I think, I was the reason that this discussion started because out of ignorance I caused the flag problem that had to be fixed manually by Denis.

I tried to direct-link a sentence by creating an already existing sentence (that only had an indirect link) for a second time in order to change the link from being indirect to being direct. I was told this is the best way of doing it if you don’t have AC permission to do linking with the official linker tool.

Because I recently removed my language information from my profile I only got the options ‚English‘ or ‚Other language‘ when trying to submit the new sentence.

I chose ‚Other language‘ because I was told that the bot would automatically detect and correct everything to eventually be left with one correct version and a direct link.

But all I achieved was the appearance of a flag with a question mark that was stuck and couldn’t be changed anymore.

Maybe this is a bug in the UI or a use case that the UI is not prepared for?

> In your point of view, it looks like the knowledge of a language is the only way one can accurately change someone else’s sentence flag. I disagree. I’d trust any corpus maintainer to change any sentence flag because they are all responsible and trustworthy.

I agree with Gillux.

If there are corpus maintainers that you feel are not responsible and trustworthy then they should be changed back to advanced contributors.

I trust corpus maintainers for doing everything with their best intention but I don't think it's reasonable to expect every one of them to be equally competent for every task that corpus maintainers can perform.

For me this is about separation of responsibilities and about transparency. This is about how do we organize ourselves in the best possible way and how to make the features of Tatoeba reflect better this organization.

I know that in many cases it is possible for a corpus maintainer who has no tangible knowledge in a certain language to fix an error in sentence in that language. This includes: setting the correct flag, fixing the punctuation and even fixing very basic mistakes. But in my opinion, if you have the chance to involve another corpus maintainer who has more experience with the language than you have, this should be your default course of action (even if what you need to fix feels obvious to you). And if that is your default course of action, then you don't really need the full list of languages by default.

It doesn't mean you are completely forbidden from making interventions in other languages. If there's a special situation, you can always add the language to your profile at any time, with a low level or unspecified level. Since these situations are supposed to be exceptions, the fact that you have to take these extra steps shouldn't be too much to ask.

I can understand that it's not practical because you may end up with unwanted languages showing up in the dropdown list when adding/translating sentences. But then it's a different problem.

Besides, if you're dealing with a language which seemingly has no corpus maintainer and, as a result, you get in touch with native speakers or/and do some research on the language, then it would be helpful for the community to know it from your profile. The next time there's maintenance to do on other sentences in that language, people could reach out to you and benefit from your past experience instead of asking assistance from a random corpus maintainer.

This doesn't really belong here - a situation that I often witnessed:
Somebody writes a comment such as "Flag", "Change flag", "Not French!", "French!".
A corpus maintainer comes by and changes the flag.
The owner of the sentence reads the comment and goes "Huh? What?"

A possible solution would be to keep a log for changing flags. Don't know if it's worth it.

> You see, sometimes appearances are simply deceiving...

Did I say something about your knowledge in languages other than the one listed in your profile? No, because I have no way to judge that.
Did I imply that your comment was Western European-biased? Yes, because it was.
Did I say that you have no knowledge in Japanese? Yes, because if you'd knew "one thing or two" in Japanese, you wouldn't make such the following statement.
> Either the source sentence has a local prepositional complement or not.

So, even if I agree with you that appearances are sometimes deceiving, I think that in this case, they're far from being deceiving.

Now, for the second part of your comment, which is only here to provoke and is near the zero-level of argumentation, it amused me, so I will answer.
- First of all, to belittle yourself so others will take your side only works in school yard or political debate. You're not a sheep. Nobody says you're a sheep. And nobody criticized your right to criticize.
- You're talking things that have nothing to do with my comment, about the feature and how I was hurt, but again it doesn't work. If you have nothing to oppose to a comment, don't get lost in argumentation about unrelated topics. If you're debating alone, it's an ok-strategy but if somebody answers you, that's a loss of credit.
- I think one is free to consider who their friends are. You should read what I wrote again because I don't think I said that people who don't agree are not my friend, but more something like "my friends here", period. Again, you're arguing on a statement that you wrongly extrapolated from a simple one. It doesn't work.

If we were in speech class, I would conclude by saying that your argumentation is a very good approach if you're giving a speech to a mass audience, but a very risky one if you're arguing with someone, because it relies more on extrapolation than solid ground. If you want to lead a discussion, you have to answer or counter-attack with solid, logical counter-argument(s) that destabilize the opponent part.

Nevertheless, thanks for keeping on giving feedback on your experience on Tatoeba. Much appreciated.

Jos ymmärrän argumenttisi oikein, niin koet Tatoeban käyttöliittymän antavan olettaa, että se sisältäisi kaikki mahdolliset suorat ja epäsuorat linkit lauseiden välillä.

Tämä ei nykyään ole tilanne ja tuskin kukaan Tatoebaan lauseita lisäävä henkilö olettaa tämän olevan totta. Syitä on muutamia:

1. Kuten aiemmin mainittu, ja kuten sinäkin mainitset, käyttöliittymä tekee tämän vaikeaksi.

2. Jotta henkilö voisi lisätä linkin kahden lauseen välille, tulee hänen osata näitä molempia kieliä riittävän hyvin. Jos palvelua ei käytä kukaan, joka osaa vaikkapa sekä viroa että italiaa, ei näiden kahden kielen välisiä lauseita tule kukaan linkittäneeksi suoraan. Lisäksi kaikki käyttäjät eivät saa linkitettyä lauseita helposti.

3. Käyttäjät ovat erimielisiä siitä, millaiset lauseet tulee linkittää toisiinsa. Esimerkiksi jotkut linkittävät lauseet kuten ”Hei.” ja ”Hei!” toisiinsa, toiset eivät.

Muitakin esteitä saattaa olla.

Näistä esteistä 2 lienee väistämätön. Emme halua ihmiset linkittävän lauseita, jos he eivät ymmärrä niitä molempia riittävän hyvin.

Estettä 3 voi madaltaa keskustelemalla siitä, millaiset lauseet tulee linkittää toisiinsa ja mitä ei.

Estettä 1 voisi madaltaa käyttöliittymää muuttamalla.

Olen melko varma, että konkreettiset ehdotukset ja työpanokset näiden esteiden poistamiseksi otetaan ilolla vastaan.

Okay, let's consider this set of sentences:

[JPN] 当店にはいろいろな種類の本がございます。(#123970)
[SPA] En esta tienda tenemos una gran variedad de libros. (#8764247)
[ENG] In this store, we have a wide variety of books. (#8768755)

If I understand correctly, your problem is that [ENG] is shown as an *indirect* translation of [JPN]. You think that if [SPA] is a direct translation of [JPN], then [ENG] should be a direct translation of [JPN] as well.

Assuming someone who speaks both English and Japanese agrees with that, then we have two ways to solve this inaccuracy:
1) An advanced contributor has to link [ENG] to [JPN].
2) A regular contributor has to add a translation to [JPN] that is the exact same text as [ENG].

In both cases, [ENG] will become a direct translation of [JPN].

The inaccuracy that you've seen everywhere is the result of another rule: if A is translated into B and B is translated into C, C is not necessarily a valid translation of A. A human has to confirm that A and C are equivalent.

In our set of sentences, what happened was:
- [JPN] was translated into [SPA].
- [SPA] was translated into [ENG].

By the rule I just mentioned, we cannot automatically assume that [ENG] is a translation of [JPN]. We have to wait until someone explicitly makes these two sentences translations of each other.

If you are very confident that [ENG] is a valid translation of [JPN], then go ahead and add it as a translation.