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Welcome to the Judaism community on Codidact!

Will you help us build our community of learners? Drop into our study hall, ask questions, help others with answers to their questions, share a d'var torah if you're so inclined, invite your friends, and join us in building this community together. Not an ask-the-rabbi service, just people at all levels learning together.

What language(s) should we use for tags?

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Here on Codidact tag names can include Hebrew. In the interest of inclusivity I created a bilingual tag for a question I just asked (and asked someone else to do the same). Questions we import from Mi Yodeya will of course come with only English tag names. And not everybody who asks a question is proficient enough in Hebrew to find or correctly spell the Hebrew word. Before we get too far in, let's figure out how we really want to handle tags.

Should we have bilingual tags? Or should we have synonyms, so whether you type the Hebrew or the English you'll end up in the right place? If we have synonyms, which should be the master (the one that's displayed on the question)? Arguments for Hebrew include authenticity and avoiding the issues of different transliteration schemes. Arguments for English are a lower barrier to entry and that the site is in English otherwise.

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As an outsider, I would really suggest to have English tags be the primary, or at the very least available and discoverable.

Whether it's better to solve that by having bilingual tag names, or by having tag synonyms (one in English and one in Hebrew), or by only using English for tag names, is something I'm not really qualified to have an informed opinion about.

On top of the issues already raised in the question, actually using tags named in Hebrew to any significant degree seems to me to pretty much require access to a Hebrew input method when posting a question, as well as having at least rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew. While that may be reasonable for in-depth questions about details of texts, which will probably quote portions of those texts anyway, I'm not sure that it would be a reasonable requirement to place on every person who wants to ask any question on the site. There's also the (arguably solvable) issue of how those input methods interact with the rest of the site's functionality.

Keep in mind that there are likely to be two major categories of users for a site about a religion (any religion): one, those who subscribe to that religion; two, those who are interested in that religion but don't subscribe to it themselves. Please think hard before making, for example, someone who is working on a school project about judaism and want to clarify something, learn Hebrew just to ask their question.

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Having tags in English is important not just for non-Jews but also for Jews who don't read Hebrew well (or at all). But having Hebrew most definitely adds a nice flavor to the site.

My recommendation is to have all tags be either English-only or English+Hebrew in a consistent format. For example, always put Hebrew on the left or on the right (pick one and stick with it). For many tags Hebrew really doesn't add much, but where there is a simple match (like the Sefer Torah example) it is nice.

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