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This brings a great deal of peace for the crew at Freeroot. We see and appreciate the work that went into this. @shanty_sniper, @varuka, @Standish_ & I have certainly spoken at length about this in Discord. It's probably our turn to listen for a bit. We look forward to the rest of the conversation with the community. Cheers 🍻🍻🍻🍻 @pez252 @fazaden @defiex@Deaygo !

Hello, community! I want to give you all an update on this topic. @fazaden, @defiex, and @pez252 were kind enough to meet with me today to talk through some of the concerns raised here. Primarily, this is about making NEW international players feel welcome. We all agreed that this was a complex issue that we need to handle with grace, and we probably need SOME kind of written policy in the near future, as much for players as for staff to reference. Having played a few days on the 2b2t server, i can tell you, it is absolutely welcome to have someone (moderators) making sure that general chat isn't a toxic wasteland. I couldn't invite my 11 y/o nephew to 2b2t, but i think i can bring him on Nerd, so long as the right staff are around. Coming from these two first principles (that there is a need for moderation and that all players are welcome), @pez252 's additional insight was that when general chat is very active, it's not impolite to ask players to take a *closed* conversation (like a base tour or block trade bargaining) to private chat. I can't disagree, since we shouldn't use language to exclude others. In terms of drawing a hard line for enforcement, that line is going to be different for each player based on their ability to respond to staff directions, and a history allowing trust that they are not being exclusionary or intentionally disruptive (harassing, advertising, etc). To tell the truth, i think what will help the most is that 18 new folks have been nominated for moderator (!), which should allow Staff to better establish and lead the way on "Welcome Culture" in gen-chat, as well as bring a diversity of perspective and opinion. Fazaden offered a further apology and retrospective on CheezyChicken's meme-worthy previous comments. I don't mean to repeat private comments publicly, but i appreciate the acknowledgement that there are cultural complexities around language. I'm reluctant to mention it here, but it's been enough of a recurring thread in the gossip grapevine, i think it's in everyone's interest. I personally am encouraged that the head admins are sensitive to the topic and are putting the players' interests first. Speaking of the grapevine... I've advocated for Shanty to be un-banned on the principle that while he was disrupting gen chat, he was pursuing admin action on a topic that is near to his heart, since staff may not have shared with him or the community what actions they were taking on the situation behind the scenes. I hate to speak for Shanty, but i do know that this community means a lot to him. However, looking at the entirety of the situation, i don't think un-banning alone will repair the relationship between Shanty and Nerd staff right now. I'm optimistic that time and a private continuation of this discussion could be beneficial. Since Defie, Pez, and Fazaden were kind enough to hear me out, this next paragraph is for the community: In the context of Minecraft gen-chat, it will take active effort us to cultivate good vibrations and shake off the "default toxic" behavior that gamers can bring to us from other communities. It can be really hard to communicate tone and emotional awareness in gen chat, since it is text only. There is the potential for us to misunderstand each other, and even as we spend hundreds of hours together, it approaches a certainty that one of us will say something in poor taste, or harmfully ignorant. I would like to invite everyone to help me continue Welcome Culture beyond the greeting for "--". Cheers and happy holidays, all!

okay and hear me out here, what if we just don't? What if we just greet people and talk to them in the language that we understand? If there are 30 users online, and 5 of them want to speak German in genchat, 2 want to speak Ukrainian, and 3 want to speak Spanish, that really shouldn't be a problem. Let them give base tours, comment on builds, grieve, etc. If the German speakers really want to get their hands on some spare sugarcane, they'll know to ask in English. CONNECTING them with each other via a clanchat (that will provide a list of users that are offline right now) is a good thing. SEGREGATING languages is a bad thing. Most of the rules that exist on this server are thoughtfully created to reduce player friction and enhance the gameplay experience. What exactly is enhanced by enforcing english in genchat? From my observation, it's a bad rule that breeds resentment, and anything other than a full rejection is, as I said earlier, a hindrance to paying the bills and/or raising money for charity. This experience, being chided about the subtle rule that's not a rule, is something that will happen EARLY in a players stay on nerd.nu, and gracefully navigating it will be key to retaining the player. In the US, we're familiar with stories of prejudice and discrimination based on visible "race", but in other parts of the world, speaking the wrong language in public can have serious negative consequences: It could mean being passed over for promotion, or it might attract attention from law enforcement. We can sidestep that entire issue by relying on the tried-and-true reliability of our existing rules around being actually disruptive, spammy, threatening/hateful, sexual, etc. I will concede that we also need to remind users not to use their language to intentionally exclude others: Clanchats, DMs, and mail do exist to facilitate private communication. Here's what i'm asking the staff to do: Please no more shaming, or pleas for staff sympathy about foreign languages. Let's treat all users like guests in our neighborhood. The reactions that you have publicly are contagious - you are leaders in our community after all. We need to see you building bridges out there, not telling people to love it or leave it. MANY community voices have been raised against the idea of an official English designation for genchat. The last post from Fazaden is still in concurrence.

