UDWiki talk:Administration/Policy Discussion/English Administration

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Dicuss

Discussy belowy. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 21:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I can certainly get behind something like this. With very few exceptions, everything else in UD is in English, so it should only follow that anything related to Administrative purposes on the wiki be conducted in English. While I certainly have nothing against people using other languages on the wiki, using them on Admin pages (like the example) just obfuscates the point and leads to confusion and inside jokes where they are not needed. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 21:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree. It's fine elsewhere on the wiki, but on the Admin pages, it's either there to be funny or annoying. In either case, it creates unnecessary work for other people since they have to go look up translations and deal with the inaccuracies therein. Plus, some of the non-English stuff posted was done by people using online translators, so even if the users of the Admin pages did speak that language, it might be nonsense anyway.

The only way I could see this harming anyone is if we ended up with someone completely incapable of speaking in English on the wiki who needed to talk on the Admin pages, which would be kinda odd, given that the game and the wiki are both entirely/primarily conducted in English. —Aichon— 21:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I concur.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 22:01, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

You could use an online translator, you silly folks. D: --Janus ^talk 22:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

But that takes effort! There's certainly gonna be a portion of people who cba to look it up, and what do they get? Nothing. Just nothing...--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 22:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Aw.. :( --Janus ^talk 23:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is a huge problem, but I have no issues with fixing it. Cyberbob  Talk  05:01, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, why not. If it stops stupid crap on admin pages like the last couple of days --

 

 

 

 

05:12, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

OH FINE

You guys are mean. I won't do it anymore then. Make the policy still though. :( -- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 23:00, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Wasn’t just you. Plus, Lelouch's comments really were just gibberish, essentially, based on some talk I read on a talk page. —Aichon— 23:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Koala and a waiter. --Janus ^talk 23:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no need for a policy on this, really. Just as long as the voter puts their vote in bold, and in english, as already required by the voting instructions anyway, they can spout whatever gibberish they like afterwords. The justifications are only their to convince others, as long as it's made easy for the sysop who comes in later to cycle, what they say doesn't matter -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:38 19 December 2009 (BST)

I honestly don't mean to be contrary, but I didn't see any instructions specifying that votes must be in English, and if there isn't a need for policy to reduce the confusion caused by non-English comments, then why did you change the indentation on SA's and Thad's votes so that they no longer count? After all, they both have their votes bolded. Unless those votes are inadmissible for other reasons (entirely possible, since I'm still learning policy), isn't it reasonable to say that non-English comments are already a source of confusion? —Aichon— 02:18, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd guess he indented them because they did not conform to the suggested voting format of "Yea" or "Nay", or any close variation thereof. - User:Whitehouse 02:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

They did, they just weren't in English. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 02:44, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I think a different language probably doesn't qualify as a close variation. - User:Whitehouse 02:45, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I think a suggested voting format doesn’t qualify as a requirement. :P

Besides, according to Deletions/Scheduling, it follows the same voting format as Deletions, which just specifies that the vote must be bolded somewhere in the text, and doesn't say that it must be in English or at the start of the comment. And unless we want to take the Yea and Nay thing literally and throw out all votes that don't match those words, then I'd say it's implied that anything with the same meaning as those words is acceptable, regardless of language. —Aichon— 03:37, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

It's common sense to allow no or nay or against to be interchangeable for the required vote, but once you get into other languages being used simply for laffs, making the sysops guess what the meaning is, or go out of their way to use translators, it shouldn't be tolerated (without good cause) -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 05:46 19 December 2009 (BST)

I completely agree that it's common sense and shouldn't be tolerated for the very reasons you cited. I just meant that with a literal interpretation of the current rules, it seems like it might be permissible, hence why I think a policy like this would be useful. —Aichon— 05:55, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

To avoid yet another policy for something so minor, and obvious, it's better to just edit the pages in question to say something like the "voters intentions needs to be made obvious". If there is a dispute, then a/a or a/pd to force it through -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 06:20 19 December 2009 (BST)

another header

This'll go to voting before Christmas, most likely this weekend, barring any other major objections. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 02:44, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Given the overwhelmingly negative feedback here, you might want to just scrap it. :/ --ZsL 23:51, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

wow

a reactionary and usless policy after some joking around in admin pages... who would expect that ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 04:12, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

hey, isso quer dizer que durante discussões eu tb tenho de falar em ingles ? ou estou livre para usar o idioma q quiser aqui ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 04:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

"joking around in admin pages": annoying, troll users take jokes too far and QQ when the wiki is changed to force their shit out of the community. --

 

 

 

 

05:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Which is why I'm not crying about it so much. It's a good idea to stomp on it now, hell, I don't even see why I did it. Guess the closeness of Christmas is getting me all jittery.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 08:31, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Disappointing

