NationStates Jolt Archive

Ok, after wiring a telegram to TacticalGrace himself, I now discover the moderation section. Sorry TG. Anyways, to the point, why was my “你会中文吗？" deleted? (Translation= Can you speak chinese?) There was an initial flare up about chinese character support, that was an honest mistake (as my windows, and many many others on the thread, came with chinese character display support already equipped). I was simply curious to see how many NSers could speak the most spoken language in the world. I don't see how this is any different to several German language threads I have seen. I just don't get why it was deleted. I mean deleted, isn't that reserved for the worst of the worst? I mean, lock it if you must, that way I could have checked the public poll results when I finished work. I was really disappointed and confused. Why?!

*chuckle* I guess I need some closure. I am not dealing with this whole 'not being in control' thing. I just cannot think for the life of me why that thread deserved deletion. Deletion. Are we that insular? Or is it that too many people were complaining? Anyways, eagerly waiting your explanation,
GreaterPacificNations

At a guess? I'd say it was because of the characters, and the Mod responsible not having the proper char-support enabled. Or, it could have been deemed spam, as simply asking how many people speak $language is kinda pointless and likely to spawn copycats.

"How many of you speak Esperanto?"
"How many of you speak Spanish?"
"How many of you speak Japanese?"
"How many of you speak Russian?"
"How many of you speak Xothic?"
"How many of you speak Pig Latin?"
"How many of you speak Coptic?"

To say nothing of the fact that it simply seeks a yes or no responce. Not exactly stimulating.

Edit: And looking at the last couple pages, I'm shifting to 90% certainty that is was locked for being spam. People randomly posting in random languages is pretty spammy.

Oh, I did delete it. Heh, didn't realise that was you.

Yeah, because a thread consisting of ???????? and pages of people saying WTF and posting photos of spam re-arranged into a Superman logo, etc, really isn't a great addition to the life of the forum.

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/897/skrmdump9te.jpg

The thing is, the thread didn't consist of "????????" - I could see the Chinese characters just fine.

In view of the German and Dutch threads that have been going on for thousands of pages, and allowed to be, I don't see why other languages should be treated differently. You should have split out the spam, IMHO, instead of deleting the thread.

This is one of the reasons I was bitching about all the mods being from English-speaking countries earlier. There are other languages out there, you know...

Oh, I did delete it. Heh, didn't realise that was you.

Yeah, because a thread consisting of ???????? and pages of people saying WTF and posting photos of spam re-arranged into a Superman logo, etc, really isn't a great addition to the life of the forum.
Answer= It all came down to the language support. Should have written in pinyin :p. No matter. Thanks for the clarification, sorry for the trouble. I really went off the wire with this whole divine intervention thing. I don't stomach humble-pie all too well. Nonetheless, you still have your pint of respect un-splashed, mainly because the way you cripple others with pure logic is such a beautiful thing to watch. Considerably more beautiful than this situation is frustrating.

This is one of the reasons I was bitching about all the mods being from English-speaking countries earlier. There are other languages out there, you know...
Yeah, like, I'm fluent in Russian. I'd still have deleted a Russian language thread if it came up as ??????? to me, most of the forum, and attracted pages of spam.

I play an MMO where foreign languages are banned from the forums. You post in anything but English, it gets deleted, and you get warned. Ten strikes and you get a permanent forum ban. The reason? The Moderators do not have enough languages covered, and the approach is "better safe than sorry". Try to question the policy, the post deletion and ban rule applies. No-one is allowed to mention Moderation. There is no forum for it. You cannot refer to it. Ignore it or else.

That's also the norm for subscription-based MMOs out there. Some have regularly-updated lists of things you are not allowed to mention, with forum bans being the punishment. Server performance issues, customer support, game balancing gripe of the week, etc. Do you see an elephant in the room? The looks of nervousness on the faces of people fearing the consequences of someone mentioning it out loud? Then keep up the small talk or keep your mouth shut. That's what you accept when you click the Terms and Conditions box.

So you are very lucky indeed that 1) You are allowed to have Dutch language threads and 2) That you don't have to pay real money for the privilege. Compared to most of the Internet, this place is a biblical city of vice, liberty and wanton hedonism.

