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As per the meta discussion How do I deal with non-English questions?, the correct flag to raise when a question is in another language other than English is "Unclear what you are asking." The reasoning behind that is sound and works great.

However, the flag dialog doesn't actually say anything about that circumstance:

Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

My feature request is for the wording on the Unclear what you are asking flag to be modified so that it's obvious that this is the flag that should be used for non-english questions too. Something like:

As your question is currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you are asking. Please clarify your specific problem in clear English or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

I don't quite like this version I've written because it sounds like I'm saying it's still fine if you didn't write the question in English as long as you add additional details in the incorrect language, so I welcome any word-smithing attempts to help make this better. The goal is to find a way to write the flag that helps community members know that this is the correct flag to use for other language questions.

Alternatively or additionally, that meta post could be linked to or the content explained in the FAQ Guide to flagging so that it is easier to find, that way if someone looks at the flagging guidance, they can find out that non-English questions should be flagged "Unclear what you are asking."


Why I believe this change would be useful:

As it stands, a user wanting to flag a question posted in another language has to have been able to find that meta post in order to know that it is the correct flag. Let's take for example a user who clicks on the new questions list and sees the following question posted in Spanish. Since I'm making up a hypothetical situation, let's also say that this user can read Spanish, and that the question in Spanish is well asked (clear, concise, useful... but in Spanish).

The user sees the question, then, recognizing that Stack Overflow is for English only, opens the flag dialog to mark the question, and starting from the top, thinks:

Well, this question isn't spam.

It's not rude or abusive either.

It should be closed as off topic, let's see what options are here...

Nope, not a duplicate.

Off topic because...

Well, it's not a problem about general computing hardware or software, nor professional server administration, nor a recommendation question, an incomplete debugging question, an irreproducible issue... no none of these fit. And it definitely has to do with programming.

Belongs on another site in the network? Maybe, but Stack Overflow en Español isn't a migration option. So let's go back to the previous menu.

Unclear what you are asking? Well, it seems pretty clear to me, it's just not in English. (This is the kind of thought I want to be cleared up by changing the flag text. I want users to be able to read right there in the text that this is the flag to use for non-English questions)

Too broad? No, it's definitely specific enough.

It's not opinion based either, so let's go back to the previous menu.

Still not a duplicate.

Maybe it's very low quality? Being in another language is a severe content problem, but I'm not sure.

The user gets to this point in the flags, still not knowing which to use. At this point he or she might make one of several decisions. The user might flag as very low quality (which we don't want happening), the user might flag for moderator attention explaining that the question is in another language and thus should be closed (which will rightly be declined with the "Using standard flags helps us prioritize problems and resolve them faster. Please familiarize yourself with the list of standard flags: see What is Flagging?" message), the user might read What is Flagging only to discover that there's no mention of what to do for non-English questions and be stuck with this same decision, the user might just give up on flagging and post a comment for the user suggesting they delete and repost on the Spanish Stack Overflow site, or, if we're really lucky, the user will search until they find the meta post telling them that they should use the Unclear what you are Asking flag after all.

A different case could be a user who understands the language and sees that it is a bad question for a specific reason because the question if written the same in English would be subject to flagging, such as too broad, or asking for a recommendation, and raises that flag. This isn't exactly bad since they will lead to the question being closed, but these aren't the correct flag to use. Again, editing the flag dialog to let users know that "Unclear what you are asking" is the flag to use would be helpful.

Other circumstances where the user might be confused as to which flag to use for a non-English question is a user who does not understand the language written, but when reading the text on the "Unclear what you are asking" flag, doesn't know if it should be used or not because of the following reasoning (similar to that of the first two): I don't know if this question is written unclearly in the other language. It's unclear to me because I don't know this language, but it could be clear to someone who does, just like if there's a question about Ruby on Rails and it's unclear to me because I don't know Ruby on Rails, but it would be clear to someone who does, so maybe "Unclear what you are asking" isn't the right flag.

These are three cases where users might be confused and thus raise the wrong flags (in the best cases, they raise different recommended closure flags, in the worst cases they raise VLQ or moderator flags or just don't flag at all). Updating the text on the "Unclear what you are asking" flag to make it a clear catch-all for other language questions would help remove any of this potential confusion.

Some evidence that people need this to be explicit, even after the FAQ was posted in June 2015:

How should I report question or answer posted using different language?, a question from December 2015.

Is downvoting question purely written in foreign language acceptable?, a question confused about what to do for non-English questions in January 2016.

“Requires editing” wrong for a foreign language?, March 2016.

The posts which are not in English?, November 2017. (This person also raised a moderator flag, just like the situation I mentioned above).

