill to die on here by the server's moderation are telling.
@vwbusguy, if you are a user on this instance and feel that there is a violation, afaik, you are free to talk to the Fosstodon team about it and try to make them understand the issue and/or switch to a different instance, where you don’t have to deal with them.
@vwbusguy, I know that and hence my reply also mentions that you are free to migrate to another instance if you believe that Fosstodon team (of which Kev is a member) will not entertain any feedback on this.
@artfulsodger How very gracious of you to invite me to join only so that I may depart. Of course, this is just a diversion so that you do not need to accept the clear problem happening before your eyes, but that is obviously your choice that you are welcome to make as well.
@vwbusguy, my reply was clearly aimed at users with accounts on Fosstodon (“if you are a user on this instance, …”). Everyone else can do whatever they want to.
@artfulsodger
Not meaning as a report-shaming, but, sir, did you consider just not reading posts that are not in your language, assuming they are not meant for you anyway? Why go to the extreme of reporting a random non-English post, if you are not going to interpret the contents, in the first place?
Additionally, when you DO report those posts, you're only stockpiling the work for moderators' team. So, it's not really helping anyone...
@artfulsodger@mairin@kev Guruprasad, as I hope we have some mutual respect from working together, please reconsider doing this. If you want to establish a 100% English timeline for yourself, then there are other ways that wouldn't be painful for other people - e.g. muting people who post in non-English. By taking it on yourself to report this, I strongly believe you're prioritizing your comfort over other people's identity in a very harsh way.
I hope other instances see this, and #defederate fosstodon. English isn’t even the most widely spoken language worldwide. It’s just sad little English speakers trying to inflict their language onto the world.
(I say this, btw, as a person who only speaks English, but isn’t racist)
@kev@mairin@victorvicpal@oliphant have you heard about this yet? This needs attention. A move to #defederate. Fosstodon is too damn big to have an “English only” rule. It’s racist and discriminatory.
@kev@victorvicpal I understand and recognize a lot of thought was put into this decision but IMO it is misguided and ignorant.
It positions non-English language speakers (likely unintetionally but it still does) as being somehow more likely to post bad content needing moderation. It's not a practical consideration. It's inhumane, sorry.
@Lazarou@mairin@kev@victorvicpal From a UK moderator no less! Imagine if I as an English speaking white American demanded that indigenous people stop conversing in Cherokee and only talk to each other in English instead!
@Lazarou@mairin@kev@victorvicpal If you're shocked about British people arguing that a colonial rule is actually in the best interest of everyone under it and for the use of the English language to be strictly enforced (and especially in regards to Irish), then I have hundreds of years of global history for you.
@Lazarou@mairin@kev@victorvicpal Ah, my bad! My apologies - I completely misread your post. 😅 Anyway, AFAICT, fosstodon mods have no problem turning it into some cromwell.social type of place, so I'll refrain from recommending it moving forward. And I won't take the soup, myself.
@Lazarou@mairin@kev@victorvicpal Lest anyone accuse me of being particularly bigoted here, I hope they'll consider my own last name. I'm directly descended from the Cromwell family line (which was ultimately Welsh), just not the infamous man himself. It was wrong then as it is now.
@vwbusguy@Lazarou@mairin@kev@victorvicpal well summarized @vwbusguy For people who want a reminder about a relatively recent part of that history I would recommend watching Rebellion, currently on Netflix. I am not a historian to judge the accuracy but it sure illustrates the situation in an entertaining, emotional and educational manner.
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin The “lot of thought” notwithstanding, you clearly haven’t considered the real world implications of let’s say, interacting with actual human beings from diverse backgrounds.
I am an active FOSS contributor, English is my second language, and I value the diversity of human communication.
It would suit you to reevaluate you moderation policy. If you need any pointers to alternative approaches, instead of a blanketing method, you could simply use any translation tool, only for posts that someone has marked as offensive, and take it from there.
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin in the era of ChatGPT and powerful translation tools that can actually do a proper translation job (Croatian is extremely difficult to translate, and ChatGPT even gets noun cases correctly, and the context), I find that that policy as an excuse. We really don't need yet another colonialism but we should embrace diversity and inclusion.
@Igorjagec did you actually read the post? We don’t claim that we can’t translate, or that the technology doesn’t exists. It’s not scalable. Do you fancy spending your every waking hour monitoring the local feed and translating every post that’s in a language you don’t speak?
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin Okey-dokey, I see the challenges with manual moderation and understand it's a complex issue. It might be reassuring to know if you're exploring tech solutions like NLP to address this. Could you add to the FAQ that you're on it and perhaps call for volunteers to help? It might encourage more hands-on-deck! ✌️ #CommunitySupport
It's entirely scalable, you don't have to translate in real time, just put it on a queue if there really are a lot of them.
But I doubt there are, it's just laziness.
I don't follow individuals for the language they use and I don't read everything, but if I'm interested I'll either read it as best I can or use Translator.
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin this justification is pathetic. just going through your proposed thought flow, why not just even make it a moderation practice in which if the message itself is reported in the first place.. why not ask for volunteers before assuming..
