It is a reasonable objection that this works even more poorly than normal when user content is mislabelled as the wrong language, which is the case here on Discourse (lang="en-US").
So this is just an experiment to see if <span lang="..."></span> is accepted by Discourse:
Was macht der Übersetzer von Google, wenn behauptet wird, dass der Text auf Englisch ist?
(What does Google translate do, when the text claims to be in English?)
Was macht der Übersetzer von Google, wenn ihm die Tatsache klar ist, dass der Text doch auf Deutsch ist?
(What does Google translate do, when it is made clear that the text is actually in German?)
I appreciate this important topic of community stewardship being brought up in this thread.
The Core team stands by the principles that we want the Swift community to be an open and inclusive community. That includes supporting users who may have different preferences in choice of language for discussion. As such, the Core team feels it is appropriate for users to be able to use whatever language they choose for discussion.
This comes with some considerations:
Members of the Core team will need to rely on community members to monitor and escalate cases of poor conduct on the forums, especially for posts written in a language members of the Core team lack fluency. Once such cases are brought to the attention of the Core team, there are various ways to translate posts and evaluate the concerns raised about a post, and if necessary, take action. This isn't really any different from the status quo today, as Core team members do not have the capacity to read every single post.
As a matter of courtesy, it feels reasonable that responses to a post should be in the same language as the original post, with the option of providing additional text in a different language. Changing the language in a response from that of the original post can become a form of exclusion in the discussion, particularly to the author of the original post.
I will update Swift.org with this clarification of policy.
It definitely was your stated preference (“Please keep this forum monolingual” is not at all ambiguously worded), and I really don't appreciate being repeatedly accused of quoting you out of context in this thread, implying that I was deliberately misleading people. If you didn't mean what you wrote then you have misspoken.
I don't find it particularly useful to have a conversation unless the purpose is dialogue.
I understand that you misunderstood my views, and whether that's an encoding or decoding error, is besides the point. It's fine that misunderstandings happen. But unless the purpose is mutual understanding and dialogue, I don't think there's any reason to continue this conversation.
I feel that I have repeatedly stated my point of view, and it should be clear by now. It should be clear that I was speaking of the linked thread, and if it wasn't clear from the beginning, it ought to be clear by now. If not, there's not much more I can say.