Products in wrong languages and bots spamming database with translations

I think we’ve reached a consensus that products should only be listed in the languages (countries) in which they are officially sold!

This refers to the countries where the products are sold regularly in supermarkets (i.e., not as imports or in small specialty stores).

The easiest way to tell is by the languages in which the ingredient list is printed (often accompanied by a country code).

And it’s clear that it doesn’t make sense to list and translate every product in the world into every language, because OFF isn’t a translation service - t’s a product database. That would just waste storage space unnecessarily, make every page more cluttered and it multiplies errors. Because instead of using an primary source (the list of ingredients in the printed language), it simply replicates an entry. If there is an error in the first entry, the translation will carry that error over.

Anyone who wants to have the text of a foreign product translated can find hundreds of tools for that online and do it themselves in 5 seconds.

Nevertheless, every day you come across accounts that do nothing but constantly enter products in foreign languages that has nothing to do with the product.

The moderators are apparently just standing by and watching this happen. :woman_shrugging:

And now there are even automated bots that spam the database completely on their own. Like, for example, this bot that generates Chinese entries for European products: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/facets/editors/agenticcommonsbot

Can someone finally do something about this?

There are many countries where imported products are significant part of market and they don’t really have many local products or products adapted other than just with translated sticker without translated packaging. So it is a strange condition. Usual person f

Average person doesn’t really take attention if some random store is specialty store or not. So also it is not really easy to check it. And I don’t really agree with that.

But I agree with all other thoughts, that only languages that are on product should be added to the DB

@teolemon sent a mail to the bot owner, but to prevent any more damage, I’ve just deleted the user account (agenticcommonsbot).