I saw this in recent changes and I thought it was a chance to ban "defense" "color" and (um) "sidewalk" I don't think its really neccesary. Throw up a test case, if aomeone we know uses english starts spamming german all over the place take them to A/VB. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 10:47, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, such a wonderous policy will never pass in a climate of Americanism. :( Maybe one day...--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 14:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe once you guys stop using your own words for things we invented (e.g. parts of automobiles), we'll start adding those unnecessary vowels back into words like "armor" and "valor" for you. :P —Aichon— 22:37, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry? What parts of Cars did you invent? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 12:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Shh. Don't burst my bubble. Most Americans like to think that Henry Ford just had a brilliant idea one day and invented the entire darn thing. —Aichon— 14:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

He didn't? D: -- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 14:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Is this like the hitler thing again? Ford's great success was his industralisation. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 14:46, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Shut up you dirty nazi propagandist!-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 21:16, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

(Shakes fist) Damn You! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Damn yourself you fucking kraut! Where is your supernatural nazi science now? THAT'S RIGHT YOU CAN'T STAND AGAINST THE BIG GREEN FIGHTING MACHINE OF THE U.S. GTFO OFF MY WIKI!-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 21:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Caps Lock=Cruise control for cool. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:38, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Which is why I didn't make the entire message caps'd. I'm not that cool yet.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 22:20, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Alternative

Just give sysops the power to remove/strike votes that are deliberately created to confuse eg. different languages. --

 

 

 

 

10:24, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

This. Policy is pointlessly reactionary, jokers will find a different way to confuse sysops aside from different languages. Linkthewindow  Talk  15:51, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

This way we could have a blanket method of getting rid of stupid shit in the system which also accounts for what this policy encapsulates. --

 

 

 

 

23:55, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you all stupid?

Yes, do let's discriminate based on what language people speak. Fucking hell, shall I start blanking comments that contain a single typo? Because the typo doesn't appear in the OED.

It's simple, all votes are required to conform to something as stated on the page in question, usually by bolding a word or two. If the rules of the page say you have bold a Yes or No then all votes of Yah, Yeah, Yawohl, Nein, Nada etc. are automatically invalid and can be struck without the need for a fucking policy that's laughable considering the language skills of some of our sysops and former sysops. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 11:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

excuse me sir but you already forfeited your right to criticise other people's english skills> furthermore; Cyberbob  Talk  12:05, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Criticising my English skills whilst failing to use correct capitalisation? Irony much? -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 12:10, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Irony² then? -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 12:15 20 December 2009 (BST)

that's-the-joke.txt Cyberbob  Talk  12:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. --

 

 

 

 

12:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

What Iscariot said. As long as your actual vote is fine, I don't care if you write Swedish, Italian, Russian or Arabic after your vote, as long as I can read (and tally) the actual vote (see: Janus on the A/D/S page.) Linkthewindow  Talk  15:51, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I dono how read stuffs fully sumtiems

"and non-English commentary is to be removed (e.g. on A/M), and if persistently replaced, the offending user is to be sent to A/VB for bad faith by obfuscating their commentary. "

No, bad. Remove this part.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 13:11, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Any suggestion on what do to with non-English commentary, or just to remove that bit entirely? I was trying to think of what to do with A/A / A/M stuff like with the A/A with you and Thad where he was posting in Dutch (or another language, I forget) for whatever stupid reason. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 20:20, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

"No, bad. Remove this part" seemed like a pretty clear indication of what I want done with it.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 21:14, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Part of me doesn't want to be a prick...

...but the other part of me wants to A/M boxy for striking my bolded and valid vote based off of no precedent or infringement of the rules. It wasn't an important vote, but it's still setting a precedent. Lelouch vi Britannia is helping make Ridleybank green_ and gives Achievements 18:25, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

After looking at the vote in question, I can pretty safely say that you won't - and shouldn't - get anywhere with that. Cyberbob  Talk  20:46, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

He won't. At least the others (Like myself) used a fucking alphabet that is readable by all of the wiki. And no, you can't A/M him, as he did it as a normal user could have done.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 21:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to try  :/ --

 

 

 

 

23:56, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Ehh, rewrite the bastard...

My observation is that most of the arguments I saw above are concerned with the voting aspect of the policy. I would have to agree that forcing English use in any commentary is rather meaningless, since commentary is not necessary to be understood for a vote to be counted, just that the vote be listed in the approved manner/section.

That said, the use of English by the sysop/'crats in their official capacities to rule on situations, ban users and otherwise conduct their day to day affairs is rather necessary. The only time I can see this being otherwise is when dealing with a user whose grasp of English is not at a conversational level. So, mandating English my the powers-that-be might be a "good thing".

The counterargument to that is why tie the sysop/'crat hands further if there has been few (if any, AFAIK) situations where the use of a language other than English has impeded someone from understanding the result of a ruling, a banning, etc. Has DDR ever used Klingon to tell Iscariot that he's been banned? Has Grim ever made a ruling in Esperanto? If the sysop crew understand and apply it well enough already, why force a restriction?