At the risk of beating a dead horse here, i want to push back against this notion: Firstly, I am suggesting that the moderated feed only be used by admins when they feel overwhelmed. Users have access to the requested /ignore command. Although i am sensitive to your argument - it would certainly help if Mojang had some built-in utilities in this area. However, we all know what to expect from Mojang. Personally, i think if admins aren't focused on customer service, that's a larger concern about staffing. Secondly, i am an avid participant in the Twitch community, particularly in the Music and Makers communities. There are two streams that come to mind as a contrafactual to your idea that multilingual general is "obnoxious": 1. GoldeNose is a polish DJ who plays a wide variety of house and trance music. You will notice immediately that he is controlling his DJ station with his nose, because of the disability detailed in his bio. I personally find his relentless tenacity to make music inspiring, and the tunes go great with programming since he doesn't talk during his stream. The chat stream is multi-lingual. I can talk to the streamer in english, but others may converse in polish, and with eachother in any language that suits. This causes no complaints or problems. 2. RyotaMaekawa is a japanese modular synthesizer player. He largely speaks japanese, but all messages are translated by api robot so that japanese text is presented in english, and our english chat is presented to the streamer in japanese, exactly as proposed. It does double the chat, but it means a lot to the community to have the interaction because we are small and niche. In the spirit of conversation and curiosity, may i ask you directly why the presence of non-english in chat is worth the description of obnoxious? You did say "even more" obnoxious after all.

As long as that is encouraging and friendly, i see no problem here. This is great, tonewise. However, i have seen some really anti-social behavior from some users in this domain, and utter silence from the admins, even at my request for correction. Let me be clear: I want you to pursue technical solutions *for you* so that admins aren't contributing to the negative vibe around other languages. I know i've got a target on my back for being aligned with Shanty on this issue, but lets be clear, i saw this happen on multiple occasions that have nothing to do with shanty. You should feel good about **enabling international users to find each other**. Take it from someone who has worked in computer security: enforcement breeds resentment. If you are anything less than helpful to multi-lingual or non-english speakers, you're shooting yourselves in the foot. Until you ban all the teenagers from Germany, they deserve all the respect that point one talks about on this page.

OK yeah i'm with you there, lets work on solutions. It really does put a hamper on the vibe in chat when some of our community leaders are big sad about foreign words. The thing i want to clarify though is 1) the effort to moderate non-english chat would be minimal and so 2) there's no need to enforce this as a rule, or even have it as a rule. As previously mentioned, there is an /ignore command, and non-english speakers will eventually realize that they are self-isolating by not speaking in a way that others can understand in gen chat. There is no need, for example, for someone to be told "they ought to know better than to speak other than english in general". THat's not friendly behavior and will ultimately limit our ability to raise funds for the server and for charity. I would further argue that the small cost to make certain admins feel better about moderating international chat is worth it if it enables additional income long-term.

Not quite. The first pass is the check for english or a language detection check, all messages would have to go through that. Translation, as a heavier call, can be done subsequently. I have other thoughts to share but i just want to say that rate limiting can be implemented on the Nerd plugin side, as well as cloud billing controls to prevent this.

On a practical level, i understand the concern that if everyone is speaking random languages in general, no one is actually communicating. My chief concern is that i have personally witnessed some rudeness from other players telling their peers that they cannot speak other languages in General Chat. Staff have been silent in this because, i presume, they lack the tools to moderate non-native languages easily. I have seen multiple admins complain about how non-english moderation detracts from their enjoyment of server participation. This does not engender a community spirit or encourage new players. If nerd is an international charity (how the last fundraiser was communicated, along with current player base and network access statistics), then we should be welcoming players of all languages. Players and staff alike should be patient with English as Second Language speakers, and not be so quick to coldly tell them to take it to DM. Before the Mr. Epic video, new players RARELY joined nerd.nu, and were even more reluctant to stay. This is a challenging community to enter and thrive in. If our goal is to a) raise money to keep the server online and b) raise money for a charity, we should be working WITH our community's interest. What i would have preferred to see this evening is a friendly guidance of the german speakers to find each other, reminding them that this is an *international community* and English is the *current* lingua franca. I am glad we have backed away from banning people for simply speaking their native languages in chat. I think we need to take another step forward towards embracing a neighborhood that supports a variety of languages. The current lack of leadership (and response to community engagement in the previous thread) is not sustainable in the long term and is observably harming the server. 1) Tech admins could investigate a moderator chat feed that includes automatic translation of non-english chat via API call to one of the many cloud translation services. This should allow the admins to more easily moderate chat. 2) In-game player preferences to help different language communities find each other. If we're going to tell players to join a special language clan-chat, we better have that chat already created and populated with some people, otherwise we're just leaving them hanging. I wrote those two points BEFORE reading this post from 2014 - Please follow up on the FABULOUS suggestions mentioned here and here. Yes, i know the linked plugins are likely dead - however, we should be pursuing replacements, not running from them.