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Language Policy for Non-English Discussions

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ImmortalDread

ImmortalDread

Call me Dread
He/Him
VS Battles
Retired
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14,323

Introduction​

Presently, we have incorporated general discussions that facilitate a foreign language as a primary means of daily communication, thereby enabling individuals to connect with like-minded people who share the same language and culture. Nonetheless, the wiki solely operates in English, as our moderators are not obligated to engage in translation activities while performing their duties of ensuring the forum remains a secure space. This measure is aimed at avoiding additional responsibilities or inadequate moderation, which may arise from moderating discussions conducted in foreign languages that our moderators may not be proficient in.

General discussions​

There are many general discussions and I will list few, so you can guys grasp the idea
And many more.

The issue​

The primary concern lies in the availability of moderators who possess a firm command of the relevant language. The absence of such moderators may result in various untoward incidents occurring without the knowledge of the staff due to the language barrier. Consequently, several forums tend to limit the range of languages available for use to those currently supported by the staff, primarily English and a few others. Permitting the use of other languages could potentially provide a platform for individuals to express sentiments and use language that is inappropriate and likely to cause harm to our relationships with Fandom and Google Advertisements.

Topic link (or the main source of this discussion): https://vsbattles.com/threads/suggestions-for-improvements-new-forum.107530/post-5615532

ProsCons
Allows people to connect based on language and culture.Could lead to exclusion of non-speakers and isolation of members.
Encourages cultural diversity and inclusivity.Could result in language barriers and difficulty in moderating discussions.
Expands the community's reach and global presence.Could cause confusion and misunderstandings in communication.
Offers opportunities for language learning and practice.Could potentially result in offensive or inappropriate content.
Provides a more welcoming environment for non-native speakers.Could result in decreased engagement and participation due to language barriers.
Allows people with similar interests in foreign fictional works to connect and discuss their shared passion.Could lead to the formation of subgroups that are exclusive to specific language speakers, which can be isolating for non-speakers.
Encourages cross-cultural exchange and appreciation of different types of media.Could result in discussions being dominated by a particular language group, leading to exclusion of non-speakers.

Rationale​

The decision to disallow non-English discussions in the VSBW community forum is based on the need for effective communication and moderation. Allowing multiple languages could lead to confusion, misunderstandings, and exclusion of non-speakers. It would also create additional challenges for moderators who are responsible for ensuring that all discussions and posts are in compliance with the community guidelines. By enforcing this language policy, we aim to promote inclusivity, accessibility, and transparency in our community.

STRICTLY ONLY STAFF MEMBERS
 
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Tough one. OP lays it out more or less as it is- to deny people the ability to speak in their native tongue is to deny means of expression, which sucks, but given how common extremely bad behavior is, I do feel the reasonable move here would be to disallow such discussion threads. They present far too great a gap in our ability to properly moderate the wiki.
 
As you mentioned, having language-specific threads can provide an advantage by allowing users who speak a specific language to connect with others who share their language and culture. It can also create a sense of community and inclusivity, as users may feel more comfortable expressing themselves in their native language. However, language-specific threads can also have drawbacks, such as the potential for exclusion of non-speakers, isolation of members, and difficulty in moderating discussions. Language barriers can cause confusion and misunderstandings in communication and lead to offensive or inappropriate content.

Ant's proposal offers a somewhat practical resolution, permitting language-specific threads but mandating that all interactions within these threads be in English. Although it may seem contradictory, this approach facilitates connections between individuals of the same language or nationality while ensuring that the forum's moderators can comprehend and moderate the content. However, forbidding participants from speaking their native language also poses a difficult proposition.

Also, we should maybe think really hard about whether having language-specific threads is a good thing or not depending on the specific goals and values of the community in question, and how well moderators are equipped to handle the potential challenges.

This one's tough.
 
I echo Bambu's sentiments to an extent, but I believe much more firmly in enforcing our English-only policy. If people want to talk in their native tongue, they can easily get in contact in other places. I don't have any particular problem with "national" threads, but even if they get made they have to remain in English as far as I care for us to properly moderate them, and for other users to notice anything wrong, if anything does indeed go wrong.

