Sonic Retro Admin to Enforce “English Only” Policy
Tristan Oliver, Founder | September 23, 2008
Tweaker: “I Want People to Know”
Yesterday’s coverage of a Sonic Fan Games HQ administrator’s blunt enforcement of an “English Only” policy on a new member who wrote his posts in both English and Portuguese drew volumes of reaction. Much of it criticized our story–and that included comments from our own staff–with some comments going so far as to level charges of personal bias against this site, and this reporter.
Still, our story was the second most read story of the day yesterday and, at present, is our most read story today. On that, our coverage on the matter continues today, though no longer in the context of SFGHQ for the moment, because another administrator of a major Sonic community hub has spoken out on this site, vowing to enforce a similar policy under his watch.
Tweaker, one of several administrators at the Sonic Retro forums, wrote on this site that he will enforce–apparently on his own–a policy similar to the one setup at SFGHQ. His actions are presumably in direct response to our reporting.
His words, unedited, are as follows:
Actually, let me make this statement right now:
I, Tweaker, an official respresentative of Sonic Retro, hearby state that anyone who does not speak English or speaks bad English will NOT be allowed to post on the Sonic Retro forums.
Are you going to make a news story about that? I hope you do, because that’s something I WANT people to know. English, motherfucker, do you speak it?!
While Tweaker is an administrator of Retro, he is not the only one, and where his words may become a problem is in the arbitrary nature of them–conflicting, even, with the forum’s own policy.
The official board rules at Retro, written by webmaster Scarred Sun and revised in July of this year, do offer a policy on proper English, though with how it is written, the policy speaks more in the context of basic grammar than anything else. The policy even advises non-English speakers not to “worry too much:”
2. Write in proper English.
We’re not HUGE grammar Nazis (except Quickman), but it is expected that basic spelling and punctuation will be evident in all of your posts. If you type in all lowercase, use “txt talk” and other various incorrect English conventions, and slap ten emoticons into each of your posts, expect to be banned quickly. It’s not that much to ask, really.
If English isn’t your native tongue, then don’t worry too much, but still try to put effort into typing properly. There’s a difference between not knowing English and being a lazy typist.
However, the official board rules do allow for these types of broad administrator powers:
Comply with any additional requests and instructions given by an admin. For example, if an admin tells you to remove certain element from your posts, remove it, period.
That noted, we checked all of Tweaker’s posts in the past 24 hours, and as of 6.30AM ET this morning, Tweaker has made no advisement to forum members of this sudden direction in policy. Further, as far as we can tell, there has been no “litmus test” to challenge Tweaker’s words on the Retro forums thus far.
A quick glance yesterday at the policy of five major Sonic community hubs aside from SFGHQ, including Sonic Retro, revealed no blatant “English Only” policy on four of those hubs–only rules as it related to proper spelling and grammar, with leniency being offered to non-native English speakers. The X-Cult community was the only other one with blatant “English Only” rules.
We have put in an E-Mail requesting comment from the Sonic Retro webmaster, Scarred Sun, asking her thoughts toward these comments, and whether she will go along with Tweaker’s sudden policy shift. Unless her comments show up here first, we will pass along whatever word we get. In the interim, you are invited to continue the debate and discussion in the comment boxes below.
Filed Under Sonic Fan Flash, Sonic Scene
Now your just making an ass of yourself.
“Still, our story was the second most read story of the day yesterday and, at present, is our most read story today.”
->
Oh wow… incredible… A fluff piece that shows how much of a Jack-Hole you’ve become was the 2nd most read story on your site… Whats this one for then?… A backup in case the full extent of your biased writing wasn’t fully noticed?
Tristan Oliver.
Douchebag.
I ask it again,why the hell did you waste your time writing this?
Take this away,this is just embarrassing.
And while i am still here,Sonic Nexus is awesome Slingerland,i played the demo and had a good time with it.I just love the music for Sunset Shore.Keep up the good work.
wow. People are fucking bitches.
“If English isn’t your native tongue, then don’t worry too much, but still try to put effort into typing properly. There’s a difference between not knowing English and being a lazy typist” <- This! From what I’ve seen, the dude’s making an effort to fit in. Help him. Try to teach him English. Be kind to the dude. End of it.
Holy shit, LOL
This man has a sense of humor after all!
This shit is fucking awesome.
In fact, this English Only shit is awesome.
Oh god this site. Did this appear in the giant BREAKING NEWS banner on the front page?
I’m pretty sure you have some kind of syndrome at this point, TSSZ.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Extended_Edition
In protest!!!!
