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My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:48 pm
by Wendylajolla

I am new to Forums. I double checked that English is selected in my profile.

However when I search Active threads it only shows me threads in Italian

Can someone help me figure out what I am doing wrong ?


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:56 pm
by Thomas.Heiss

@Wendylajolla

This is because the Italian discussions are flooding the streams (New, unanswered, active topics).

You're not doing anything wrong.
But a tons of ITA sentences got created through the bot and browser plugin.

Those discussions almost make the other rest of forum threads to disappear.
Or you have to scroll a lot.

Or set the other 14/30 days filter on the bottom left side (drop down icon).
Normally only the "last 7 days" are shown by default.

AFAIK you can't actively subscribe to forums and limit the streams; there is a workaround with copy and pasting selected forum ids at the browser url field from an advanced search.
I was playing around with this, only selected a few forums and flagged the filter as "search no sub forums".

But the forum software alone doesn't seem to be able to assist us, unlike Duolingo community forum.

I don't get anything out of all the Hebrew, Arabic, Russian threads which are all shown, besides Italian flood of sentence discussion (SD sub forum get moved to the other real forum on a reply automatically).
Just takes away the view from the rest of important existing or new forums which languages I actually speak (De, En, Pt or learn: Fr).

If you switch the filter to 30/60 or 180 days or 1 year you will see more useful threads from the Duome community in that "active topics" stream.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:59 pm
by gmads
Wendylajolla wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:48 pm

I am new to Forums. I double checked that English is selected in my profile.

However when I search Active threads it only shows me threads in Italian

Can someone help me figure out what I am doing wrong ?

That forum shows all the active topics of all the languages, so you're not doing anything wrong.

Right now there are a lot of Italian entries because of me :lol:


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:13 pm
by Thomas.Heiss

@Wendylajolla
@eI000yo

You can use this How-to guide also for "active topics" from @Basler Biker :

viewtopic.php?t=3156-how-to-new-posts-o ... ted-forums

I strongly want to advise to turn "search sub forums" OFF and really mark everything precisely what you want to see and can understand/read/speak.

I also select the main forums Duome in the selected topic list, like "I speak English"", etc., but NOT all target languages.

If you include sub forums you will see again the Italian SD mess even if you don't learn this language.

That trick will help for all foreign script target languages in the native EN speaker forum.

I would go for a customized "active topics" view.

..(...)..

Hard to believe it is that difficult coming from the Duolingo community forum mess, but yeah, modern technology seems to have some limits.

Wanted to speak to Maxime about some ideas and uncertainties but other stuff has been and will still be going on for a while in personal life...
And maybe there just are no forum advanced options or third party plugins or possibly modifications.

If I would have had to constantly read posts in topic streams in or about Hindi, Russian and Asian languages & more on Duolingo I would surely have thrown it away much earlier :-)


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:19 pm
by Thomas.Heiss

Another example:

After one year on Busuu I finally understand French just a little bit (started from scratch).

But several FR posts from daKanga quickly fill up the Active posts stream.
She is very active and eager and even created posts for each single verb. The tables look good and even have audio.

But it's hard that way to keep the " active topics" stream reduced a bit more and not overfilling it with a lot of new threads or updated posts.
Maybe 1-2 more sub forums can help for special listings.

But the real killer is the sentence bot user and that forum is not being excluded from the main streams.

Not very useful what I'm reading about in the Portuguese SD threads on here...very difficult sentences are not discussed.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:23 pm
by Wendylajolla

Thanks for all of the helpful replies. Good to know I’m not crazy LOL. It would seem to be easy to add a way to default to a language, but I am no programmer LOL. You are all the best!


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:31 pm
by gmads

If you can't beat the enemy… join him!


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:35 pm
by Cifi
gmads wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:59 pm

Right now there are a lot of Italian entries because of me :lol:

But why? If there's nothing you'd like to comment on these sentence discussions, why create them?


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:44 pm
by gmads
Cifi wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:35 pm
gmads wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:59 pm

Right now there are a lot of Italian entries because of me :lol:

But why? If there's nothing you'd like to comment on these sentence discussions, why create them?

See my previous post ;)


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:01 pm
by Cifi

Sorry gmads, ¿which one?


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:18 pm
by gmads
Cifi wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:01 pm

Sorry gmads, ¿which one?

gmads wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:31 pm

If you can't beat the enemy… join him!


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:02 am
by JudieLC

So you're the one we have to thank for this, @gmads . :D
I've been trying to get past them for days to get to actual discussions that aren't bot created threads. :D


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:23 am
by gmads
JudieLC wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:02 am

So you're the one we have to thank for this, @gmads . :D
I've been trying to get past them for days to get to actual discussions that aren't bot created threads. :D

😂   🕺🏼   🥳   🎉   🌻


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 10:22 am
by uralicnomad

:twisted:


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 10:37 am
by John Little
Wendylajolla wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:23 pm

Thanks for all of the helpful replies. Good to know I’m not crazy LOL. It would seem to be easy to add a way to default to a language, but I am no programmer LOL. You are all the best!

I mentioned that once when I first joined "but I think I got away with it". :)


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:46 pm
by MoniqueMaRie

And now the Italian subforum is so full that it needs subforums like the ones for other languages.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 2:50 pm
by gmads
uralicnomad wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 10:22 am

Hale and Pace - Trenches :twisted:

LOL! :D


How to ignore sentence bot

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:41 pm
by FurbyZeKat

Sentence bot is a special user that you cannot ignore the usual way, but it is making too much noise on the forum. Is there a way to hide it?