No one should be expected to sit in front of a screen pasting pages upon pages into Google Translate just to see if User #23342 said a derogatory term about homosexuals in Mongolian.
 
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I'm torn. On one hand we're denying people their right to express themselves as well as cracking down on those who have little to no experience in speaking English.

On another we're opening doorways to more rulebreaking and further destabilization of the site, and exclusion and potentially mistreatment of those who don't understand the language.
 
As a person who has been planning on improving multilingualism on the VBW and making it more language-friendly since 2018, shortly after I had become a staff member for the first time...

✅ Strongly support multilingualism. Firstly, it'd greatly increase our popularity in countries where English is considered a foreign language. Secondly, our international members, especially newcomers, would see that their languages are appreciated too, and thus are more likely to be active in the community. Thirdly, such threads can really help people find their compatriots and make friendly atmosphere. Fourthly, experienced members could help out less experienced ones in one or another aspect of the wiki in their native language via such threads. Fifthly, such threads could also motivate members to add their homeland verses to the wiki by discussing important feats with their compatriots.

For the last case, there's the Monika's Gang/Turma da mônica GD thread. Since the verse in question, Monica's Gang, is considered iconic in Brazil itself, but not as much in other countries, our Brazilian members gathered up together to discuss the verse in their native language. I think we shouldn't forbid using the verse's original language in such specific cases, just make the thread bilingual (the original language of the verse + English). However, CRTs for already added verses would be in English anyway.

As for international GD threads, just make the local rules bilingual and post them in the first message, as many WordReference subforums do in the pinned rules threads (e.g. this one). Perhaps we would also need to make a pinned rules thread for the entire subforum.


As for the cons that others mention here:
The primary concern lies in the availability of moderators who possess a firm command of the relevant language. The absence of such moderators may result in various untoward incidents occurring without the knowledge of the staff due to the language barrier. Consequently, several forums tend to limit the range of languages available for use to those currently supported by the staff, primarily English and a few others.
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I think it shouldn't be a problem if a certain language is spoken by one or more staff members natively/fluently. Or at the very least, by an expirienced and trusted regular member. We used to have Mindovin and RedGrave, who were native Turkish and Indonesian speakers respectively, in our staff. What should we do if we previously had staff members that operate in a particular language, but now we don't?
Permitting the use of other languages could potentially provide a platform for individuals to express sentiments and use language that is inappropriate and likely to cause harm to our relationships with Fandom and Google Advertisements.
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We can decrease such risks by applying local rules + our members must follow the Site Rules regardless of the language they are using. If I personally notice a member uses homophobic/racist/etc. slurs in a language I speak good enough, I'd warn and ask them to delete inappropriate words, and if they continue using those, I'd most likely report them. There was a case of a member utilising Russian profanity in his username, but it wasn't really hard for me to prove that the word in question is inappropriate by our rules as there're websites such as Context Reverso, which can give one examples of in what context a certain word is usually used.
No one should be expected to sit in front of a screen pasting pages upon pages into Google Translate just to see if User #23342 said a derogatory term about homosexuals in Mongolian.
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Never seen Mongolian members here, but if there are just one or two, I doubt they will make a thread just to talk to themselves or one and only compatriot. Message walls suit better for the second option. As in the case of the three threads mentioned by the OP: we have pretty big Turkish, Indonesian, and Chinese subcommunities, so it's not as much a problem for such threads to exist.
 
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May I ask if we have any site rules regarding the language because I am searching for it and I did not find any.

If there is none, we should perhaps create a policy and close all general discussions that violates the VSBW guidelines and policies.
 
Personally, I don't mind them, as long as things remain in that one thread and everyone can speak English. Outside of them everything should be English.
What moderation is concerned: If someone feels like something needs to be reported we can request translations and if nothing needs to be reported it is probably fine. (It's not like those threads are prime ways to talk about circumventing wiki rules or something - DMs would be much better for that)

Given, if they end up causing trouble we could still revert that decision, but until then I personally don't mind them staying.

What a subforum is concerned... I don't think they are frequent or important enough to require a whole forum for them. Giving them a special tag, like "non-english threads" or something, should be enough.
 
