Rejected Remove general rule #2

I don't think this rule should be removed, as it should be enforced as necessary.

It comes into play when conversations in another language that other players/users cannot participate in, and is therefore considered spam.

This should only be a problem on the forums if there are several lines of text in SB in a different language. If it's a meme, and you can tell it's a meme, it shouldn't be enforced, and I've never seen it be enforced by any staff if so.

Removing the rule entirely would allow all non-English speaking, regardless of meme or not.

Examples:

Memeing:
Calling your friend a 'puta' or other non-English insults (occasional)
Anime speak like "senpai" and "baka", etc. (frequent)

Serious:
2 friends in Latvia talk over mic to each other in their language on a nearly full server (occasional, not specifically Latvian)
Discussion on SB in a different language (rare if ever)

 

Just for clarification here because I'm seeing mixed answers. I'm watching the thread, and I'm curious in the responses. I'm admittingly towards the -1 crowd mostly for the reasons stated by @Grimoire+ , @The Rickest Rick , and @Dani. Enforcement is done at staff discretion when needed, it's not something you're gonna get beaned for because you pop into shoutbox and say "Hola" to everyone.

However, just to be clear.. The english only rule only applies to the forums and discord in public channels. Other languages is allowed on the servers, regardless of NA and EU, and in private discord channels on the SGM discord currently.

 

Well that changes my argument. tbh it should be enforced on the servers - and I'm pretty sure I've seen it enforced - but whatever

As far as the forums go, adressing @ink's argument, it's not ever enforced because nobody ever talks in a different language, at least, not that I've seen that isn't an obvious meme or some Spanglish
If it is enforced, it is likely a joke in itself

However, if it becomes a problem, the rule is there so it can be dealt with.

 

Yeah, wtf. My impression was always that it was allowed to speak other languages on the EU servers, but never on the NA servers, and I've been told many times that people gag you for that on the NA servers. "regardless of NA or EU" is new to me.

 

Yep. It’s a common misconception- but check out the motd and extended rules. It isn’t there.

That being said- it may be treated as micspam/text spam. However, You’d actually have to be getting disruptive to the game for it to fall under that category.

 

Does it fall under micspam/text spam more easily than it would if people spoke English?

 

As with all spam, this would be discretionary.

 

One of the main points that I see is that staff wont be able to communicate well with a player. If that player doesnt speak english, they are forced to use a translator, which in turn is just what a staff member would do if the player wasnt using english. Yes, google translate gets words and phrases wrong, ALOT. However there are several other sites that have better translations such as https://www.online-translator.com/ and https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/translator. I have used both translators as staff at some point, and I was able to 98% of the time clearly communicate with a player.

Every day, and I mean every day, SGM gets more and more players. EU has grown substantially over the course of its uptime. Alot of EU players do speak english, but there is no reason to force them to use it. English speakers in this community use english bc, primarily its their first language. Youre comfortable with it, you understand it easier. Players who, regardless of how fluent they are, still find their primary language to be easiest to speak. We shouldnt force a player to use a secondary language.

"Getting rid of English rule will only make matters more confusing to our audiences and other communities as well. We will start seeing what ever languages that people
would want to see in forums, ShoutBox and profile messages. We could have five different language in one thread which can be annoying. I can see memers exploiting this idea too much."

How would it make matters confusing? I dont see any way that it can make it any different. All it would take is a copy paste onto a translator site.
"we will start seeing whatever languages that people would want to see"
There is no harm in this.

"We would have 5 different languages in a thread which can be annoying"

I can see this being annoying, however limiting people to 1 language isnt always the best thing. In fact, if we do open up languages, I can see more connections with players and even more players joining in general bc they have the freedom to speak whatever language they feel like.

"I can see memers exploiting this idea too much"

Oh god. Everyone here is so afraid of "memers". Too afraid to try something new bc they are scared of how many people will abuse things. Yes. Yes there will be THOSE people who intentionally try to be stupid with it, but a MAJORITY of the playerbase will not. Look at what happened when we added opalbot. Look what happened when the color red was allowed in shoutbox. Players "memed" with both of them so much in such a short time that it died out within days. DAYS. Taking that as evidence, I see no reason as to why, if this is added and if we even do have those "memers", that it wont die out just as fast.

