The "warning" for "bad grammar"

[Eliwood]

This is probably going to make me sound kind of stupid and I realize I shouldn't question the rules but why are we giving warnings for people using bad grammar?

I can understand it to some degree but if you know what they're trying to say then why are you getting on them like that? Text talk I can understand but... if you can understand what they're trying to say then why are they getting infractions for it? I've seen people who state before in the past that English is not their main language and still get in trouble for it. Why are they getting a warning for this if you can understand what they're saying, "poor" or not? That just seems kind of mean. It'd be like punishing some foreign guy coming into your store trying to communicate with you using his small amount of English that he knows. "You had better learn to speak proper English the next time you come into my store or else I will not allow you in until you do."

I'm probably the only one here who has thought this but whatever I kinda want to hear the answer for this one.

 

[Ice]

When it comes to the foreign language thing, I don't really think I've seen what you mean. For the most part I think we've been pretty lenient on foreign language speakers, and that's good.

But for the most part, I agree with you. I generally think that we're a community of jaded older dudes who sometimes forget that our fanbase is really, really young. I know we've got certain standards to uphold, but damn, slack is not something given freely around here.

 

[Ultimate]

No, Eliwood, you aren't the only one. I've seen warnings given to people who obviously do not speak English as a first language and have wondered the same thing. However, I haven't seen this happen in about a year or so.

 

[MascaraSnake]

If English is not your first language and you clearly make an effort to be understood, we're lenient. If your whole sentence is an unreadable trainwreck because you used Google translator, we're not.

 

[Mystic]

Well, might as well start from the top here. The primary reasons for the existence and continued enforcement of that rule are to help keep the forums easily readable and to help avoid the issues that forums frequently get where the guy that never spells anything correctly gets isolated as a running joke of the forums. I would prefer outcasts get banned for real than remain an outcast punching bag.

The people who get and continue to get infractions for this tend to fall into a couple categories:

1. People who simply don't try. This is, sadly, the most common category. These are people who think that fitting in with the standards of a community that they just joined isn't important, and these people I have absolutely no sympathy for when they get banned.
2. People who are too young to know the basic rules of English grammar. I'm not talking about complexities like semicolons, I'm talking about 5-8 year old kids who can't spell single-syllable words. Not to be mean, but people that are too young to even express their thoughts properly probably shouldn't be posting on an internet forum until they grow up enough to be able to do so.
3. People who have legitimate mental disabilities. This one is frustrating for everyone involved, but the few historical incidents of this here generally involved even more significant issues beyond just the lack of basic grammar.
4. People who do not know English. This one's a little more complicated so I'll come back to it in a second.

Remember that a significant percentage of the people who get a warning or infraction actually fix the problem. The hope is that most people will fit into this category and this is the reason why we have an infraction system that requires you make multiple mistakes to get banned. We want the newcomers that can improve do so so they can fit in with everyone else.

The biggest problem, of course, is that the internet is a global service, and many people on the planet with computers do not speak English. These people sometimes have a broken understanding of English, or occasionally none at all and are using automatic translation programs such as Babelfish. For these people, we try to apply the following basic guidelines for their posts in the community:

1. Is their post readable? If it's completely unintelligible, there's no sense in keeping them on the forums. The forums are a place to have conversations about things, and it's impossible to have a conversation with someone you can't understand.
2. What is their post about? Having a foreign member using Babelfish to ask an occasional question is a lot better than having that same member try to socialize. We try our best to accommodate people using the Help or Editing Help forums with bad English because most people posting there came because they have a specific problem that they couldn't find the answer to anywhere else. There are millions of other forums on the internet for them to socialize with other gamers, though, so they should find one in their own language for that purpose.
3. Is the author trying? This one is HUGE to me. If the author is clearly trying their best to write a proper English sentence and simply doesn't have the ability to do so, we try not to give them a hard time. Lack of understanding is not an excuse not to try, though.

I know this may be frustrating to some people, but this is, at the end of the day, an English forum. The staff all speaks English, and I would be completely incapable of moderating posts written in other languages. With very few exceptions, you'll find this to be the case at almost any forum you visit on the internet, regardless of their chosen language. We have to draw the line somewhere, and we've chosen to draw the line with emphasis on forum readability instead of for including the maximum percentage of participants.

 

[Sapheros]

One thing I'd like to mention because it'll probably happen to me, the forums can get a little uptight by missing as much as a DOT or a COMMA. This is kinda annoying, as one thing, I accidentally may miss a comma or use a semicolon because I meant to press the apostrophe button and I accidentally skip over it. Two hours later, I'll get an infraction for not making the corrections. What I'm trying to say here is that the forums can be a little too stiff in the grammar area. I thought I was in a family-friendly/fan-friendly Fanbase, not an English college.

 

[Jayoshi]

I think the main problem here is that the rule is enforced far too strongly. I even saw a guy get an infraction on "bad grammar" even though it was nearly perfect, probably the only thing being a slight lack of capitalization.

That's not asking for clarity or better readability. That's nitpicking.

To be honest, there does need to be a set point on good typing skills, but not to a professional point. If someone doesn't type in perfect format and ends up looking a bit childish, that's not the staff's fault, and it never should be. However, if that person makes a post that's more than a bit annoying to read, then it's at least reasonable to give an infraction, even if relatively strict.