I think it also depends what type of threads; obviously Content Revision, Staff Threads, and Wiki Management threads should be strictly English. But I think allowing General Discussions and Fun & Games boards can have the localized languages. As for News and Announcements as well as Vs Threads, seems case by case but I suppose leaning towards the latter remaining English with the former it could be multlinguistical depending on what it is.
 
In my opinion, the establishment of a sub-forum within the wiki may serve as a source of entertainment for a greater number of visitors, and may lead to increased engagement among users. Consequently, it could be a beneficial strategic decision for promoting member activity.
 
ImmortalDread said:
In my opinion, the establishment of a sub-forum within the wiki may serve as a source of entertainment for a greater number of visitors, and may lead to increased engagement among users. Consequently, it could be a beneficial strategic decision for promoting member activity.
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If it's just 1 thread per language, then that would be a subforum for very few threads, all of which have no relevance on anything. (As anything important definitely needs to be in English)
Feel like one could safely shove those into general discussion / Fun & Games and make them traceable with a tag.
DarkDragonMedeus said:
I think it also depends what type of threads; obviously Content Revision, Staff Threads, and Wiki Management threads should be strictly English. But I think allowing General Discussions and Fun & Games boards can have the localized languages. As for News and Announcements as well as Vs Threads, seems case by case but I suppose leaning towards the latter remaining English with the former it could be multlinguistical depending on what it is.
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Definitely not vs-threads. They are a main gimmick of our site and require proper moderation as for vote counting, profile usage etc. Excluding people from those debates via language barrier seems wrong, as everyone here wants to be able to debate those.
I don't think news threads need to be either. We generally try to keep it non-political and somewhat fandom focused, so I'm not sure which truly regional news would deserve a thread in one language. And, in general, there is little reason to exclude people from such a debate even if it's regional.

I feel like it's one thing to allow people a thread for casual chats in their native language, which could also help with the language barrier and stuff, and another to make threads on specific topics that use the language as a barrier to exclude people from the conversation. Basically, if the point of a debate is not in itself that it's not in English, I see little reason to not have it in the language everyone here understands.
 
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(I previously asked DDM, and he said i can say a couple of comments)

Well here goes.

About the fact that there are no moderators in these types of threads, well @Rendynoc0unter (I know he's from the Joke wiki but it still works) and @Jasonsith are in the Indonesian and Chinese thread respectively, @Dereck03 is in the Spanish thread too.

Maybe in one or the other, but it is still a minor problem when there are already others with staff and as @Ogurtsow says, using trusted members to monitor it should

The barrier can be easily broken with an English version of the text above (or below, depending on how you like it), it would only be a matter of taking the time and if you want to use the translator to confirm it

Also, these threads are mostly with their title about the language that is spoken, so that people who pass by will have the idea of what it really is, so that people will know what is happening inside.

I also think that the staff (or non-staff in some cases) could use these types of threads to meet new people who can give them an opinion on a scan that needs to be translated.

so I don't think it's necessary to ban it, just limit them in a specific place and that's it, maybe in fun and game as DDM says
 
Hard disagree with the sub-forum idea. I do not believe whatsoever in superfluous additions that do little to aid our efficacy. And mind you, I am a massive fan of indexing and categorization. I could even say it's a compulsion of mine.

But not when the effort is worthless, and not when there's already alternatives that are functioning just fine in their own capacities. General Discussion and F&G do the work just fine. If, and I mean if, we had a substantial number of speakers for a good chunk of the world's living languages, and who were also particularly inclined to speak to their fellow countrymen in their native tongue, I would accept a sub-forum.

But we do not have such a situation. There are only a couple of languages that have large numbers of speakers in the wiki, and many others that have one or two at most. Furthermore, most of those people still tend to communicate in English anyway, even with people that are from the same non-English speaking countries.
 
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Crabwhale said:
I echo Bambu's sentiments to an extent, but I believe much more firmly in enforcing our English-only policy. If people want to talk in their native tongue, they can easily get in contact in other places.
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This is more or less also my feeling on the matter. There's nothing wrong with these discussions, per se, but there's no reason in particular that they need to happen here rather than Discord, for instance.
 