When should I flag as “in need of moderator intervention”?, January 2018. (Actually closed as a duplicate of this very question).

Does Stack Overflow follow multiple languages?, April 2018

Should non-English questions be marked for deletion or editing?, June 2018

All of these preceding questions step from the simple issue that it is not obvious that using the "Unclear what you are Asking" flag is the proper course of action when a question is not in English.


Even now, August 7th 2018, somebody posted a question out of confusion after having raised a moderator flag because the definition on Unclear what you are asking wasn't obvious enough for them: What is the correct flag for a non-English answer?

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  • I see no real need to emphasize the "English speaker" part. "¿Donde es el bibliotéca?" ➡️ "Unclear what you are asking". And I am no English speaker (not, presumably, without at least a vary havvy akzent). – usr2564301 Jan 6 '18 at 18:12
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    "¿Donde es el bibliotéca?" ➡️ "Off topic -- This question has nothing to do with programming." There are appropriate reasons for such questions, that's why making the description on Unclear what you are Asking as a catch-all for other language questions would make sense, so that there's no question about which flag to raise. – Davy M Jan 6 '18 at 18:13
  • So it is clear to you what it asks? Not to me. – usr2564301 Jan 6 '18 at 18:14
  • Like I mentioned, any question in English of a programming language that I am not familiar with, will not be clear to me what it asks, but to someone else it will. So the general question "So is it clear to you what it asks? Not to me." Isn't a good way to judge the "Unclear what you are asking." flag. That's why I'd like to see the description edited in some way to show that other written language questions should be flagged as that, just as the Meta question suggests. – Davy M Jan 6 '18 at 18:18
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    "¿Donde es el bibliotéca?" ➡️ "Off topic -- This question has nothing to do with programming But you don't know whether that has nothing to do with programming unless you can understand it. You can't assume the close voters who see your flag will also understand what it says. – BSMP Jan 7 '18 at 22:45
  • @BSMP I am in agreement with the idea of marking all questions that are not in English as "Unclear what you are asking" for that very reason, that's not up for debate -- I just think the description for that flag should be edited to explcitly include all non-english questions so that there's no question about which flag to raise when a user sees the question and sees the flag descriptions. A small edit to the flag's description will avoid the confusion you and usr2564301 have mentioned that people flagging questions might reach. – Davy M Jan 7 '18 at 23:10
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The close message is fine as it is: short and intentionally covering broad range of reasons. There are a lot of things can be added, but every extra word makes it less likely to be read and reasonably understood, plus it may open more unnecessary discussions on whether it applies.

To address your particular concern about "I don't know technology X and hence post is unclear for me":

  • first of all you should not be voting on posts where you know you don't have enough expertise. Note that the barrier is very low - we need new users of given technology to be able to judge if question matches they problem and comprehend an answer. I'd say "I know C uses curly braces" is almost enough to judge C questions :).
  • additionally it is very rare for question to be on-topic and completely incomprehensible for all but top experts in a particular field. And even less likely such question to have unreadable text.
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Closing (deleting) the post would be only fair if community migration would be possible between the SO sites of different languages. Closing/deleting a content what could be useful on a different SE site is evil to the OP, and an irrational self-mutilation of the site network.

I think the best to do:

  1. using the google translate to translate the content to English
  2. tuning that English as we can
  3. advice the OP in a comment (either on English or in his language, using the google translate again)

I think the voting the post silently down, and then go away is highly suboptimal in this case. These posts are absolutely not so common to not deserve this little attention.

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    One reasoning not to translate the question because when they receive the answers, OP still needs to translate them manually and some explanations may be lost in translation, which make the answer unclear for OP. – Andrew T. Jan 8 '18 at 5:15
  • @AndrewT. Only bad English is not a reason to close the question, and that the OP maybe won't understand the answers is not a reason to close, too. Btw, understanding an English answer is much easier as to formulate an English question. – peterh - Reinstate Monica Jan 8 '18 at 5:18
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    If the user knows enough English to understand the answer, then the user should use Google Translate in the first place to get his or her post into English. We can then tune their English through edits to improve it, but the burden is on the OP, not the Community, to make sure that the questions are in English. – Davy M Jan 8 '18 at 15:27
  • @DavyM No, because he can write on a different language on a lot of other reasons, too. For example: he found a Spanish SO content with google, he doesn't know that the Spanish and the English SO are entirely different sites with different databases, but he thinks we can ask here on any languages. The fair way would be to move his Spanish question to the Spanish SO, it could be done without any problem, but it is impossible on unclear reasons. Thus, the translation is the workaround for it. – peterh - Reinstate Monica Jan 8 '18 at 20:09

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