Posts by analogwalker5

Look, I don't necessarily see deleting posts as some kind of formal punishment, but more often than not, it feels like a massive power trip from the moderators or admins—just a way to flex their muscles or force their specific vision of how the rules should work and what the vibe of the community ought to be, which honestly feels pretty insulting when you're just trying to participate.
Personally, I haven't had any beef with the mods here, but I used to hang out on this huge international language subreddit where the moderation was absolutely brutal; they were constantly nuking posts, and man, it drove me insane. I mostly hung out in the sub-section dedicated to Slavic languages, but then out of nowhere, the mods started getting super aggressive about people switching languages in threads that were officially set to English. I totally disagreed with that rigid way of doing things, and because I pushed back, they ended up wiping out a ton of my posts—posts that were actually super helpful and stayed right on topic, they just weren't in English, which basically gave me all the motivation I needed to just boycott their moderation entirely. They spent a long time deleting my stuff, sent me a few warnings, and eventually just banned me altogether (they actually moved to permanent bans only there since they realized temporary ones weren't doing squat).

Is deleting a post even considered a punishment? Honestly, I don't think so, because the whole point is just to defend the vibe or get things back on track on Reddit, not to actually penalize someone for breaking a rule. Plus, those Cardboard posts can sometimes just stay up anyway.

I’m honestly thinking about dropping a post like that over on "Improve Your English," but I don't want to risk getting slapped with a ban or something, otherwise I definitely wouldn't even dream of trying it.

If I go onto that thread and post something like, "I hate English! It’s seriously the most disgusting language I’ve ever encountered!"—is my post gonna get nuked by the mods?

Hey everyone! I’m a little lost here—I can't quite wrap my head around what actually counts as trolling on this forum. Is it just one of those subjective things where it depends on who you ask? And honestly, does breaking that rule actually mess with how the whole community runs, or is it just a minor thing? If anyone could throw out some real-world examples of what qualifies as trolling right here on our boards, I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!

bluemason3 said:You're lying. 🙂

And there's plenty of other things I don't want, but nobody ever asks.🤣

I suggest you just start an American grammar forum with two or three former Oak Tree regulars. They'll probably get bored of it after a week once they realize there's nobody left to annoy with their pointless drama.😳

Look, this is a public forum open to absolutely everyone, so anyone can sign up and see whatever they want. It’s one thing to have access, but it’s a whole different story when you consider how much it actually helps—or doesn't—when people are posting stuff that isn't strictly following American standards.

Brian Edwards6 said:Because of official (formal) reasons.👍

Yeah, honestly, it’s all just being done in the name of so-called "legal certainty," which is total nonsense because it has absolutely nothing to do with actually being practical in the real world.

lonebadger6 said:1. Correct.
2. Incorrect, and here is why...

The points that are looking pretty shaky are:

1. The idea that if I understand Language X, it’s fine to use it (but if someone else understands Language Y, they should get the same treatment).
2. The notion that this forum is a private playground where we can do whatever we want (just because everything in the US is private doesn't mean people are exempt from following the law).

It might be about time we started drafting some actual concrete rules for the forum.

1. This just doesn't track, because we aren't debating whether Flemish is allowed while Urdu is banned. Language X—in this case, Mexican—is understood by every single person on this forum, from start to finish. If anyone claims they don't understand it, let's be blunt... they're lying. That makes it incomparable to those languages that "someone out there" happens to understand. Everyone understands "some" language. It's nonsense to compare a language that every American here fully grasps with the fact that there might be one random user who understands Mongolian.
Your argument actually carries much more weight when you're talking about English, since there are certainly plenty of users here who don't speak it fluently.

2. Forum.hr isn't breaking any laws by allowing other languages, and a few people have already tried to explain that to you. You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood what "official language" actually means.
Besides, regardless of that, even in the United States, we have public media outlets that publish or broadcast in other languages—like minority newspapers or news segments in English or German—and they aren't breaking any laws either...

I think the real point is that we aren't trying to stop communication in the heart of our community, where the vast majority of users speak American English and 99.99% of posts are written in it. There should be rules requiring posts to be in American English if possible and it is recommended to translate anything that might be unintelligible to the "average American." Translating from Mexican or Canadian is completely unnecessary because anyone who knows standard American English understands those languages just fine, and it makes zero sense to insist that native Mexican or Canadian speakers write in strict American English standards—practically everything is understood, and it would be useless to write in some "quasi-English" (which would be like that "quasi-Mexican" post in this thread) instead of standard Mexican or Canadian, because it doesn't help anyone understand better; it just "mangles" the language.