DontTalkDT said:
If it's just 1 thread per language, then that would be a subforum for very few threads, all of which have no relevance on anything. (As anything important definitely needs to be in English)
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Not in the case of the Monika's Gang/Turma da mônica GD thread, where Brazilians discuss a specific iconic Brazilian verse in Portuguese mainly. Similarly, I think we could get a Kral Şakir Discussion Thread operating mainly in Turkish, a BoBoiBoy DT in Malay and Indonesian, and the like. Gathering up all such threads inside one subforum would be better IMO.
 
Ogurtsow said:
Not in the case of the Monika's Gang/Turma da mônica GD thread, where Brazilians discuss a specific iconic Brazilian verse in Portuguese mainly. Similarly, I think we could get a Kral Şakir Discussion Thread operating mainly in Turkish, a BoBoiBoy DT in Malay and Indonesian, and the like. Gathering up all such threads inside one subforum would be better IMO.
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I don't think such debates should exclude everyone that doesn't speak the language.
 
DontTalkDT said:
I don't think such debates should exclude everyone that doesn't speak the language.
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Yes, as I had mentioned, I'd personally make such threads at least bilingual so that members who do not speak the verse's original language could participate too. But since the majority of Monica's Gang supporters in this community are Brazilians, I'd not forbid using Portuguese for that specific thread.
Crabwhale said:
There are only a couple of languages that have large numbers of speakers in the wiki, and many others that have one or two at most.
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That's an understatement. Even by checking the Multilingual Members List, there're 14 languages with at least 5 members listed. And this is considering that not so many people add themselves to the MML nowadays, yet we can notice them speaking their native languages on message walls or language-specific threads.
 
Ogurtsow said:
That's an understatement. Even by checking the Multilingual Members List, there're 14 languages with at least 5 members listed. And this is considering that not so many people add themselves to the MML nowadays, yet we can notice them speaking their native languages on message walls or language-specific threads.
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I feel like that is ignoring several modalities that would have to be considered for each group.

For instance, how active are the users listed there? Second, how much do they even care about engaging in discussion with their own countrymen? Thirdly, for the purposes of moderation, how many of those groups have a staff member of any sort/trusted reliable user in them?

And even factoring all that in, and assuming a best case outcome on all those modalities, I still do not think creating an entire sub-forum for what will amount amount to under two dozen threads is necessary.
 
I feel like the worst policy here is forcing members to only speak english. As a site on the internet we're going to have a healthy amount of members who can't effectively engage without english, a naturally problem of no real barriers to entry. And forcing people to only speak english can and will be read in a way that excludes non-primary english speakers from engaging with our community. And exclusion of that nature is a troubling precedent to set. As a wiki for hobbyist, adding barriers to engage with our hobby isn't really self productive. In fact, a lot of the cons listed end of existing if we make english the only permissible language, we just get to ignore the problem cause of english speaking majority. Such a policy doesn't end of promoting inclusivity, accessibility, and transparency in our community but the exact opposite.

The real solution I see here is the attempt to broaden are billingual speaking or reading at least thread moderators.
 
Duedate8898 said:
As a site on the internet we're going to have a healthy amount of members who can't effectively engage without english, a naturally problem of no real barriers to entry. And forcing people to only speak english can and will be read in a way that excludes non-primary english speakers from engaging with our community
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The reality is, anyone who cannot effectively speak English will not be able to participate in the community regardless, not due to any rule but just as a matter of practicality. The subject at hand doesn't really address this either way. Many staff members speak English as a second language just fine, the practical reality is that English is the barrier to entry for most online communities.

It's fairly common for communities to enforce an "English-only" rule for the sake of moderation, and I don't see any reason for us to be an exception to that practice. The reality is, we are slicing down to an extremely niche set of users who:

a) Speak a certain non-English language

b) Have a particular interest in using the language in a VSBW thread for other people who speak it

I just think the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and I echo Crabwhale's sentiments that we should more strictly enforce the English rule.
 