Yeah, like, I'm fluent in Russian. I'd still have deleted a Russian language thread if it came up as ??????? to me, most of the forum, and attracted pages of spam.

I play an MMO where foreign languages are banned from the forums. You post in anything but English, it gets deleted, and you get warned. Ten strikes and you get a permanent forum ban. The reason? The Moderators do not have enough languages covered, and the approach is "better safe than sorry". Try to question the policy, the post deletion and ban rule applies. No-one is allowed to mention Moderation. There is no forum for it. You cannot refer to it. Ignore it or else.

That's also the norm for subscription-based MMOs out there. Some have regularly-updated lists of things you are not allowed to mention, with forum bans being the punishment. Server performance issues, customer support, game balancing gripe of the week, etc. Do you see an elephant in the room? The looks of nervousness on the faces of people fearing the consequences of someone mentioning it out loud? Then keep up the small talk or keep your mouth shut. That's what you accept when you click the Terms and Conditions box.

So you are very lucky indeed that 1) You are allowed to have Dutch language threads and 2) That you don't have to pay real money for the privilege. Compared to most of the Internet, this place is a biblical city of vice, liberty and wanton hedonism.
Sodom? Are you accusing Fass of being a Sodomite?:p

Yeah, like, I'm fluent in Russian. I'd still have deleted a Russian language thread if it came up as ??????? to me, most of the forum, and attracted pages of spam.

Instead of splitting the spam out, if it isn't the fault of the OP or topic isn't spammish itself, and setting up proper language support?

I play an MMO where foreign languages are banned from the forums. You post in anything but English, it gets deleted, and you get warned. Ten strikes and you get a permanent forum ban. The reason? The Moderators do not have enough languages covered, and the approach is "better safe than sorry". Try to question the policy, the post deletion and ban rule applies. No-one is allowed to mention Moderation. There is no forum for it. You cannot refer to it. Ignore it or else.

That's also the norm for subscription-based MMOs out there. Some have regularly-updated lists of things you are not allowed to mention, with forum bans being the punishment. Server performance issues, customer support, game balancing gripe of the week, etc. Do you see an elephant in the room? The looks of nervousness on the faces of people fearing the consequences of someone mentioning it out loud? Then keep up the small talk or keep your mouth shut. That's what you accept when you click the Terms and Conditions box.

So you are very lucky indeed that 1) You are allowed to have Dutch language threads and 2) That you don't have to pay real money for the privilege. Compared to most of the Internet, this place is a biblical city of vice, liberty and wanton hedonism.

So, basically, "other forums out there suck, you should be happy we claim not to suck as much, because we hypocritically allow a few token threads, while deleting others because some mod fails to have language support installed properly on his comp, thus erroneously claiming the thread was filled with "??????," and that should make you stop the criticism of the poor handling of this issue, and the poor handling of the larger issue of language bias in the moderation staff."

Well, gee. As long your suckage isn't quite like that of those others, then I guess we just need to pretend it isn't suckage at all. Oh, and be happy you don't delete me for mentioning this. Quite the standard to measure you by!

Instead of splitting the spam out, if it isn't the fault of the OP or topic isn't spammish itself, and setting up proper language support?When the vast majority of a thread is spam, the thread as a whole is treated thusly. This isn't new or earth shattering, Fass.

When the vast majority of a thread is spam, the thread as a whole is treated thusly. This isn't new or earth shattering, Fass.

You're shirking the issue, here. If someone goes into an RP-thread and is off-topic on it, spamming, you reprimand the spammer and delete those posts. You don't delete the thread because someone else went into it and spammed, if the thread doesn't have a spammish topic. At least, I hope you don't.

If the thread doesn't have a spammish topic, just happens to be in another language, and someone who doesn't understand the language goes in there to spam with "wtf?! sp33korz Americun yo bitchez!" - would you delete the thread? Or if it were in English, and someone, say, went in there and spammed in some other language, or spammed at all, would you delete the thread? Would one then be allowed to start the thread anew, this time telling the spammers to piss off?

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If someone goes into an RP-thread and is off-topic on it, spamming, you reprimand the spammer and delete those posts.What part of "the vast majority of the thread was spam" do you fail to grasp? If a role-play thread is 80% spam, I'm not going to take the time to split out the spam; I'm going to toast the thread. But thank you for implying that we're all corrupt and biased towards role-players. Because, you know, Tac is a role-playing machine.