Re: How to ignore sentence bot

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:03 pm
by JudieLC
FurbyZeKat wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:41 pm

Sentence bot is a special user that you cannot ignore the usual way, but it is making too much noise on the forum. Is there a way to hide it?

That's cause one person has been generating a lot of Italian sentences lately. ;)


Re: How to ignore sentence bot

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:53 pm
by Corinnebelle

@FurbyZeKat I do not know of a way at present. There is the option to subscribe to forums you like, which means you'll get notifications in your feed for those forums you're interested in.

At the moment Duolingo isn't linking to some sentences with discuss that it should. I don't know why it is doing that. That means more people may be pressing the Duome button and linking sentences so they can access something.


Re: How to ignore sentence bot

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:06 pm
by FurbyZeKat

I know its purpose but it's making a lot of noise. I wonder what is the impression of new users visiting the forum, they'll see a lot of uninteresting activities without knowing the ways to filter them.


Re: How to ignore sentence bot

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:25 pm
by Thomas.Heiss

You could do it the manual way by adding specific forum ids to the Url of topic streams, e.g. "Active topics":

viewtopic.php?p=48443-my-native-languag ... ian#p48443

See the linked Howto thread.
And my replies to that above thread.

In that case don't include the SD bot forum in the selected list (advances search to generate all the forum ids you want to see).

I'm not aware of any simple solution or to customize the three streams with forums ids more easily.

Seems nothing is easy, not fully customizable and you can't save those customizations on the forum for a search or three stream links other than doing it all manually and saving your own Url as a browser favourite.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:53 pm
by Corinnebelle

@FurbyZeKat Good point! I wonder what new users think of it! I saw there were 48 users online not long ago. No doubt the Italians enjoy it! I get offers from the translator to translate the unread posts sometimes. I merged your thread with another on the topic. @Wendylajolla I like your title! Welcome to Duome! :)

Anyone know how to write an extension that would hide the sentence bot from the feed? It is a deluge! Of course one can browse manually checking each of the I speak English forums by date.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:38 am
by gmads

One man's trash, another man's treasure.

Anyway. It's been interesting to see what could easily be called a herd effect.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:54 am
by Corinnebelle
gmads wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:38 am

One man's trash, another man's treasure.

Anyway. It's been interesting to see what could easily be called a herd effect.

Yes, indeed you have been working hard there and your work is invaluable. The forum structure isn't perfect whether it can be improved or I'm not sure, I'm not a computer whiz to know how write a script that might help.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 3:24 am
by EranBarLev

I find the Active topics, Unanswered topics, Unread posts & New posts totally useless, regardless of the sentence bot, and I never go there. I don't care if it's Italian, Chinese, Swahili or Guarani, or if it's the bot or any other user. If I can't read it I don't want to see it. To make them useful, there should be a way to filter by language.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 3:41 am
by gmads
Corinnebelle wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:54 am
gmads wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:38 am

One man's trash, another man's treasure.

Anyway. It's been interesting to see what could easily be called a herd effect.

Yes, indeed you have been working hard there and your work is invaluable. The forum structure isn't perfect whether it can be improved or I'm not sure, I'm not a computer whiz to know how write a script that might help.

Yes, thanks. I guess a lot depends very much on factors like:

  1. the forum app itself (its capabilities, its ease of configuration and of modifying the code, on the possible existing plugins that might help manage how threads are organized etc.)

  2. how technically knowledgeable is the owner and administrator of this installation and how much available time does he have to play with it and get the most of it

  3. the willingness of the managers and moderators to work on the organization of the forums and subforums, which by the way, from what I have seen, the team doesn't even seem to have a unified criterion of how everything should be structured… I'd say there are conflicting philosophies

  4. what each of the users here could consider should be the best way to organize everything, or what should be the best options or tools to move at ease, in an ideal way

So, yes, quite a number of "if's" to take into account :|


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:19 pm
by JudieLC
EranBarLev wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 3:24 am

I find the Active topics, Unanswered topics, Unread posts & New posts totally useless, regardless of the sentence bot, and I never go there. I don't care if it's Italian, Chinese, Swahili or Guarani, or if it's the bot or any other user. If I can't read it I don't want to see it. To make them useful, there should be a way to filter by language.

After I’ve read my notifications, I only use New posts and Unread posts. The latter two have been filled with bot created sentences lately, though, which is not always the case. When there aren’t so many bot created sentences, I find those two useful.

I’ve never looked at unanswered or active topics, because I figured unanswered would be filled with bot created sentences. And honestly, I never noticed the active topics category till you mentioned it. :D


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:18 pm
by FurbyZeKat
gmads wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:38 am

One man's trash, another man's treasure.

Sure, but on many forums now (mainly Discord, but even in the late Duolingo forums) you can select which channels interest you, the newcomer is not immediately overwhelmed by so much information.


Re: My native language is English but Forum is only showing me Italian

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:51 pm
by gmads
FurbyZeKat wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:18 pm
gmads wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:38 am

One man's trash, another man's treasure.

Sure, but on many forums now (mainly Discord, but even in the late Duolingo forums) you can select which channels interest you, the newcomer is not immediately overwhelmed by so much information.

Yes, although we are talking about two different topics. That the forum does not offer better options to move around, is one. My comment clarifying the reason for the creation of the entries, is another.