In regards to the Qoto Announcement about language uses in our Mastodon and other services.

[ Posting this here, top level, for exposure. ]

This has been percolating since November 2019 - at least.

The discussion started right here in the Local feed in this instance. We moved the discussion to the Moderation section (publicly viewable to all) since it was getting fragmented and difficult to follow.

This topic from November 2019 has link backs to Toots here as well : https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nov-2019-site-issues-discussions-non-english-and-foreign-script-posts/102/5

At the time the issue was an incoming wave of Indian users, some of them posting in regional languages and character sets that nobody in our staff could read, never mind monitor for any needed moderation.

We had another wave of incoming users, refugees from Twitter like the Indian users, in the last days of December, 2019. There was a huge spike in user account here and in many other instances, and many of those Spanish users are still active here and elsewhere.

The main issue with foreign languages in the instance is for monitoring content -- in regards to being adequate to our instance's Focus (a STEM place, primarily), and not abusive or containing any content that is inappropriate in accordance with out Terms of Service and Conduct -- see : https://qoto.org/about/more/

I am part of the site staff and moderation team, and I do speak 3 languages as mentioned in my profile. I am comfortable working in all 3, plus some other Western European languages.

Some of our staff might handle one or two more with proficiency, but we cannot do it for many of the World Languages, which are rich and represent people cultural inheritage.

We are responsible for the upkeep of this organization, and feel we can't go on without being able to monitor content added to our various resources here.

The thread linked in the OP above is new to me, but I will be reading it.

We had this as our most recent discussion and resolution thread on the Languages issue -- https://discourse.qoto.org/t/resolution-establishing-a-new-qoto-language-policy-going-forward/220

Decisions are not taken lightly or off the cuff or on a two line post, I assure you.

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in response to https://qoto.org/@QOTO/104147229937571199 and @pemoe comment there