Sigh. Pretty much proving my point about the gymnastics you are.

No, Fairfox was typing in gibberish and then counting on the reader to assemble it into something that's somewhat comprehensible. Half the time I couldn't figure out what she was trying to say prior to getting a headache. And the only way to determine whether or not it is comprehensible is to go through the process of assembling it. Text is difficult enough at times to understand without other cues, any time there's subtleties, they can be missed.

Drawing a line isn't particularly hard. If it's truly hard to tell whether or not the language should be allowed, you issue a warning and clean it up. It's really not anywhere near as complicated as you're suggesting. This is an international forum and people aren't all going to have perfect English. It's also the internet, so it's an informal register as well.

But, if you can't tell that somebody is making a sincere effort to communicate, then it probably shouldn't be in the forum at all. And that's exactly what we're talking about in the case of Fairfox, she wasn't anywhere near as hard to understand for most of the time she was here. It's well established that she could have communicated more effectively, but was enagled to not do so.

As far as the alts go, we already have alts on here, I've been accused of being one of NES' alts and offering the people the ability to ignore people is hardly going to change things much unless that is being used to excuse the mods from actually moderating things that are actual rules violations. How do you think those people wind up losing hundreds of points over night? Here's a hint, almost certainly alts.
While we're at it, it's really not pronounced ye, it's pronounced thee, it's just that we no longer use that letter that looks sort of like a y.

Sure, whatever. =p The accepted definition of gibberish is "unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing; nonsense." Fairfox's writing does not qualify as gibberisih. I'm sure you could find another word if you looked hard enough, but gibberish isn't it. If it's easy to draw a line, draw it. Give me an explicit definition and a method of quantifying posts to this definition. Enagled? I see gibberish.

But, hey, we can't really define "sincere effort," either. Everyone, pretty much, is aware of the alt issue. However, you don't want to incentivize making the problem worse. For better or worse, it's more or less manageable right now. What are you even on about? Where did this even come from?

Yes. I'm liking Chandra's input of late. Thumbs up.

Ok, according to my dictionary, more correct term is "gibber". But the point still stands - Fairfox's writing was problematic to decipher, unless you put a lot of effort into it. And even in that case, some comments couldn't be understood properly. Believe me, I tried.

As for drawing the line. If everybody on this forum would talk like Fairfox, would it be convenient for you to converse on this forum, without proper understanding what is said to you half the time? Especially with people around who accuse you of strawmanning and other fallacies if you misinterpret their words even slightly?

I think Chandra is awesome.

I agree, Chandra is a very good moderator.

That is not a line. A line would be something like "Murder is the initiation of violence that results in the death of another human being." Pretty clear, pretty qualifiable, and leaves room for understandable situations, like someone deciding that they won't let the murderer kill them, and kills them in turn. Stealing "taking that which you do not own, but someone else owns, without permission." Those rules are pretty easy to enforce, but ambiguity can even make those rules difficult. For something like fairfox's writing, you can't even define it properly. You can't draw a clear and concise line. If you can't even have an objective standard, you can't expect and objective consensus. Without that consensus, moderation becomes a fickle tyranny.

I like them too and it would be great if they could be as active here as Linko was. But try to remember the time when we did not have a forum moderator. You could see some posts of them but far not enough to keep some of the threads in order. I guess they simply did not have the time to be in the forum as active as Linko was (because of other things they had to do like support).

But maybe some of you are correct and the forum is not as important to GOG as I wished it would be. Then of course a bit moderation would be better than none at all ... of course it would not be enough and soon after the next uncontrolled threads full of OT hatespeech and insults the next people would leave the forums ... but if GOG does not really care about the forum that would be all right as well I guess.

But you haven't answered my question. ;)

Fine: Rules aren't made for convenience, so it's irrelevant. However, to humor you, no it would not be convenient. That's why we typically ignored fairfox.

Newsflash: They are. The whole point of the rules is to make your (and other users') time on forums pleasant, or at least not very annoying and frustrating. Flood, flame, off-topic are forbidden exactly to make you find what you need in threads dedicated to specific topics. The same is with the use of language. Users are told to use forum sections with their language so everybody would understand them and they could understand others. Posts similar to Fairfox's, while technically written in English, hampered that users intent. That's why it was totally ok for mod to stop that.

Those things destroy the community, while inconvenience does not. If convenience was the goal, swearing would never be disallowed on any forum. It's about keeping a given community thriving, whether that means preventing things which are deemed illegal (which can get the community shut down), banning "swearing" so that people would not be hindered by victorian views, etc.

But, hey, even if we were to agree that it causes trouble, you have yet to define an objective standard that is qualify-able. Without the standard of enforcement, the discussion on whether it should be banned or not is moot: you must first be able to ban it.

Did anyone expect to see the day where i'd be defending fairfox for over an hour? I sure as hell didn't.

Don't wanmt to interrupt this interesting discussion. But you are aware that it is just a tiny bit OT? (meaning it has nothing to do with what the thread title is about)? How about opening an own thread to discuss ... whatever it is you are discussing?

Follow it back, you'll see.