Tagging Shared Decks to Identify Native Language, in AnkiWeb

Anki Suggestions
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For example, if a native Japanese Anki user tries to search for shared decks created by native Japanese, the output will be Japanese learning decks for native English speakers.

Beginner Anki users are basically English learners, so they virtually cannot use AnkiWeb’s search function. (Perhaps Anki users who are speakers of other languages have the same problem.)
For now, the solution to this problem is to manually search for and list the shared decks.

So I think it would be useful to have a tag function to distinguish the native language that the shared decks correspond to.
(For example, “for native English speakers”, “for Japanese”, “for Germans”, “for Chinese”, etc.)

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A couple of potential problems:

  • All the existing decks will lack such a tag, making them invisible to such searches
  • Getting deck authors to consistently add the tag when exporting may be tough unless we make it a required entry
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  • I think there is no need to worry about them invisible in search, most of the existing shared decks are not searchable so they are invisible already.
  • There is probably no way to search for decks available to non native English speaking Anki users at once, other than tags. The number of Anki users is increasing every year, so this could be useful in the future.
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I often see native English speakers killing the rating of decks that are designed for other languages.

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If I don’t find something, I make the search more inaccurate. It will be enough to make a hint that if you can’t find something, use fewer tags.
Decks in my native language can be found in many places besides the anki site itself.

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I thought it might be enough to just add a hint like this instead of the tag.

“If you include in the title which native speaker it is for, it will make it easier for them to find your deck. for native English speakers, Für Muttersprachler Deutsch, Pour les locuteurs natifs français, etc.”

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If there are 58 decks(Actually they are much more) for English learners, the search results would look something like this.

  • English learners search “英語” (English) → 16/58
  • Search “英単語”(English words) → 10/58
  • Search “TOEIC” → mixed with other languages
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I appreciate the problem this suggestion is trying to solve, but there are a few more issues that would make this problematic at the moment:

  • An informal suggestion to deck authors is the easiest solution to implement, but it may result in different authors using different language descriptions (“en”, “en-US”, “English”, “British English”, etc)
  • If we make “native language” a required field, there are similar problems with consistency. If we let deck authors type something in, then it could differ. If we give them a drop-down choice, the list of languages needs to be maintained, and you will people requesting new/obscure languages are added.
  • AnkiWeb’s search function currently can’t search for multiple terms at once. So users can’t combine “English” with another search.
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Hmm, seems to be more difficult than I thought :-/
I expect future updates.