"I believe Highwon wanted people to understand and have communication with each other. We all respect other's ability for speaking a different languages." Having this rule gone, opens the door for more and more players to communicate. There are alot of people in the world, and surprisingly alot of players in this game that dont speak english AT ALL. Allowing them to communicate in their language allows them to be open and allows them to actually participate within this community.

"However I'm in for one thing. We could have an exclusive forum dedicated to a another majority language users but the problem is that we need to find people in that language to monitor
as well. Probably won't sit well as our current situation. Maybe in the future."

So instead of just allowing players to communicate in their language, we are going to completely section them off from the rest of the community just because they dont speak english? Thats absurd.


I am hugely +1'ing this suggestion.

 

This should be added to somewhere in the rules. For years people have been taught that NA servers are strictly English only, while it may not be "needed" to add it to rules, just for clarification sake it would be nice.

The problem really comes from the stigma that SGM staff has in terms of strict staffing especially in SB. You had people like Nilz who got warned for posting . in shoutbox. Whats stopping staff from warning Nilz after Nilz says "Hola" in shoutbox? By the rules staff is correct in warning Nilz even though in either case Nilz is not really causing trouble and the problem is the strictness itself.

And as the previous clarification likewise it would be nice that it is clarified that you are allowed to speak non-English language as long as its not disruptive, the only reason I havent made few meme non-English posts is because I dont want to flip a coin if I get warned just for the sake of warning since I would break a rule technically.

 

I think the opposite should be added tbh. It makes no sense to have a rule of English-only on the forums but not on the servers.
For most people, non-English is just jibberish, especially on NA

If we look at the NA, we have the US, Canada, and Mexico. That's 2 different languages, and we don't have very many Mexican-speaking players on the servers from what I can tell. So, we can assume English should be the primary language so everyone can have an enjoyable experience.
As far as the EU, there are 28 different countries with 24 different languages. We can't have a specifically Estonian server or specifically Austrian server, etc. The best way to communicate is through English. That's why everything here is written in English, including the rules. We are an English-speaking community, and therefore, we should enforce English-only regulations.

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Nilz knew the rules and put that in SB because he knew it would piss some staff off, so he was reprimanded.
"Hola" shouldn't piss many people off because everyone and their mother knows that it means "Hello"

You cannot copy and paste speech

 

Yeah, the best way might be English but that doesnt mean other language ways need to be made against the rules. Who cares if two players are typing to eachother in a different language? If they are actually being disruptive we have:

---

I thought it was impossible for someone to get pissed off from a red dot.

 

The rule only affects the forums. Why would you need to translate text for the forums?

 

Because the point of my post was

 

just rewrite it to "We reserve the right to request that you communicate with us in English at any time to ensure we can adequately assist you. If you are asking for help, making a report, or attempting to talk to another community member and there is a language barrier, we will attempt to find a translator, but if we are unable to communicate we won't be able to help you any further. Please understand that we are based in the U.S. and are primarily English speakers, but we will not bar you from speaking your native tongue." or something along those lines

 

I think the general argument has become a more moderate form of "I like the rule when it suits my agenda the best" rather than the extremes of "remove the rule" or "keep the rule". Personally, I have never seen the rule itself cause undue harm to any user in the community, but the staff members intentions may. Look, if someone's only language is Spanish chances are they aren't going to be on these forums. It just isn't reasonable to assume that a Spanish speaking person would go out of their way to post on a forum that is entirely made up of English speaking users. Those people that we all seem to be talking about are those who speak English but not very well. The argument is that while they may be adequate at speaking English, they can speak french better and so they should be allowed to articulate in their native tongue. However that isn't going to help them learn English and get better at it, and as a community we should be understanding of people who don't speak the language well, but we shouldn't be allowing them an easy out with the rules.

