0.10.15 — one conversation under one text

When the second language version was set up, a decision was made that the instances would not share a database: comments, ratings and views belong to the text in a particular language. It looked coherent and it survived twelve hours.

It was overturned by one sentence from the instance’s author: but this is one site, only bilingual. A simple sentence with a serious consequence — because if it is one site, then you have to ask separately about every thing you record beside it: **what is it actually about?**

The answer is not the same for everything. A rating says: this text, in the form I read it, is worth this much. A view says: this page was opened. Both measure THE PAGE. A comment says something else — it is about THE THING: what happened, the sentence that struck someone, a question for the author. That does not change with the language of the translation.

So the comments move to a shared database, and what binds them is the entry key rather than the series and slug — a slug is in the language of the content and reads differently on the other side. Ratings and views stay separate.

The translation of a comment sits **beside** the original, in its own table, keyed by comment and language. Not as a second comment and not in a second database. The original therefore stays the only one: deleting it takes the translation with it, the email address is duplicated nowhere, and the view is chosen to match the language of the page. In the interface the translation stands above the original, marked as machine-made, and the original remains visible below — the reader is meant to know they are reading a translation, and to reach what was actually written.

An instance without a binding to a shared database works as before, on its own. Single-language deployments lose nothing.