Sonic Retro Admin to Enforce “English Only” Policy

By
Tristan Oliver
– 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.

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