I got a thread locked at Sonic Stadium for it being in a non-English language.
http://www.sonicstadium.org/board/index.php?showtopic=34951&pid=608437&st=0&#entry608437
Looks like you better do a story on them now, too.
http://timetwisted.sonicstrike.net/ I don’t have a forum but I have a shout box. Sometimes its broken but it was working at the moment so I posted a rule that saying English only. I need my article now too.
This is getting out of hand.
For page hits and nothing else, as well.
Man, you really need to get a life. It’s so obvious you’re trolling that I won’t even bother with a response anymore.
Slow News Day?
@Svend: Well, if it’s a hot-button issue… obviously it was worth talking about, no? Though I stand by my comment that I, personally, don’t think this was really worth talking about, everybody in the comments certainly seemed to think there was conversation in this, even if it was mostly people fanning the flames (which is continuing in full force, here). It’s always nice to see sensationalist headlines (sorry, Tristan) met with sensationalist reactions.
Everybody’s doing a whole lot of shouting over nothing.
I really don’t understand why you’ve reported in these…It’s just a forum. And it’s not your forum.
@Ryan: With all due respect, I don’t believe it was the topic that got people reacting, it was the attack on someone over a trivial matter, and other things that I covered in the other news post.
I agree though, everyone’s getting riled over something that is… well, not really worth it.
I’m not riled up as much as I think this is absolutely hilarious. Like, is this serious? Really?
@Svend: As I see it, it wasn’t really an attack on anybody. Previous posts about Slingerland were made because Sonic Nexus is an important fangame - one of the most important. That, in some regard, makes him a bit of a community celebrity, as he is sort of a figurehead for the project. That sort of stuff more or less comes with the territory. And while I’ve always agreed with the “At SFGHQ, we speak english. We ask that you also speak english.” rule, Slingerland was sort of cold about it in the referenced topic - or, at least, that’s how I perceived it (tricky thing this internet, you can’t really glean a tone of voice from text).
It’s just the news. Sure, it might get fluffed up in spots (not every story writes itself), but I sincerely doubt it’s personal.
Yeah, I’m laughing, too. This stuff is pretty funny. Everybody translating their stuff for everybody to submit to this site has been hilarious.
I’m done though. I’ve proven my point enough.
¿¡POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR QUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUé!?
LOL
You know I’ve been thinking back. TSSZ just hasn’t been the same since it came back it kinda sucks now. As I recall Tristan used to wine and cry about being depressed because of the website or something like that and that’s when it such down. So the fact that he’s posted this doesn’t really surprise me. I think Tristan has always been kind of a drama queen especially when I think about what has happened in the past. Looking over these articles and remembering bits and pieces of the past Tristan must be kind of a pathetic guy.
Whoa, not even people with bad english … I´m german and I consider my english as acceptable, but sometimes I can´t get it right, does that mean that I´m realy not allowed to post anything on any of these forums? Well, thats kinda hard y´ know!
But I understand the main problem here, but afer all, nobody is perfect! And I can´t be perfect all the time either! :/
I applaud Tweaker, and anyone else who enforces such a policy.
To anyone else who supports this kind of policy, I applaud you as well.
Pinche Tweaker, que pendejo es.
You actually went and made a story out of that comment? Really? That’s pretty crazy man, what the hell were you thinking? As for why it’s being read so much? That’s because we’re all linking it to our pals, talking about how absurd it is that you posted something like this, in the way you posted it. Rather than posting a generalized article, you singled people and communities out and wrote the news story in an EXTREMELY biased manner. You based your entire article on an assumption, not track record.
The being the case, please allow me to completely rend your article and beliefs of “discrimination” into shreds. As someone who’s been at SFGHQ for many, many, years and administrator, I feel I have a pretty good idea of wtf I’m talking about. Actual history trumps individual incidents any time, wouldn’t you say? So, that being the case, let’s look at what SFGHQ actually DOES with non-english speakers, what REALLY happens, shall we?
In every instance that I or any other moderator has dealt with a person who has had horrible typing issues, we often try to find out if they’re ESL first. If they are ESL, we try our best to help them improve their writings into a reasonably readable post. We HELP them out, so that they can communicate appropriately. We have a rather extensive list of members who have been on the forums for YEARS and speak English as a second language and they’re still around today as VALUED members of the community.
HOWEVER, we DO require that you TRY to write in English, because we are an English speaking forum, period. The issue here was that this person came in saying we should have portugese speaking mods to conform to HIM and his specific, individual needs. He went on to, for the most part, have a generally lax attitude about even trying to communicate in English, the UNANIMOUSLY SELECTED COMMON LANGUAGE OF THE FORUM. THAT’S why Slinger got pissed.
