Implemented Consider Removing the "No-English" Policy

[lydian]

For context, recently a new rule has been placed (or rather an old rule has started to be enforced, whichever it may be) that prohibits speaking non-English languages in SmogTours.

This rule seems extremely out of place for me, for several other non-native speakers, and I've even seen some native speakers themselves not being fond of this rule at all. I understand that 1) speaking in a different language can interrupt the flow of the chat, to a certain extent, and that 2) you'd need moderators fluent in said languages for effective moderation, but both these problems have relatively attainable solutions, that to me, are way better than blanket muting someone for speaking their native language will ever be.

Firstly, the point about interrupting the flow of the chat, you could very easily create a separate room for non-English languages, or perhaps, a room for each language. This does mean moderators will have to keep an eye on more than one room, but it shouldn't be much of a problem, especially since you could easily turn modchat% in the respective rooms if no moderators are available. There won't have to be a Portuguese / Spanish / Italian speaking moderator online 24/7, but I don't think it'd be much of a stretch to allow conversations in other languages in a separate room if a moderator happens to be online at the time. And that brings me to my second point:

This is the current authlist of smogtours:

Administrators (~):
chaos, Eo, HoeenHero, jake, kjdaas, Marty, perry, Quite Quiet, The Immortal, yuyuko, Zarel

Moderators (@):
Aurella, Djokra, Eien, hogg, kris, Merritty, Quantum Tesseract, reyscarface, rozes, sparksblade, TDK, tennisace, Tony, Tricking

Drivers (%):
Eereshkigal, MajorBowman, Malekith!, Perish Song, phiwings99, vani

Obviously, some of these are PS! staff that kept their rank by proxy, and some are inactive, but just from a quick glance at the list, you can easily spot fluent speakers of non-English languages that are reasonably active (to name a few: Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, etc.), and of course, you can also recruit other prospective moderators that are fluent in the aforementioned languages (as well as a couple of others that have a reasonable number of native speakers, like say, French). PS! does this, so I don't really see the problem with SmogTours trying it, on a smaller scale. Granted, I'd imagine it's not easy to recruit that many people willing to help with this kind of stuff actively, but I'd very much like to see an attempt at providing native speakers a way to express themselves and root for their fellow countrymates without risking getting muted or having their voice removed, even. I think it'd be very beneficial for us native speakers, and hopefully, it shouldn't be too bad on the moderation team if you get an additional one or two people that are willing to moderate each language, and modjoin the international room(s) in case no mod is online to moderate these.

I very much hope this proposal is taken seriously, and that it's possible to make strive for this to happen. Either way, have a nice day!

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

We just had a talk about it, and we're going to relax the policy. As an English-exclusive chatter, I haven't had a problem with non-English languages, but I haven't always been online and active for some of the spammier moments. I would rather not add additional moderator overhead by introducing separate rooms. Here are some guidelines I've laid out to define moderation moving forward that I believe are reasonable, easily understood, and will result in a better chat experience for all if heeded and/or enforced:

1) Spamming

We've observed in recent times some moments where spam has flooded the main chat and forced us to mute it completely. If spam goes on for more than 5 seconds (or if the chat is scrolling too fast to feasibly read anything), moderators should start actively muting people. Chanting is fine in the ~5 minute windows at the start/end of the game (and maybe after certain big plays), but if it occurs after every turn, it becomes annoying, so we reserve the right to mute habitual offenders.

2) Conversations

Conversations shouldn't take over a chat; if certain people are repeatedly having conversations in non-English, we reserve the right to warn early offenders / devoice habitual offenders. This applies just as much to off-topic conversations in English that take over main chat during a game, too! We want anyone to be able to jump into a chat and talk about the game, and that becomes more difficult when there are potentially multiple side-conversations dominating chat.

3) Habitual offenders

As mentioned in these points, we are going to distinguish between habitual offenders and random incidents or one-time offenders. I am sure all of you know whom I am talking about.