My main suggestion is to rigorously rethink and rework the language packs approach and the current phrase system, because its hurting international and non-English communities the way it is now.
I'll explain why I suggest such a radical thing:
- It can take an addon developer a lot of time to simply search and replace each instance of the same word throughout the phrases system. Simple tasks are complex and time consuming here. The interface could be improved a lot to cater to developers.
- After 5 years of xenforo there are quite a few languages for which there barely are any good language packs around. Not many people want to translate a whole pack with thousands of phrases. It's a monks task, so we should be happy to have any language pack.
- Translations should not rely on webmasters. End users should do it. That would be a game changer.
- Please consider translations of user generated content. Not just interface phrases. Its not possible to offer a translation of a resource or a page. This same problem extrapolates to addons.
- It should not be the case that only parts of XF can be translated.
- Google will index all forums as the same language and therefore multilingual forums hardly gain any traction.
- Users will always see all forums, even if the forums are in a language they can't read.
- Users should be able to search in their language.
- XF should consider the language that a browser defines.
Translations does not equal localization. The latter is what international communities need. XF offers only partial translations not comprehensive localization.
Phenomenon like Reddit, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc are successful at the expense of our communities, in part because they offer an experience tailored to users in all countries and languages. We have the handicap that we cannot offer this.