My opinion is that sysop'ing is a relatively thankless, unpaid job that only the deluded, altruistic or power-mad want. That they use English when acting in their capacity as a sysop is a professional thing to do, as would be using a different language when necessary to properly communicate (although providing a translation of what was said would be polite), but to restrict them from having some fun by insulting another in Klingon? In Swahili? No, I think that would be wrong. -Wulfenbach 23:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

You're the first user who I have seen using his userpage as a redirect page to his talk page.--Thadeous Oakley 23:04, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Is that relevant?--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 00:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is that there really isn't any need for this policy. As Wulfenbach says, we've never had a problem with it before so there's no need to ban it.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 00:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

We've never had a problem with it before, you say? —Aichon— 00:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the havoc I cause around this place. If someone showed up occasionally they'd see that.-- ¯\(°_o)/¯ 01:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Nothing about that is incorrect according to the voting rules stated on the page (other then the occasional non-english bolded nay or yea), Aichon, and the people involved are not making ruling on bans, de-escalations, reviews or anything else that would be considered part of the normal day-to-day work of a sysop (something that should demand easy comprehension by others). See, the rules don't demand understanding or comprehension by others for voting. They only demand a english yea or nay for those styles of votes, and at minimum a signature timestamp in the appropriate section for policy-style votes. I should be allowed to state Yea - 0100011001110101011000110110101100100000011110010110111101110101011100100111001101100101011011000

1100110001000000110000101101110011001000010000001101101011001010111001001110010011110010010000001

01100001101101011000010111001100101110001000000011101000101001, as the only really important fact about the previous is that I have voted yea. As an example, if DDR posts a denial in Elvish in reply to a (assumed english) request for a page protect, that I think should be a no-no. -Wulfenbach 01:17, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You're bringing up something I wasn't addressing at all. I was replying only to his claim that we haven't had problems with it before, which is patently incorrect. Regardless of whether or not those edits were against the current rules (they weren't, by and large), they were clearly still a problem. That's all I was saying. Nothing else. If anything, I agree with you and others that only the bolded part needs to be in English and that commentary can be in any language (I'd rather not address your "sysops should use English for their duties" idea, since it seems unrelated to this policy discussion), but that doesn't change the fact that we did have a problem with non-English votes. —Aichon— 01:39, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, he was agreeing with my assertion that we haven't had a problem with it, so inheritance-wise, you were debating me. :) What about the vote (and the examples you gave) would count as examples against the "no issues" claim of mine? Yes, people fought over it, but the vote could still have been resolved successfully under the current rules. To me, everything else is drama-froth. -Wulfenbach 01:47, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, you were talking about sysops acting in their official capacity, whereas The General mentioned the policy itself, which addresses all users posting on admin pages, so I wasn't necessarily attacking your argument. ;)

As for which part is the "issue," the disruptive nature of the posts and the ensuing "drama-froth" is the issue. Yes, they could have been resolved successfully, given some time and patience, but given that these people speak English easily and have done so consistently in the past, it was clear that they were posting those comments for purposes other than facilitating communication with their fellow wiki members. That's a problem, regardless of if it's against the rules, and it needs to be resolved somehow, whether via guidelines, bringing them to A/VB to set a precedent, creating a policy, or some other means. —Aichon— 02:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, no attack interpreted from your end, but you've switched focus (in my opinion) from discussing the merits/flaws of english usage in voting to talking about methods to step on problem-players (Trolls). I don't think we should be using their words to keelhaul them, but their actions. I'd be more for de-escalation change then using english-only voting as a work-around in getting them banned. I think Angel and J3D would tap-dance a little more carefully if they knew that their next ban was for a week and no matter what, their next one was for a month.

But we're disgressing heavily. Do you think that it's worth a policy to force admin to use English in the execution of their adminly duties (A/A,A/M,A/SD,etc)? I don't. -Wulfenbach 02:22, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I only mentioned the merits/flaws of English in voting in passing, since I didn't see a point in discussing it. That's the sort of discussion that needed to take place either before the policy went to vote or as discussion for a new policy. Same thing with how to go about dealing with the "issue"...I only mentioned it in passing as an opinion, but didn't mean to open it up for broad discussion and debate since there's little point in doing so here.

Though I see it as digressing from the overarching topic, to answer your question, I don't see a point in singling out sysops as needing to use English, when the problem extends beyond them. I do see logic in forcing everyone to use English on the admin pages, though I think the alternative of just requiring English bolded parts is better, since it addresses the real issue sufficiently. —Aichon— 02:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

My comment was meant to be in agreement to Wulfenbach's post but was rather badly phrased. With regards to the policy; If people are being disruptive then my opinion has always been that they should be taken to A/VB as bad faith edits. I don't think we should be banning all languages other than English from the admin pages and forcing admins to speak English is a solution to a problem we don't have.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 02:52, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't blame General. He hasn't been around here long, remember? --

 

 

 

 

01:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

This week is actually the first time I've ever gotten to see him active and involved, so from my perspective, he seems new. :) —Aichon— 01:39, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Amen

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Urbandead; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Axel27 (talk • contribs) 07:18, December 29, 2009.