You don't delete the thread because someone else went into it and spammed, if the thread doesn't have a spammish topic.It wasn't one poster.

If the thread doesn't have a spammish topic, just happens to be in another language, and someone who doesn't understand the language goes in there to spam with "wtf?! sp33korz Americun yo bitchez!" - would you delete the thread?If my cat could bark, it would be my dog. Any other irrelevencies you want to bring up, or can we stick with the thread in question?

What part of "the vast majority of the thread was spam" do you fail to grasp?

I fail to grasp why someone's thread should be locked when it gets spam-jacked like this, i.e. a foreign language thread invaded by people who don't speak the language. If you still feel "yes," then is he allowed to start a new one, this time asking only for Chinese input?

If a role-play thread is 80% spam, I'm not going to take the time to split out the spam; I'm going to toast the thread. But thank you for implying that we're all corrupt and biased towards role-players. Because, you know, Tac is a role-playing machine.

I was using RP as an example. Substitute "RP" with "General," if you found your sensibilities injured by some paranoid connotation.

If my cat could bark, it would be my dog. Any other irrelevencies you want to bring up, or can we stick with the thread in question?

The thread in question was by someone who wanted to talk about the Chinese language in Chinese. It was "invaded" by people who went "omg, wtf? question marks? English, do you speak it, mofo?" You're copping out with the excuse that it had a "yes or no" type of question as a title.

That's why I'd like to know, if the OP started a new thread in Chinese, having a title, say, "What are your sentiments when it comes to the issue of simplified vs. traditional Chinese character input?," and it in a similar way got invaded by these fucking morons, would you delete that as well? And would he be allowed to start a new thread, in Chinese, but with a short line in English in the OP saying something like "Please do not post in this thread unless it's about Chinese language character input, or something close to that topic, and preferably in Chinese"?

Or, are non-Latin alphabet language threads banned from this site?

I fail to grasp why someone's thread should be locked when it gets spam-jacked like this, i.e. a foreign language thread invaded by people who don't speak the language.You continue to ignore the key point here, Fass. I don't care about the specifics of the thread. When the majority of it is spam, it gets deleted or locked.

The thread in question was by someone who wanted to talk about the Chinese language in Chinese.That's a pretty loose interpretation of his stated intent. "Do you speak Chinese" isn't quite the same as, "I'd like to talk about the Chinese language in Chinese because I think it's neat."

It was "invaded" by people who went "omg, wtf? question marks? English, do you speak it, mofo?" You're copping out with the excuse that it had a "yes or no" type of question as a title.Big fan of cherry picking, aren't we? Ever consider that maybe, just maybe, all of these points are considered together? I know it's a stretch, but I can keep more than one data point in my mind at the same time.

That's why I'd like to know, if the OP started a new thread in Chinese, having a title, say, "What are your sentiments when it comes to the issue of simplified vs. traditional Chinese character input?," and it in a similar way got invaded by these fucking morons, would you delete that as well?At the risk of repeating myself once again, if it was ~160 posts of spam and ~20 posts of content, yes. It would be locked. Just like we always do.

And would he be allowed to start a new thread, in Chinese, but with a short line in English in the OP saying something like "Please do not post in this thread unless it's about Chinese language character input, or something close to that topic, and preferably in Chinese"?That would be, and has always been, just fine.

Or, are non-Latin alphabet language threads banned from this site?Yeah. That's it, Fass. We have a real hatred of non-Latin characters. You sure found us out. Good on you.

You continue to ignore the key point here, Fass. I don't care about the specifics of the thread. When the majority of it is spam, it gets deleted or locked.

How does one ensure, if not a mod, that that doesn't happen? It seems hardly fair to the OP.

That's a pretty loose interpretation of his stated intent. "Do you speak Chinese" isn't quite the same as, "I'd like to talk about the Chinese language in Chinese because I think it's neat."

Well, seeing what he's written here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=10949990&postcount=11), my "loose" interpretation seems to have been more correct than the anal one you're using as a cop out.

