why do i get answers in a different language

Question

Why when I ask a question and check to see if it has been asked do I get the answers in what I think is norwegian? I only speak/read English. 

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Comments

What question did you ask that caused that result?

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" can i post a photo i found " Is what I asked minus the quotes. But it doesn't matter what I ask. 

can you use a photo you found at a thrift shop

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The reason it matters is that someone might be able to tell you more precisely why you got the answers you have asked about.

I don't find that question among the list of questions linked to your G2G profile.  Did you get any useful answers?

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I never asked the question. This happens when I am searching for previously asked questions.

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Right.  I see now.  Sorry I misunderstood.  Sorry also that I can't explain the reason!

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Leif seems to have the answer below.  If you want an answer from WT itself, I suggest you add the "bugs" tag to your question.

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Thanks Julie. I added bugs. I decided to ask this today, because it is frustrating and I usually end up trying to find it some other way with poor results and not asking the question. Maybe others are having the same problem.

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You're welcome.  I'm still interested in your question!  Did you find a photo in a thrift shop?  Could you identify the subject?  Did it have any photographer's name on it?

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Someone I know did. The photo is very nice, from 1912. Father & son. Has a good history on the family. Who the photo was sent to. Before offering to put the family on WT I wanted to know if I can use the photo w/ credit to the finder. She did not mention the photographer but I will ask. I also want to encourage her to join WT, as she finds a lot of photos and seems to do good research. Her intention is to find the family and return the original photos and putting on WT might help with that. I did ask the question in a new post so hope to get answers. Fingers crossed!

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https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1365567/photo-found-thrift-recovered-other-profile-permission-finder

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I've seen it happen, too.

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Thanks, Herb.  I hadn't seen that.

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@Herb: I knew that I'd seen your thread about the same issue. I even repeated some of Jamie's words in my reply, about "a" being heavily weighted.

I didn't even try to search for it, though, for the obvious reason that the search engine on this forum is seriously dysfunctional.

Answer 1

You may have used the letter Å/å in your question. This letter seems to be heavily weighted in the search results. It's possibly a fluke that should be ironed out.

WikiTree is an international project, and not everyone involved is fluent in English. Questions and answers in any language should be expected and accepted. And the search engine can of course not know if you don't speak Norwegian

Comments

Interesting idea, Leif.  Based on the clarifications in comments above, do you know what else could be the problem?

I have some vague recollection of the same thing happening to me.

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It's probably the single-letter article "a" that's causing the weird search result. It seems like diacritical letters are "flattened" into the plain English 26-letter alphabet. Normally common small words like "a", "the", "or", "and", etc. are filtered out by search algorithms, but the letter Å is a special case that's like a monkey wrench thrown into the search engine.

It's obviously a bug in the forum software.

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So maybe using 'a' is causing this? Interesting. I have also asked things in the past that got back French I think. Also a language I don't speak. Thanks

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Generally it's a good idea to drop the small common words (called "stop words" in search engine language) and only go for the longer, significant ones in searches. You'd probably get more relevant answers by shortening your query to "post photo found".

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Good to know!  I'd never thought of that.  Maybe it should be on the G2G Help page.

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Yep, if you use "a" in your question it causes this issue.

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Jamie, could there be a pop-up warning when the question is entered?

Answer 2

Probably because it's a worldwide tree?