In my mind this isn't so much a rule as it is just a general expectation. We expect our users to speak English, and if they don't that sucks. Trust me, if we could instantaneously transmit the entire English language into a person's brain we would, but we can't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Listen paci.
I didn't fluently speak English before 9th grade. I still played online games before then. Video game English =/= Fluent English =/= fluent written English. If I want to occasionally type out to my friend @Jaysu in Chinese, nobody is stopping me from doing it on servers and nobody SHOULD be stopping me from doing it on the forums either. People before you have pointed out that there is almost no case that a user only speaks that particular language and doesn't know any English, but it may be easier to write out certain things in native language and it's easy to just default back to that when you can't communicate that particular phrase well in English. Like people have stated above you, we shouldn't be barred from occasionally typing out phrases (andrew) and (pixel) that naturally only occur in that language. Nobody is saying we want to help out that one Spanish friend who doesn't know a word in English. The rule's current state is vulnerable to being exploited to enforce in ways that are clearly out of line from what is and isn't allowed on the severs and isn't acted upon by most staff. I agree with other users above who have pointed out that this rule should be enforced in very specific instances and not be a general rule. At its current state, it's exploitable and discouraging, but it shouldn't be for the EU half of the servers.

 

я не говорю по-английски



плюс один

 

But are you really being barred? Has anyone stopped you from speaking Chinese with jaysu before now? Has this had a considerable impact on you, beyond mild annoyance? I mean it is easy for me to sit here with my 17 years of speaking English and tell you what you can and cannot say and in what language you can say it in, but chances are i'm not going to and I really don't have to. You are mature enough to use some common sense and realize that speaking Chinese with jaysu is probably not going to land your ass in the slammer, and if it does that is an extreme exaggeration of enforcement on the hands of the person doing it. In that case the problem is no longer the rule itself but the person who is enforcing it.

I think the biggest reason you see this rule as being too open to interpretation is because you yourself feel threatened by the rule and the power that it is supposedly given. I mean, to anyone who speaks English this rule is pretty straightforward and reasonable, but to someone who may not speak English very well this can be a sign that we don't want diversity in our players and we don't want foreign language. This obviously isn't the case. I mean, if the rule were so strongly felt among the people who are set to enforce it, more people would be punished regularly and across all platforms of SGM. Do you truly believe that someone is magically out there ready to drop a hammer on you the second you speak Chinese with jaysu? There simply is no enforcement to be had with this ruling and I can't name a single case in my time here where someone has been told English only, save for a few shoutbox memes that were obvious trolling.

Honestly have no idea what you mean by the whole "Video game English =/= Fluent English =/= fluent written English." means because it honestly wasn't something I was debating. Never was there a point where I am trying to say that if you can speak clearly in game you can write perfect English. What I was trying to say, and maybe the translation got a bit out there on this one, is that simply put most people in this community speak English, so why is it unreasonable to ask someone to speak English while they are in this community? They clearly had to find this place and they would need to have some knowledge of the English language to do so. Obviously most of these people understand at least a basic level of English, but by being on the forums that can actually expose them to new English words and ways of sentence formatting. Even if they struggle to understand it, they will eventually pick it up if they are exposed to it so often.

In closing, I think you are reading too far into the rule itself and its general implications without looking at the grand scope of how the rule is applied on the daily. The rule in practice is actually a pretty tame one, you probably wont ever see anyone get banned for speaking Chinese with jaysu. I still see this as an expectation rather than a hard set rule, and realistically it is enforced more like an expectation. Its basically like going to the principal's office because you never do your schoolwork. It is expected that you do your school work, but if you don't they probably aren't going to chuck your ass out of school the first time you don't do an assignment, over time that will obviously change if behavior's aren't changed. However if you punch a kid in the nose, you've violated a rule and will be suspended.

 

Yeah it's not enforced like it is stated. We ditched that right from the OP. That's exactly why it should be changed, yeah? Why leave the ambiguity down to the next admin? If we all agree that this isn't how it's enforced and shouldn't be how it's enforced then we should change it to better fit its purpose.

 

Change it to "English only on www.seriousgmod.com, other languages are allowed on servers as long as they are not disruptive"