I can understand content moderation might take up most of your operational resources but it feels more like censorship of others' voices.
As a free software contributor from the global South it's very sad.
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin seems to be a profoundly inward-looking xenophobic solution, especially (as you observe) you had access to native speakers in the languages of most of the non-English toots
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin There are many free translation services available on the web. It takes literally seconds to copy-paste, and the better services detect the input language. Your blanket ban is therefore demonstrably just lazy. Colonialism is not a good look.
@kev I read your link about why fosstodon.org is English-only. I'm glad you value moderation. But if you double down on this decision to ban other languages, that sends a message about where inclusion falls in your list of priorities. Fedi already has a problem with Anglocentrism. You have a chance to make things better instead of worse. You could call for volunteers to run text through a free online translator for the mod team. I hope you'll rethink this decision. @victorvicpal@mairin
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin why don’t you consider the use of translation tools instead of discrimination rules? Here is an example of how well they work.
@kev@victorvicpal@mairin mundane. Maybe you don't know but it is one of the worst things to be told not to speak your language. You have a policy and you don't care, but el problema es tuyo por no saber que en el mundo se habla un montón de idiomas.
@osslate@kev@victorvicpal@mairin Maybe it would be feasible to have a policy of allowing posts in every language the moderation team understands — with an open offer to add people to the moderation team who wish for their language to be included?
@krans@kev we found in practice that we didn't need language restrictions — at all — to foster a safe and inclusive community.
Translating reports is not as laborious a task as described in Kev's post, and translation platforms are incredibly accurate today for typical moderation purposes.
Dropping that rule, alongside onboarding mods for non-English languages on Fosstodon, would be a no-brainer to me were I in their shoes :) there's no excuse for it beyond laziness.
@osslate we’re all for facilitating that, but not at the expense of the free time of our team of volunteers. We have a translation server that’s been running for a little bit now, but Masto’s implementation isn’t great and relies on folk setting the language of their post. Until the tech works it’s too much of a burden.
If you’re happy to take on that burden, I commend you. If people want to post in other languages, they shouldn’t join Fosstodon.
@jtr makes me go and say "back in my day..." but back in my day, trolls like these were left and right, so I moved away from social media.
I left Facebook, twitter, and slowly turned away from communities or Reddit. Yelling, it seems, was the default in those places.
So I came to Mastodon and it has been good for me for years. Still is. But people are people, and as the number increase, so is the number of possible trolls. Unfortunately a human phenomenon.
@victorvicpal@mairin I run a little web site. I accept contributions in English only, because I run it as a free public service and English is the only language in which I can form a judgement as to whether things that are posted are legal, decent etc.
@mairin there used to be pubs around here with signs saying "No Blacks, No dogs, No Irish". The owners and regulars no doubt made all the same arguments seen in this thread: it's private property, it doesn't bother me, there are other pubs you can go to, the rules were posted on the door. But society said no, that's not okay.
@mairin @mairin Very sorry that you have to put up with such treatment from the popular "#FOSS" network.
Going out of their way to force a community to speak only English behind the mask of inclusion is just purely antithetical. Nice going there, #Fosstodon...
@mairin I hope you'll continue to post in Irish! I don't understand most of it, but I'm always a little happier when I see Irish and Welsh show up in posts in my feed. They're languages from my own bloodline and I'm very happy to see them live on. Having lived in Ireland, I also have very strong feelings about people in power demanding English be spoken instead of Irish. If this policy holds, I'll most likely quit referring people to #Fosstodon out of conscience.
@glitzersachen@mairin Ah fair enough. When I initially wrote that, I hadn't seen where the interaction ended with Kev. I still had hope it had been some kind of mistake and a moderator shooting from the hip, but you are correct. It is very intentional.
@mairin I'm extremely surprised. I don't understand half the languages on my timeline but this is the appeal of the place to me. It's like sitting in an airport. I really like it.
@mairin I don't understand this behaviour. Why does Mastodon have language tagging for the posts, and corresponding filtering mechanisms, if people are then excluded based on the language they use?
To give them the benefit of the doubt, many #instances have English-only (or other single-language-only) #rules because they fear #legal#liability because of their inability to effectively #moderate or respond to complaints about #content posted in a language they cannot understand.
You're asking did the admin of fosstodon.org receive any complaints about your posts in Irish Gaelic?
Sorry, I have no idea. I have nothing to do with that instance; I was just explaining that most of the language rules on Mastodon/Fediverse instances are there because admins can't moderate what they can't read -- it isn't a conspiracy or anti-Irish sentiment or anything like that.
@mairin so sorry that you've experienced this. Clearly a red flag that the instance doesn't allow different languages, and I completely agree with your statements about colonialism. I've followed your other account. I will make sure not to recommend fosstodon to anyone in future.
@mairin I don't understand why this is such an issue. Fosstodon is an English speaking server, for moderation purposes. When signing up to this server you agree to this. There are plenty of multilingual servers, but you chose to join Fosstodon.
