Just a Thought

We would like this forum to be open to people from all over the world. I don't think that poor English should be used to exclude people. Besides, there are lots of native Enlish speakers who don't express themselves very well in posts either, what with all the IM speak and such. We can't get rid of them all too.

We want to keep our community open to as many people as possible. And diversity is definitely a good thing!

I would be interested to hear what others think about this though...

I think we should definitely be open to everyone, and if we simply can not help them, that's something that we are going to have to live with. Perhaps you should state in the rules or whatever that anyone is welcome, but if you do not speak English, we may not be able to help you (but more professional-sounding).

As for the 'lol', 'ur', etc talk, I simply can not stand it and I never use it, but there really is no way to stop it. If you absolutely can not stand it, just ignore posts that use them. Otherwise, live with it.

Internationalis(z)ation on the web is a tough issue, but it's going to stick around for a while, I figure. From CJK in URLs to communicating at sites like these, a lot of people will find it troublesome that neither English nor any one dialect of it is really ubiquitous (particularly American English).

brady.k wrote:
-How did that Chinese character-writing spammer get in?

Like every other spammer -- and member, unfortunately.

brady.k wrote:
-Should there be an English requirement for the site? (Obviously it's written in, and geared towards, English speakers)

Nope. Setting an arbitrary threshold is difficult. Megan's example of native speakers with a poor command of the language is a case in point.

I don't foresee a complete linguistic takeover happening though, so there's no need to place restrictions beyond the ones naturally in place. i.e. our administration structure is based on English anyway.

brady.k wrote:
-Would the community benefit from posters having a certain level of English proficiency?

Absolutely. All of society would benefit from frictionless communication in any reasonable language. Too bad it's not enforceable.

brady.k wrote: Anyways, I'm just trying to say that I find it hard to read broken-English (especially non-English!) posts, and think that others might as well.

I understand this difficulty. I guess you'll just have to pass on those posts for now.

Personally, I think it's a great opportunity to diversify and learn a new language or two. Perhaps even something like Esperanto or Loglan?

Edit: funnily enough, a couple minutes after writing the above, I had to go hack some CSS from a theme written apparently by a Spanish-speaking person. Had to trace classes called "entrada", "noticias" and "bloque", among others.

I've also read that the fastest growing popultaion of internet users is in south-east asia. So we're going to have to get used to it anyway I think it's a good way to learn to communicate with people in other cultures.