Big fan of cherry picking, aren't we? Ever consider that maybe, just maybe, all of these points are considered together? I know it's a stretch, but I can keep more than one data point in my mind at the same time.

For having being considered together, you sure were selective about which one led to the deletion. First it was the characters, then it was the title, then it was spam-jack, and now they're all oh, so conveniently "combined." Right.

At the risk of repeating myself once again, if it was ~160 posts of spam and ~20 posts of content, yes. It would be locked. Just like we always do.

You didn't lock this one, or moved it to Spam. You deleted it. Had you locked it, and perhaps written a "lock due to spam, OP is free to start a new spam-free thread about the Chinese language," it would have been much more user-oriented.

That would be, and has always been, just fine.

Due to the thread having been deleted, and what with the later complaining about question marks, the reason for its deletion was less than clear, what has "always been just fine" was not all too apparent.

Yeah. That's it, Fass. We have a real hatred of non-Latin characters. You sure found us out. Good on you.

"I'd say it was because of the characters, and the Mod responsible not having the proper char-support enabled."

You were the one who moaned about question marks.

How does one ensure, if not a mod, that that doesn't happen? It seems hardly fair to the OP.

One can start by making the thread title readible to people who haven't downloaded a specific character support set beforehand. For example, by calling the thread 'do you speak chinese?' rather than '你会中文吗.' You are bound to attract 'WTF' answers if you don't even attempt to explain to people who don't speak Chinese what the thread is about.

For having being considered together, you sure were selective about which one led to the deletion. First it was the characters, then it was the title, then it was spam-jack, and now they're all oh, so conveniently "combined." Right.

Fass, if you troll like this again in Moderation you will be looking at an enforced vacation from these forums. If you are incapable of debating civility, you will not be allowed to debate at all.

You didn't lock this one, or moved it to Spam. You deleted it. Had you locked it, and perhaps written a "lock due to spam, OP is free to start a new spam-free thread about the Chinese language," it would have been much more user-oriented.

That is Tactical Grace's decision as a Moderator. Rather than describing the event, could you, say, tell us why it should have been handled any other way? What possible use can a thread have if its title is going to confuse half the forum instantly?

Due to the thread having been deleted, and what with the later complaining about question marks, the reason for its deletion was less than clear, what has "always been just fine" was not all too apparent.

I have yet to see another thread with a title requiring non-standard character support. It has never been 'just fine' because it's not happened.To make things easier:

Official ruling: thread titles requiring foreign character set downloads are banned.

There, that wasn't so hard.

And while I have no real opinion on the matter, the only way your barking cat would be a dog is if it were involved in a hideous accident with a gene transplicer. It's a pretty bad analogy - after all, if my little brother started to bark, he'd still be a human, not my dog.

Fass, if you troll like this again in Moderation you will be looking at an enforced vacation from these forums. If you are incapable of debating civility, you will not be allowed to debate at all.

"Big fan of cherry picking, aren't we? Ever consider that maybe, just maybe, all of these points are considered together? I know it's a stretch, but I can keep more than one data point in my mind at the same time."

"Yeah. That's it, Fass. We have a real hatred of non-Latin characters. You sure found us out. Good on you."

"But thank you for implying that we're all corrupt and biased towards role-players. Because, you know, Tac is a role-playing machine."

"If my cat could bark, it would be my dog. Any other irrelevencies you want to bring up, or can we stick with the thread in question?"

So, mods are allowed to be sarcastically acerbic, but when we regular users are, it's "trolling?" Or, are you gonna give The Most Glorious Hack the same warning you just gave me? Because I hardly feel that I dished out anything he already hadn't shown himself capable of dishing out, too.

So, mods are allowed to be sarcastically acerbic, but when we regular users are, it's "trolling?" Or, are you gonna give The Most Glorious Hack the same warning you just gave me? Because I hardly feel that I dished out anything he already hadn't shown himself capable of dishing out, too.

What does this have to do with the topic of this thread, Fass? Any other irrelevencies you want to bring up, or can we stick with the thread in question?

What does this have to do with the topic of this thread, Fass? Any other irrelevencies you want to bring up, or can we stick with the thread in question?