For the record, I myself am not a native English speaker, though I prefer to not reveal where I'm from nowadays unless someone already knows. This is also why I'm pushing for the "do these non-native speakers even give a shit to use their own language in the context of the forum" angle, since I myself have never felt the desire to talk to my (admittedly limited) number of countrymen in the wiki. And by law of Idunfuckinknowaveragesmaybe, I'm probably not the only one.
 
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I can understand it being a common policy and you thinking it not worth it, but I also think that doesn't make the idea any less lazy. We clearly have a bilingual base here, in fact a healthy amount of our verses rely on the fact that we possess bilingual members for clarities sake. We do possess the people to allow non-english speakers or just those who communicate more effectively in their original language to do so. And if we have these tools available to us, then I say we should embrace them and not reject them.
 
Deagonx said:
I thought you were African-American?
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I will certainly unleash Africanized killer bees upon your person.

Anyway, here's a post by LuffyRuffy, who asked me to comment:
Well, I've seen the whole CRT and I don't see any problem opening a discussion of different languages, as is the case that we have a tab entirely for Brazilian people who speak Portuguese, I'm from Brazil and I usually speak through Google translator and even to translate the pages is with him that I represent myself, most people who come from vsbttles are from different languages, few people are actually from the United States and speak fluent English, we are all here to make a better wiki and not make it worse (which is the in the case of some ), I come to advise that I did not create a rule about this, we are only talking to our friends of our languages and it is very good, some people can curse and such, because of that there must be several people who moderate content with different languages to help with that, this would be a good choice rather than banning other people from creating such a topic related to languages.

Reforming my answer, we should assign a role to people who know other languages so that they can help here to report curses and such ( and these people must have good behavior and speak such language well, and must have considered time in vsbttles ) this all to moderate topics from different languages.

Thank you all for doing a good job.
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I don't see a problem with having threads where people speak another language, this thread reflects the worst of the possible scenarios that have not even been given after many months of existence of these threads, moreover people who participate in these threads do it just for fun and I have not seen any of the members of these threads behave any different at all with those who do not speak their language and also prefer to continue speaking English and occasionally participate in these threads. And as previously stated there are staff members that participate in those threads, so the moderation issue should not be a problem, I could not care less about a subforum but the threads should remain for those who want to continue speaking their language I think it is fine.
 
Crabwhale said:
For instance, how active are the users listed there? Second, how much do they even care about engaging in discussion with their own countrymen? Thirdly, for the purposes of moderation, how many of those groups have a staff member of any sort/trusted reliable user in them?
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If we count the ones with at least one staff member and not with limited/basic knowledge, the count would be slightly higher (I just counted 15).

Deagonx said:
It's fairly common for communities to enforce an "English-only" rule for the sake of moderation, and I don't see any reason for us to be an exception to that practice.
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That practice isn't productive in some cases. Like do you think YouTube would be as well-known and popular as it is if it only allowed English videos and/or comments? I don't think so. To expand our community to a greater scale and another level, language-friendly policies should be introduced for those multilingual threads.
 
Ogurtsow said:
If we count the ones with at least one staff member and not with limited/basic knowledge, the count would be slightly higher (I just counted 15).


That practice isn't productive in some cases. Like do you think YouTube would be as well-known and popular as it is if it only allowed English videos and/or comments? I don't think so. To expand our community to a greater scale and another level, language-friendly policies should be introduced for those multilingual threads.
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We aren't YouTube. We're an incredibly-niche character indexing site that has often more than not, further escalated drama and controversy more than anything else.
 
Crabwhale said:
Anyway, here's a post by LuffyRuffy, who asked me to comment:
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@LuffyRuffy46307 We already have the Multilingual Members List, where our international members indicate which languages do they speak. If you want, you can add yourself as well, and ask other members to do so.
KLOL506 said:
We aren't YouTube. We're an incredibly-niche character indexing site that has often more than not, further escalated drama and controversy more than anything else.
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Well, maybe the YT example is too extreme, but we are not a noname standalone website either way. We're the biggest character indexing wiki in the world, we're well-known for what we do, we have the name, and as such, improving multilingualism in our community could help us grow even more.
 
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