Language filter

Ideas to improve Criticker and new feature requests, as well as announcements about new enhancements.
mpowell
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Re: Language filter

Post by mpowell »

Yes, this is definitely in the plans! As always, I can't estimate when we'll be done, but a language filter is something we've wanted to get to for a long time.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Language filter

Post by CosmicMonkey »

I was just about start a new topic requesting this same thing.

mwgerb
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Re: Language filter

Post by mwgerb »

Oh this would be great. I can usually approximate it by choosing the country, but I always like seeing how many non-English films I've watched.

BadCosmonaut
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Re: Language filter

Post by BadCosmonaut »

I was going to start a topic on this, but I remembered this thread plus 2 others (here and here).

I think a language filter is strongly needed, almost as much as a negative filter for genre and country.

But if a language filter is added, it should not be added with the goal to list every language that is used in a movie. Instead, it should list just the predominant language for the movie. For example, The Godfather would just have English as the language. It wouldn't also have Italian. The Deer Hunter would be English, not English and Vietnamese.

Basically, 99.9%+ of movies should have only 1 language listed. It should be very rare where more than 1 listed language is needed. I can't think of any examples where more than 1 language should be listed. The only kind of movie I can think of in the abstract is one where it has no predominant language, but instead has 2 or more languages each used for less than 50% of the dialogue. I don't want to draw a hard line in the sand about when more than one language should be listed, because I think a hard line isn't needed. When someone watches a movie it's obvious which "one language" should be listed.

To list more than one language for too many movies recreates the problem discussed in the "Name that country" thread linked above. Language creep could very easily make the filter misleading, almost useless, or completely useless. And I would argue that the purpose of a language filter should not be accuracy (of all or most of the languages used in a movie) but rather the purpose should be to list the predominant language. If the common audience member had to pick just 1 language to list for a movie, which language would it be? That's the only language that should be listed for almost all movies. Adding others defeats the purpose while adding little to no benefit.

Basically, please don't let more than 1 language be added without admin approval and without justification as to why more than 1 is needed.

Also, if a language filter is added, then it needs to also be a negative filter.

mpowell
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Re: Language filter

Post by mpowell »

We agree with basically everything you've written here. A language filter is one of our top priorities... and we've given thought to making it a "primary language" field. That is, only one language per film. There'd be a couple films which would have a hard time with that, but it would make things better for the other 99%.

5Z5qjRCfM2
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Re: Language filter

Post by 5Z5qjRCfM2 »

I would like this feature very much. Useful for language learning, as well.

BadCosmonaut
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Re: Language filter

Post by BadCosmonaut »

BadCosmonaut wrote:
Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:30 pm
I was going to start a topic on this, but I remembered this thread plus 2 others (here and here).

I think a language filter is strongly needed, almost as much as a negative filter for genre and country.

But if a language filter is added, it should not be added with the goal to list every language that is used in a movie. Instead, it should list just the predominant language for the movie. For example, The Godfather would just have English as the language. It wouldn't also have Italian. The Deer Hunter would be English, not English and Vietnamese.

Basically, 99.9%+ of movies should have only 1 language listed. It should be very rare where more than 1 listed language is needed. I can't think of any examples where more than 1 language should be listed. The only kind of movie I can think of in the abstract is one where it has no predominant language, but instead has 2 or more languages each used for less than 50% of the dialogue. I don't want to draw a hard line in the sand about when more than one language should be listed, because I think a hard line isn't needed. When someone watches a movie it's obvious which "one language" should be listed.

To list more than one language for too many movies recreates the problem discussed in the "Name that country" thread linked above. Language creep could very easily make the filter misleading, almost useless, or completely useless. And I would argue that the purpose of a language filter should not be accuracy (of all or most of the languages used in a movie) but rather the purpose should be to list the predominant language. If the common audience member had to pick just 1 language to list for a movie, which language would it be? That's the only language that should be listed for almost all movies. Adding others defeats the purpose while adding little to no benefit.

Basically, please don't let more than 1 language be added without admin approval and without justification as to why more than 1 is needed.

Also, if a language filter is added, then it needs to also be a negative filter.
mpowell wrote:
Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:46 am
We agree with basically everything you've written here. A language filter is one of our top priorities... and we've given thought to making it a "primary language" field. That is, only one language per film. There'd be a couple films which would have a hard time with that, but it would make things better for the other 99%.
On the new page design, it seems a language field has been added to each film, but the way it's been implemented is that more than one language can be added. For example:
Was this intentional? Are you still planning to implement a one language restriction per film? If not, then it's the "Name that country" problem all over again for the language field.

My suggestion would be to keep the language field but to delete the current language metadata for all films in the database. Then set a restriction to allow just one language per film. Then let users add a language to each film page just like how we can add other types of info like more actors. If there's a film out there that truly deserves to be multi language, then require the user to use the "Help us fix up incorrect or missing information" button and argue the claim. Even then I'm not sure how many films would deserve to have more than one listed. I can't think of any off the top of my head. See my above post for the reasoning.

(Another relevant thread in addition to the two I linked in my quoted post.)

mpowell
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Re: Language filter

Post by mpowell »

BadCosmonaut wrote:
Fri Jul 21, 2023 4:35 pm
Was this intentional? Are you still planning to implement a one language restriction per film? If not, then it's the "Name that country" problem all over again for the language field.
This was intentional, but we've also built in a way to indicate the "Primary" language of a title. We thought this would be the best way to go about doing it, as you're right that almost always, that's the thing people are concerned about. If a title is 90% in German, but has a few lines in Italian, that's not going to be of interest to people looking for Italian-language movies.

Allowing users to select (or order) those languages is something we still have yet to implement, but which is on our list. Same with just looking for films whose "primary" language is Spanish, versus any film that has Spanish in it. Both can be useful, but they are certainly not the same.

BadCosmonaut
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Re: Language filter

Post by BadCosmonaut »

Sounds good then. Having more than one language is fine as long as it's possible to select a primary language for each film and as long as it's possible to search/filter for the primary language in the database.

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