If you want me to start a new thread asking why I was chided for "trolling" and not "debating civility[sic!]," and no attention was paid to the mod who was no better himself, IMHO, then, sure, I'll start a new thread and ask for an explanation as to why I needed to be warned, and he didn't, but I thought keeping the events of this thread in this thread was the way to go.

So, an explanation by you here, or should I start a new thread? Will I be further chided for starting that thread, or is it best for me to just skip ahead and contact the admin?

If you want me to start a new thread asking why I was chided for "trolling" and not "debating civility[sic!]," and no attention was paid to the mod who was no better himself, IMHO, then, sure, I'll start a new thread and ask for an explanation as to why I needed to be warned, and he didn't, but I thought keeping the events of this thread in this thread was the way to go.

So, an explanation by you here, or should I start a new thread? Will I be further chided for starting that thread, or is it best for me to just skip ahead and contact the admin?

No, you will have a forumban for trolling moderators, and your overall aggressive and insulting tone throughout this thread. Mild sarcasm is nothing alongside things like:

So, basically, "other forums out there suck, you should be happy we claim not to suck as much, because we hypocritically allow a few token threads, while deleting others because some mod fails to have language support installed properly on his comp, thus erroneously claiming the thread was filled with "??????," and that should make you stop the criticism of the poor handling of this issue, and the poor handling of the larger issue of language bias in the moderation staff."

Well, gee. As long your suckage isn't quite like that of those others, then I guess we just need to pretend it isn't suckage at all. Oh, and be happy you don't delete me for mentioning this. Quite the standard to measure you by!

You have done nothing but hurl insults and allegations, accusing the moderators of 'language bias' because we are foolish enough to ask that someone try to allow non-Chinese speakers to understand their posts. Now that point has been addressed, you continue to hurl allegations of bias around and try to excuse your own behaviour with 'he's doing it too!'

Fass, 3-day forumban. Try to chill out in the meantime.

Question for clarity sake.

would you allow threads in foriegn languages to exsist if the titles were in English or is that in English font?

I Remember some German? Dutch? don't really know but I remember some Foreign language threads in the past that did seem to last for a while.

and would it help if, as a ruling also, that the OP also states in english the purpose of the thread to prevent (or at least cut back) the "WTF" spam?

just trying to keep it clear.

Question for clarity sake.

would you allow threads in foriegn languages to exsist if the titles were in English or is that in English font?

I Remember some German? Dutch? don't really know but I remember some Foreign language threads in the past that did seem to last for a while.

and would it help if, as a ruling also, that the OP also states in english the purpose of the thread to prevent (or at least cut back) the "WTF" spam?

just trying to keep it clear.

If the thread title is in English and meaningful enough, then the original post could be completely in another language. Or, to avoid the people that would still be clueless, a brief introduction might be in order.

But yes, so long as the thread title is not in a foreign character set and doesn't generate mainly spammy comments, the thread is quite free to exist on NS. (and the Dutch thread is here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=392194))

thanks eras, had lost it :D

I will begin by saying that there was very little in the thread to indicate that it was anything other than spam. The topic title was ????????. The post content was ??????????. The vast majority of subsequent posts were quotes of the ???????? and comments along the lines of 'WTF', 'omg spam' and even photos of spam - certainly the meat, and possibly even the tins (my recollection of the details is alas, imperfect). At no point did I get a Jolt pop-up window advising me that I needed to trawl the Microsoft website for a character set not included in my Windows installation CD. :rolleyes:

Simple fact is, I had no idea what the hell it was. I had no way of knowing or finding out either, unless you seriously expect us to ask spammers what they are up to and await a response before acting. To all intents and purposes, it was spam. Because it looked like literally (no really) thousands of other spam threads I have deleted previously.

"Hi there, I'm sorry to disturb you, but did you really mean to post a string of question marks, or is there something wrong with my computer? And those of a dozen other people?"

Why do I delete spam instead of locking it? Well, generally if a thread starts off OK and ends up being mostly spam, I just lock it, with a post to say it was locked because it was spam. Then the non-spammy stuff gets preserved. But if it starts off as spam, then there is no reason to keep it. Indeed, locking it and allowing it to be viewed only serves to reward spammers by drawing attention to, and immortalising their efforts.

I agree with the above ruling that all thread titles should be in a standard Western character set. At least then the poster's intent is obvious.

