On: Ask HN: Why are all non-English submissions flagged?

[leoedin]

Back when I ran a fairly large forum we had to ban non-English content simply because we couldn't understand it, and so couldn't moderate it.

I'm guessing that's a big part of it - How do the HN moderators distinguish the credibility of a non-English news source? How can they determine if it's flame bait? How can they determine if it's legal or not?

[eesmith → leoedin]

If I see a submission in a foreign language, I'll paste it into Google Translate and flag if obviously off-topic.

Most of the non-English links I've checked are obviously off-topic, like "how to find a dentist in <city>".