Languages are now in the sidebar

[emk]

Looking at it right now. I think it may not work until you post at least 3 messages (it seems to be restricted to discourage spambots). Tell me if that helps, and I'll take it from there.

[Arnaud]

deleted

[Serpent]

For me it's displayed on the profile page below things like birthday, twitter, skype etc

[aokoye]

I'm post this in part so I can reach the 3 message threshold, but is there a way to not have a threshold in terms of being able to edit one's profile? I haven't played an admin role in a phpBB forum and I haven't read the documentation so I'm not sure that that's possible. If the threshold for editing was something that was enabled I have to wonder what the reasoning was. Note that I think the, "three posts before you can PM someone", makes total sense, just not the inability to edit your profile.

[rdearman]

It is actually three posts to move from newly registered to standard user.

[emk]

As I understand it, the problem is that spam bots will sign up, immediately fill in their profile fields with handbag ads (HTHAL got a lot of handbag spam, for some reason), and then post to the forum. Apparently, putting URLs in profile fields allows spambots to bypass the restrictions which prevent new users from posting links. But if you require people to post a few times before enabling all the board features, it helps discourage the spambots. Or so the PHPbb documentation seems to suggest.

HTLAL had something like hundreds of new spam accounts per day, and moderators needed to approve each account by hand. And the spammers still slipped through sometimes.

[rdearman]

As I understand it, the problem is that spam bots will sign up, immediately fill in their profile fields with handbag ads (HTHAL got a lot of handbag spam, for some reason), and then post to the forum. Apparently, putting URLs in profile fields allows spambots to bypass the restrictions which prevent new users from posting links. But if you require people to post a few times before enabling all the board features, it helps discourage the spambots. Or so the PHPbb documentation seems to suggest.

HTLAL had something like hundreds of new spam accounts per day, and moderators needed to approve each account by hand. And the spammers still slipped through sometimes.

Wow! I had no idea. Been very lucky with phpBB then. And I was annoyed that some of them got through the recaptha.

[Luso]

I don't like making new threads unless completely necessary.

Given the subject of this one, I thought I might add my question here.

Which is: what about flags?

Some other fora use them, and not only language-related ones. Usually people love having the flag of their own country in their profile. Not mandatory, of course.

Instead of having the name of the language, we could have a flag. The level of recognition is very high and, in the remaining cases, it usually suffices to hover over (!) the flag to have the name of the country or of the language (I remember seeing that somewhere). It can even be pedagogic.

Another plus would be having a bit of "fine tuning": Union Jack versus Stars and Stripes, Portuguese versus Brazilian, Arab League (for MSA) versus Egyptian, and so on.

I'd just like to add that I used this visual aid twice in HTLAL (as TAC Rare Team leader) and it seems to have worked very well. Of course, it also meant many hours searching for a flag to represent Hawaiian or Karelian (maybe we don't need that kind of detail here, anyway). "Fun with flags", if you wish.

I know it could mean a bit of work (I speak from experience), but I can't really assess its technical feasibility.

What do you think?

[daegga]

You can use bb-code in your signature to include an image (it would need to be activated).

[Luso]

It sounds interesting, but what to do about countries that are officially bilingual, trilingual, etc.?

I would be practical:

The nation flags are what they are: if you are from a given country and think your province, village, or street should be independent, it's too bad. As we usually say in Portuguese, "temos pena".

As for languages, I don't pretend to have 7 000 flags, or whatever the number is. If you look at the Team Rare threads, you'll see that I used the Indian flag for a few languages. No one ever complained.

If you still are not satisfied, visit Interpals (a penpal site I'm a member of) or Unilang (a language learning site I'm not a member of) and check.

I don't mind having my idea rejected (I only had it a few hours ago anyway), but I'd rather not see it happen on the grounds of a few exceptions. Let's look at the big picture.

N.B.: Underlying my idea is the use of a) one country flag, and b) any number of language flags. Sorry if that was not clear.