It’s not discrimination, because it’s based ENTIRELY on their ability to communicate with other members of the forum. Where they are from, what race they are and so on is completely irrelevant. We do NOT tolerate racism on our forums and THAT is in our rules. While we might scold people who fail to communicate people, racists are banned without question, without second chances. Your story on SFGHQ does not reflect what actually goes on at SFGHQ, my dear Tristan and I feel that it’s only fair you amend the story, though I know you won’t.
As for Tweaker, I’d like to thank him for trying to defend our community and the undeserved slander. It seems however, that as a result, he himself has come under attack as well. I’d say that really sucks, but I support him in full and feel that god dammit, if someone doesn’t want to allow non-English on their forums, they have a right to. We are NOT a government institution that everyone has a right to. We are NOT a required program that one must attend by law. We’re a fucking Sonic community and we shouldn’t be REQUIRED to learn Portuguese, Spanish, French or whatever the hell language of the week it is to communicate with these people, just like THEY shouldn’t be REQUIRED to learn English to communicate with us. Why? Because we don’t HAVE to communicate in the first place.
It’s simple, if you don’t speak English, you don’t have to come, it’s ok. If you want to come anyway, then that’s a decision YOU made. If YOU decide to come to US, then the burden of being able to communicate appropriately is on YOU. If I were to go to China, I wouldn’t expect the entire nation to learn English just so they can talk to me, hell no. The responsibility is MINE to learn enough Chinese to ask for directions properly and if I can’t, I probably shouldn’t be going to China now should I?
All SFGHQ asks is to show some friggin effort to try and communicate with us on a reasonable level. I don’t give two hoots in hell about the semantics of what our rules page says and blah blah blah.I’m talking about what ACTUALLY OCCURS on a day to day basis in our community, because THAT’S what matters. That day to day basis includes us helping those who are ESL to the best of our ability, so long as THEY try to put as much effort into communicating with them as we do. Babelfish doesn’t take a lot of effort and that’s why Slinger didn’t put a lot of effort into dealing with this guy, ESPECIALLY after he started demanding we have Portuguese speaking mods. If that’s a mistranslation, it’s his fault for using babelfish and he’s responsible for whatever statements the fish made in his name, just as we would be.
Oh and for the record, some members might remember that I happen to be Greek actually, so this is coming from someone with a non-English speaking background. So umm… yeah, your “original” story has no merit and attacking Tweaker because he called you out on it is really, really, low. Way to punch someone in the balls Tristan, seriously. I hope your proud of yourself.
English, motherfucker, do you speak it?!
This is crazy,
1: because neither of the two languge arguments should have been put up here.
2: because its pretty obvius tweaker was kidding
3 : If the first instance that started this conflict was already translated into english, y was slingerland complaining?
Although the Forums are owned by english speakers, the sonic community is world wide, it started in JAPAN people. If the person has translated it , doesn’t that mean its ok. its no reason to bar people from forums just because they speak another languge predominantly.
@Impish: Well yeah, but the thing is, this guy was saying we should have a Portuguese speaking mod and was generally being kinda a jerk about trying to make his shit understandable, ya’ know? It was a babelfish mess and no one had any idea what he was going on about and then he went asking us to make a some random joker a mod because he didn’t speak English and wanted someone in a position of power who spoke his language, which sorry, that’s friggin crazy. You don’t go into a restaurant in Mexico and demand they hire a manager that speaks English, now do you? Tristan took that, WOEFULLY exaggerated and twisted what actually happened and here we are now
Man PC0, I haven’t seen you since like… you made me and Brad mods. Good to see you.
Looks like Tristan doesn’t have the balls to respond anymore. I guess he realizes what an enormous douchebag he is.
[...] recently, Tweaker spoke out on this site just a week ago, proclaiming quite vocally that he will not allow anyone who cannot speak English to post on the forum. We [...]
OH WOW
Come on Tristan, keep digging that there internet hole~
I guess this is the closest thing to having a News The Didn’t Quite Make The Headlines of the new TSSZ, sadly, it made the headlines
[...] Scarred Sun did reply to our request for comment on a previous story we ran, but only after the story was published–13 days after the fact, and on a completely different [...]
Tweaker! you are nazi bitch, bigger bitch than a nazi! Why Vincent isn’t even a moderator? Cuz you isn’t staff there? Высосите мой член. Sorba mi pene. Saugen Sie meinen Penis. Sucez mon pénis. Sugue o meu pênis. Sosni huitsa mudak!