And yes Fass, we do suck less. Elsewhere, you are not allowed to write in a foreign language at all. Here, we only ask that you make the fact clear. Oh the hypocritical tyranny.

Instead of splitting the spam out *snip*
The Jolt interface isn't up to the job. You can delete a few spam posts manually, but splitting pages of it out, most of the time you can click all you like, and it won't even give you an error message.

So just to check in with you guys, you wouldn't have a problem with me restarting the chinese thread with an Pinyin (english characters chinese words) thread title and an in english OP warning of language support?

It should read something like this, 你会中文吗？(Can you speak chinese?) so that all readers know what the core topic is from the topic title.

That should be fine. The Asian Character Set for Windows XP is ridiculuously huge, something like 50MB, just for character support. While Windows users in Oceania may have this character set pre-installed, it is not preinstalled in America and most of Europe -- where most of our users live; therefore, chances are, the vast majority of users will see nothing other than "??????". Case in point: my work computer doesn't have the set installed, while my home computer does.

Since posts that will show as "???????" are doomed to being spammed, it would be much better to use English transliteration. So, transliteration in the title, and then a brief disclaimer, in English, stating what the point of the thread is, and that it will be using the Chinese character set, and so users without proper support will just see question marks.

I believe the first Dutch-language thread had a brief disclaimer that it was for discussions in Dutch; I'm sure CG or someone can correct me if I'm remembering wrong. You'll just need the extra disclaimer because of the character-set.

It should read something like this, 你会中文吗？(Can you speak chinese?) so that all readers know what the core topic is from the topic title.
Cool, and what about the poll options, are they fine in charaters?

That should be fine. The Asian Character Set for Windows XP is ridiculuously huge, something like 50MB, just for character support. While Windows users in Oceania may have this character set pre-installed, it is not preinstalled in America and most of Europe -- where most of our users live; therefore, chances are, the vast majority of users will see nothing other than "??????". Case in point: my work computer doesn't have the set installed, while my home computer does.

Since posts that will show as "???????" are doomed to being spammed, it would be much better to use English transliteration. So, transliteration in the title, and then a brief disclaimer, in English, stating what the point of the thread is, and that it will be using the Chinese character set, and so users without proper support will just see question marks.

I believe the first Dutch-language thread had a brief disclaimer that it was for discussions in Dutch; I'm sure CG or someone can correct me if I'm remembering wrong. You'll just need the extra disclaimer because of the character-set.
Ok no worries. Just wanted to check in with you guys, I don't want you to think I am being an indignant shit about all of this.

Cool, and what about the poll options, are they fine in charaters?
Poll options you can have in special characters, yes. They don't matter so much if the language issue is obvious from the thread title and body text.

I believe the first Dutch-language thread had a brief disclaimer that it was for discussions in Dutch; I'm sure CG or someone can correct me if I'm remembering wrong. Sort of, it's in Dutch:p

Sort of, it's in Dutch:p
Well, we could tell it was in Dutch. It didn't require a 50MB download and restart to work that out. So it was OK. :p

I note that for over a page of the Chinese thread, people were talking in 8-bit ASCII binary. Since it requires an external script to convert to 'real' characters, there's another example of something which is unreasonable.

Is this Ok for a Title/OP?
你会说中文吗?Nĭ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?
你会说中文吗？哪个NSers会说中文？你说哪个方言？Do you prefer traditional or simplified 汉字？（我不会写all in中文:p ） 你是中国人吗？

我
我是澳大利亚人。我会说英文和一点儿中文，和意大利文。现在我学中文。







Disclaimer: This thread is written mostly in chinese characters. Some computers come with chinese language support, some do not. If you do not have it and would like it, you can download it here (http://zsigri.tripod.com/fontboard/cjk/cjksupp.html) or get it off your Windows cd. That being said, this is a chinese language thread and is not for you to spam with your problems with the characters featured within. As you may or may not know, there was a recent Chinese-language thread which was deleted because it basically became a sh!tfight about language support. This thread has been given the official rubber stamp of reinstatement by the mods given this disclaimer is present. So, if you have any problems, consult the mods.

Seems OK. I hope that's a reputable vendor of language support packs. :p