How can we encourage M.Y. contributors to translate sources and technical terms

Question

When I post a question, comment or answer, I try to use "simplified" English terminology as often as I can. There are times when I am lazy or forget, admittedly, but, I believe that's a minority, in my case.

I am aware that this site caters to a wide variety of contributors, many who don't understand Hebrew, Aramaic, yeshivish, Yiddish, etc. And, there are a number of non-Jewish contributors as well (I'd be curious if someone knows approx. what percentage this is.)

Is there some way that we can encourage people to translate quotes or technical words into English as much as they can? My Hebrew is quite good, but I am disturbed when someone sends me a link to an all Hebrew site, and doesn't at the least explain BOTH, what the site is about or how it relates to my question, AND WHERE in the site I should look. That's a general / separate problem. But, my point is, if the site is in English, at least, most people might eventually figure it out by scrolling to the site. If it's in a language you don't understand well or at all, this is not useful.

Answer 1

My understanding of the Jargon policy is that the answers are to the level of the question. Complex "insider-baseball" questions get quite tedious to answer in the Queen's English. But if the level of the question is one coming from someone who just isn't up to the technical terms, I try my best to translate everything, communicate using English idioms and try to avoid Yeshivish.

So my answer to your question is that the more you ask the question in the Queen's English and appear to be coming from a less Yeshivish perspective, the more my answer will reflect that. My anecdotal, bias observation is that either consciously or unconsciously, several other users follow that protocol as well.

If that doesn't work, you can always ask, and point them to the Jargon policy.

Answer 2

I think that just asking nicely does the trick. As you did most recently to this question. i usually do take the time out to translate and use jargon which is "shaveh lechol nefesh" - common to all, but sometimes its just too difficult. But because you prodded me nicely, I took the time out to do so.

Maybe in the question add in italics and bold in the bottom:

Please explain or translate any jargon used when answering your question, and please summarize and or translate any sources used when presenting your answer

This is common already among many miyodeans when asking for specific halachic sources or any other specifications. So to do this wouldn't be a totally drastic change.

Answer 3

Perhaps we should encourage downvoting answers that don't translate jargon with a comment saying we are downvoting for that reason, and then once the jargon has been translated, we remove our downvotes?

We would have to do this even in cases where the OP doesn't ask for jargon assistance, because we want to encourage everyone to translate at all times, otherwise without the consistency people will grow lax (like they currently are)