International Content Sorting on Steemit Website

Problem: Steemit has diverse group of content creators and users. And few among them usually make use of the local language in their posts or videos across platforms that are under steem blockchain.

For example, If there are large percent of chinese users posting content in their language, the feed on home page in trending, new and content gets affected. And for those users who can't understand specific language tend to get lot of voted content of different language in the feed.

This creates two problem for the users.

1. Users who are posting their content in local language end up getting featured in the feed of users who don't understand this language.
2. Users who are reading the feed end up getting the most non-English content tempting them to unfollow that specific user or block, if the content appears regularly.

Solution

This problem can be solved in multiple ways. Here's one fix for this problem that may help solve the content sorting.

In post editor, developers can add checkbox for "foreign language". If this checkbox is chcked by the user and when user makes the post, that post needs to be seen by users who wish to read the foreign language content.

Also another option can be made in steemit settings that whether one wants to read "English only content" option. If this checkbox is checked the algorithm should limit the English only posts. Another checkbox can be selected if one wants to include foreign language content.

This is simple solution for a complex problem. Considering there are plenty of languages which are harder to filter on case by case basis. This solution can be extended on the steemit settings side. Here users can select "English" and multiple native languages to read the content.

Feature Development

My limits on the coding side prevents me from contributing code on this set of the problem. So feature development with code is not discussed in this feature suggestion post.

The issue of content clutter in feed may happen if i18n sorting is not handled. This problem can be handled by making users consciously choose the type of content they wish to see. And it also gives people option to discover content in a language they understand. This can reduce a lot of flagging of content people don't understand. It can also bring people closer in specific language.