The reason that it's so pleasant here is because of the moderation. That moderation requires English, a) because translation services apparently aren't that great yet and more importantly b) the mods are only a small team of volunteers. I stand with @kev
@InayaShujaat@kev@mairin well yeah, and with the plethora of multilingual servers in the fediverse I don't necessarily see the issue for others either.
That is not to say I'm not interested in a solution, if its technologically feasible and works for the mods.
@Gina Says the woman who has made it abundantly clear that she thinks that "English only" is a fine "rule" for a server to have, and if people don't like it, they can leave.
@InayaShujaat@kev@mairin@Gina as an admin of users I don’t speak language, barely remotely know how to read their alphabet: yes it’s a huge matter to be able to read what users post
I’m lucky to have adorable and wonderful users, but we went through propaganda and trolls accounts (in a language I can’t decipher)
@InayaShujaat@Gina@kev@mairin I don’t have time and energy to translate every single posts on local timeline
and they often miserably fail at translating slangs, which is the common gate for troublemaking posts :bunsmile2:
@duponin@Gina@kev@mairin Sorry that you insist on being a one-person mod team. If only you could get people to help you, but that would require asking them....
Seriously, boo hoo. The world is made up of people from different backgrounds, who speaks different languages, and have different ways of expressing themselves. Do you walk around in this world refusing to hear non-English languages?
@InayaShujaat@duponin@kev@mairin The fediverse is no different than in person though? There's a server for every interest/group imaginable, and you always have the option to start your own server.
This discussion feels like joining a football match and then getting upset that they're not playing basketball.
@Gina@duponin@kev@mairin Methinks you don't know how "in person" works. Too busy making memes?
For those of us who exist out in the real world, we know that hearing and seeing folks from all different backgrounds is a thing. They are not relegated to a hidden corner, far from easily offended eyes.
I am visibly Muslim, both in the real world, and online.
@Gina@mairin@kev that is not entirely true. Fosstodon aporebtly is a server focused on free and Open Source software. It happens to be owned by people with little knowledge of languages and with little capacity to run it.
@mairin@kev@osslate maybe it's my lack of knowledge on integrating chatgpt into Mastodon servers, but to me this sounds like saying "modern skyscrapers were invented" when building a cabinet in your hallway. 😅
@Gina@mairin@kev@osslate I wouldn't want to use a server where moderation relied on machine translation, and that will probably be true regardless of how good it gets, as good moderation relies on understanding nuances that are hard enough to translate manually.
@bkhl Vast majority of reports you deal with as a mod on Mastodon don't need any extra nuance; they're overt bigotry. Machine translation handles it fine.
For more complex situations, there are other strategies used atop machine translation. Native speakers can be usually be found for clarification on larger teams, and failing that, opening dialogue with the reportee in question.
All of the large tech instances I know of, including the largest general tech instance, operate in a similar way.
@osslate@mairin to add on to my post: it would be awesome if there was a translation service that could work AND that wouldn't burden the mods team. In that case, the whole issue would be resolved.
A broader community effort to include multilingual mods would also be cool, but please don't ignore the significant organising effort that would take, speaking from experience. Again, we're dealing with a small group of volunteers, this isn't the Wiki foundation.
@osslate@mairin I haven't been a Fosstodon mod for a while, so I can't comment anymore on technical feasibility or the workload of your solution, but it does sound interesting.
@mairin Wow. That seems like such a huge inclusion issue. Really unfortunate. And in a way is one of the downsides of the fediverse I guess - small community servers don't have the ability to moderate across languages.
@mairin That makes sense. Did @fedora not consider having their own Mastodon instance? For such an international project, being on an English-only instance seems a paradox.
@mairin it's not the first time a whole community leaves because FOSS is very multilingual in nature. FOSStodon is kinda meaningless without enabling more languages.
@mairin I am on this server because I was on esperanto.masto.host first and that server has a similar policy but for Esperanto, and I speak too many languages to be able to deal with that.
@kf4hzu By the way, quite a lot of things do not transfer over to a new account when one migrates, as @kissane has catalogued https://erinkissane.com/notes-from-a-mastodon-migration - plus the per-profile user notes (the private note about another Fediverse user that you can write and review when viewing their profile)
@brainwane
Add to that followed tags, that was also a surprise to me, feels like an easy thing to include in a migration but isn't @kf4hzu@kissane@mairin
@mairin WTF?!! You should be free to post in whatever language you want! We have DeepL, Mastodon’s built-in feature and translator extensions if we need them.
@TritTriton Unfortunately translators are still lacking, especially with colloquial language. And translating messages is slow, an overhead that makes just following a stream of new posts impossible (like the local timeline much of the time).
Just the other day I had a French post in my feed with a meme I wanted to understand, but DeepL failed me with half of the words.
You are absolutely free to do that.
Just not on Fosstodon (nor on dolphin.space either, and I'm not sure about oulipo either).
That is the reason the Fediverse exists : so that you moderation decisions on one instance do not infringe any of your rights nor freedom.
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