 

[CyanS]

Those who saw my first postes in this forum know that english is not my first language. I had a lot of warning and infraction for bad grammar or spelling but now i do a lot of effort to write readable sentences (i spend like 3 minute rereading my message before posting it). So my opinion is to not give infraction to those who are trying their best or those who just forget a dot or something like that.(I hope i didn t do some mistakes here).

 

[Ultimate]

Not sure whether or not you care, but I wanted to let you know that I believe your reasoning is fair, Mystic. Also, thanks for taking the time to explain.

 

[Mystic]

I think the main problem here is that the rule is enforced far too strongly. I even saw a guy get an infraction on "bad grammar" even though it was nearly perfect, probably the only thing being a slight lack of capitalization.

That's not asking for clarity or better readability. That's nitpicking.

Actually, this goes back to my previous point on "is the person trying?" Someone who doesn't use their shift key in the entire post is clearly not trying. While we can all read a post that doesn't use capitalization, punctuation, and line breaks, it's a lot harder to do so because those grammatical features are in the writing system to help the reader process the information faster. Since someone who isn't capitalizing anything in their post but otherwise has everything correct is almost certainly aware of the proper rules of English and just lazy, the infraction is clearly justified in that case. It's especially damning when someone who is English as a second language does a better job than the native speaker simply because the native speaker doesn't even try.

We're not asking for perfection, because we all make mistakes. We ARE asking you to TRY to write correctly and to proofread your own post for errors before submitting it. A forum is not a chat room, and time isn't a limitation in getting your message across, so there is plenty of time to read over your original post and catch most of your mistakes.

 

[Rob]

Spoiler

i mean yeah i can type like this and you can understand it but why should you have to go through the effort of understanding it i mean really it just makes your life harder to understand a paragraph like this and you have to put effort into reading it the amount of effort put by everyone into reading it far outweighs the effort that would be made by the op to just make it work properly and its really not fair to ask that everyone have to go and do that when we could just make the op fix it in the first place and it really seems reasonable to us to have that be a rule than to make each and every one of you endure this type of bullshit make sense now

Just to emphasize exactly what is being discussed here.

 

[clairebun]

i tend to lurk the forums occasionally, and whenever i visit the introductions topic and see a wall of red text on each post, for the most part the way i'm typing now is the worst thing that's being infracted upon.

Please tell me if that's not legible, because on any other forum I go to, there is at least one person I know who talks like that, and I have absolutely no problem reading it. Huge blocks of text with no paragraph breaks are actually way more offensive because the information isn't separated into something digestible. But all lowercase.... whatever. As long as you have punctuation, really.

 

[Deadpool The Hedge..]

It really shouldn't matter if you made like one or two or few more mistakes but if people don't know good english and the translator they use is not good, then cut them a break at least make it known in the post that your not good with english like other people do. I find it sad that they really need a topic about this spelling errors for a few things. But on the other hand if your text is like a bunch of letters and no one can read it then I understand why they give you the warning. But about 90% of the time we can read what people are saying. This is one of the reason's why hardly no one want's to post.

 

[amperbee]

I don't actually speak english as my first language, and I tend to use a dictionary to check which words I'm writing correctly.
Also, as Google Translator isn't a super translator that translates perfectly every single pixel, I have to write my phrases with whatever I learned thanks to the games and the school.

Oh, I learned most of this english because the videogames tend to be made with the almost same language: English.

(And, I have to use Google Translator to check my (for example this) "phrases", to translate to spanish, so I can see if what I'm writing makes a readable sentence.

And it almost does. So, sorry for my grammar.)

 

[karob]

Actually, the bad grammar threats have made me more careful about proofreading my posts everywhere on the internet. As I go to post something on Facebook my mind says "Oh crap, I'm gonna be banned from Facebook if I use 'there' instead of 'their'," so I check my post grammar again. Also, I get an adrenaline rush when I actually do post. Who knows if some rogue punctuation slipped by my careful guard? Who knows if Mystic is waiting around the corner with a banchainsaw?

I think that this forum is too restrictive about grammar use. I really can't complain, though, because it has only been good for me.

 

[Charybdizs]

I think that this forum is too restrictive about grammar use. I really can't complain, though, because it has only been good for me.

If it was good for you, then it wouldn't be too restrictive, would it? It's either good because it helps you, or bad because it harms you.

 

[Lat']

The infractions for bad English are way too strict!!
I never get any infraction about my bad English in any other forum!
(SRB2 Skybase, NSMBHD...) I am French and it isn't easy to write a post without amount of faults, I'm trying to do my best.
That's like if you were on a French board, and get an infraction for this.
Of course, it isn't the fault of the moderators and the admin, they do what they are supposed to do. (spent 2 mins to reading my message before posting to avoid useless infraction.)

 

[Burning-Fox]

They may be strict but it tells people "LEARN ENGLISH OR GO AWAY".
It's difficult to do it perfectly, but not impossible.

It also prevents:
"m8 hi omgzzzzz lol wuu2 :)"

...Which personally, boils my blood.
*eye twitch* But yeah. Strict, but effective.

That's all I can say.

 

[Lat']

We didn't mean this, It's just because someone who doesn't know how to propely speak English (like me) will get an infraction for a totally readable text. (I agree the "Your post make absolutey no sense") And, of course, I agree getting an infraction for "m8 hi omgzzzzzz lol wuu2 :)"
Just be more indulgent with the peoples who try to do their best with the English.

 

[karob]

If it was good for you, then it wouldn't be too restrictive, would it? It's either good because it helps you, or bad because it harms you.

It is good for me but that doesn't mean it is good for everybody.