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Can we discuss language rationally?


JLP

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Let's Discuss Language Rationally

Can we? Withoug getting too emotional or personal? I hope so. Please?

I ask because something I find distrubing is happening on Hockey's Future -- a site which has superior round-the-league prospects' reports and so on, and is otherwise a great semi-independent (not so independent it turns out) place for avid hockey fans. There is no homer bias there, or there wasn't one -- until yesterday.

According to a message from HF's American administrators which was passed onto the Montreal discussion board operators, all French-language posting is now banned from Hockey's Future Boards. If someone posts with French their post will be removed. Those who disagree or feel disrespected have been told to have their accounts deleted.

Read the Mod's explaination here

(I wonder how far they will go in rooting out French -- is Bégin now only to be spelled "B*gin" over there? Ok, that's probably severe but who the hell knows?)

Anyway I am concerned about this -- the issues of tolerance, freedom of speech, respect for the NHL's tradition in Montreal and also ethnic sensitivity come to mind, among others.

Because we often pepper (hehehe pun intended) our posts with some French here, I'd like to get other HabsWorld posters' feelings on HF's new and surprisingly severe position.

Again, let's not get too emotional or personal, people.

:que::hlogo::can:

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Well, I can make it simple for you and everyone on behalf of the admins. HabsWorld was created to be THE place for every Habs fans all around the world. We thrive as much as possible to offer content of the website in as much languages as possible (if you click the flags you can browse the menus and "static" content in 7 languages). I respect HF Boards. If they want to manage an english board only, that's fine. Here, everyone from every country is welcomed to share their story about the Habs. It happened sometime that members wrote in other languages (deutsch, french). I have no problem with that. It's sure it's better if everyone gives the effort to write in English (including me, it's not my primary language). That way, more people can understand each others and participate. It's also fun to see a czech Habs fan trying to write in English :) When HW will be very very big, maybe we'll create sub-forum for different language, but for now it's not worthing it.

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Hi sakiqc,

I know, we often have french on HabsWorld and I have even chatted with some people in Japanese, also there are Swedes and Dutch who sometimes exchange a few posts with one another in their own language. That doesn't bother me in fact I like it, hat's why I'm mostly here and not on other boards.

Maybe the censorship of French posts on HF will bring more people here!

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well.... that sucks for HFBoards.

I'm anglophone, but I enjoy tossing the occasional french around (however erroneously). It shows the true spirit of the tricolore that our threads interweave multiple languages.

eh bien, ce qui se passe sur HFBoards n'import rien ici. (see how bad french can be!).

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Originally posted by simonus

well.... that sucks for HFBoards.

Yup.

The reason given in that HF Mod's post is the agreement with "sponsors" -- I have clicked around their site and so far found links to a motorcycle dealer called "Motopalsta" which ironically has a site not in English but in Finnish only (and more ironically now will reach fewer NHL fans in the only city with a Finnish captain!); also there was a "take this web survey" banner that is just there to install spyware; a "free smileys" banner that was a dead link; and a "help victims of Katrina" donation link which I assume is not a sponsor as per say, and anyway don't they accept money from francophones? Hell Florida is full of Quebecers!

So I am starting to wonder about the reason for this new severe anti-French stance at HF. Anyway I think I am soon going to ask to have my account terminated as a protest.

I wonder, are they getting any support from companies that do business in Canada? As a hockey site I would assume they are. These companies backing a site that openly discriminates against French, that is something interesting, isn't it?

So I have a question for the francophones here -- do you know, are there any big French-language Hockey/Habs discussion boards around that have a published policy of automatically deleting any message that contains English?

:que::ghg::can:

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i dont know how chfans handles english, though I must say I don't think I've ever seen it there.

The interesting thing is that this could end up hurting HFBoards' advertizing revenues. If enough people (is there any idea how many habs fans are PO'ed?) delete their account or stop coming, the HFBoards reports a smaller readership to their advertizers, thus lowering their ad revenues... I'd imagine it'd work that way...

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Originally posted by simonus

i dont know how chfans handles english, though I must say I don't think I've ever seen it there.

The interesting thing is that this could end up hurting HFBoards' advertizing revenues.  If enough people (is there any idea how many habs fans are PO'ed?) delete their account or stop coming, the HFBoards reports a smaller readership to their advertizers, thus lowering their ad revenues... I'd imagine it'd work that way...

You are entirely right about that! Especially if certain sponsors are publically asked why they are supporting a dicriminatory website. There is nothing to suggest that there were problems with a band of renegade French-lang posters, and the HFBoards Mtl mods even said in their letter that they had no problem with checking Eng/Fr messages.

Anyway thanks for the heads up on CHfans, I checked and found some Eng messages there and when I signed up they had an option to display board templates in Eng if desired. Also the rules said nothing about restrictions on Eng. The HFBoards total ban on French is very wrong.

Anyway, here at HabsWorld we clearly have the most international and open-minded Habs community -- forget the rest, this is the place to be!

:que::ghg::can:

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Intolerance at their finest but they run their own site and can do what they want. Doubt people would wanna sponsor it with that sort of intolerance. Actually maybe someone would... the CBC? They tolerate and promote bigotry.

[Edited on 2005/11/7 by Leafs Suck]

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