We also have to keep in mind that the person posting doesn't necessarily have to be able to translate foreign text into American English if that text isn't meant for Americans, especially since the author might have very limited or zero active knowledge of the foreign language they are quoting.

If a user is intentionally writing in a foreign language that Americans normally wouldn't understand, then yeah, that counts as trolling and should definitely be sanctioned.

Anyway, if the rules or recommendations regarding language choice are broken, a moderator should only step in if it actually ruins communication. Honestly, the best move is to send a private message to the American user who broke the rule, explaining what the issue is, so they can judge that person's English skills and their actual intentions.

Look, you can moderate pretty much any standard language when people are using tools like Google Translate to drop posts. The real headache isn't even about the tech; it's just about preventing people from shutting down communication by using languages that aren't common on a specific forum—basically, the more obscure or unintelligible a language is, the harder it becomes to keep a decent discussion going. But you also have to weigh how difficult it is to understand against what the user actually intends to do: are they just some random visitor popping in with a question or a comment despite not knowing American English (which is totally fine by me), or do they actually know the language but are intentionally making things difficult just to be a jerk—you know, trolling—which is absolutely unacceptable.
We also really need to keep in mind that speakers of the Mexican or Canadian standards can't always switch over to the American standard as easily as some people think it should be. So, it’s worth questioning whether we should even demand that everyone write in the official American standard if they can clearly understand us, especially since writing in the Mexican or Canadian standard doesn't actually stop anyone from communicating normally.

Patrick Miller3 said:Well, I did exaggerate certain words just to make sure the Mexicans on the forum found them funny—though, honestly, what I was actually trying to say came through perfectly fine.
I have to hand it to you, though; the fact that you make such an effort to write in proper American English shows real respect for the country and the majority of people posting here.

If I were posting on a Mexican forum, I’d go out of my way to write in Mexican—or if it were a Mexican forum, I’d write in Mexican.

To me, that’s just the only logical and decent way to handle it. It isn't about racism, nationalism, or any kind of chauvinism; it’s simply about basic etiquette for participants from different parts of the world.

Actually, it would be quite interesting if some "pure" Englishman logged onto the forum and started "chatting" in English—since that's the globally accepted standard, right? That would be perfectly acceptable, wouldn't it? 😁

Well, let’s face it, you aren't going to find an Englishman hanging out here—he wouldn't even be able to sign up, let alone jump into a debate, because almost everything is in American or at least closely related languages that most Americans barely understand, so he'd just be lost. If he actually knew American, he’d probably just be typing in that.
The real issue is how much communication is being stifled—I honestly don't know how much English you Americans actually know, but over in Bulgaria, English is mostly just understood by people under 35 or 40.

Patrick Miller3 said:bluemason3, come on now—don't try to spin this. This entire forum has felt hollow and lackluster for the last two or three years. Both younger users and the old guard are jumping ship from Forum.hr because the topics are just too diluted, bluemason3—really, it's been a long time coming.
There was a certain charm back in the day within the science section, Politics, and Informatics—but those subforums eventually fell apart because everything got spread too thin across endless sub-sections.
The whole of Forum.hr needs a complete overhaul—a proper reconstruction—and then maybe we'll see more high-quality contributors again. The better posters are leaving in droves because the site is cluttered with kids who are frankly difficult to engage with.

(since it's permitted to write in Mexican, I'll be doing that from now on—it’s much easier for me to express myself clearly without worrying about those specific vowel nuances)

Let’s be clear: this isn't trolling—it's simply my democratic right, and I think you all know what I mean.

Best regards!

Honestly, I feel like my grasp on Mexican is actually way stronger than my Mexican-to-English translation skills, so I went ahead and tried to "fix" the text into what I personally consider to be proper, authentic Mexican based on how I know it.
I’m out here doing my absolute best to write in proper American English whenever I can, but man, even when you're trying your hardest, things can still slip through the cracks. It’s not just about those little grammar tweaks or how you structure a sentence—it’s way more complicated than that, especially when you're constantly trying to navigate all those subtle linguistic differences between various regional dialects and styles.

Hey everyone! Just wondering, am I strictly required to stick to American English here on this forum?
Thanks in advance!