Members with poor English skills

[Cosmic]

Have you ever had to deal with members who have very poor English skills? I'm not talking about members who may know English as a second language and may make a mistake from time to time, but more members who will post replies that don't really have anything to do with the topic, and will respond with confusion when you send reminders.

What do you typically do when running into members like this? It's very hard to help them post replies that make more sense, although, as an admin, if you don't do anything about it, it can make it much harder for members to read the content on your forum.

 

[Forces of Steel]

Nothing you can do. The fact they joined your forum and want to contribute is all that matters.

 

[Reverie]

Simply by trying to communicate with members via PM to maybe see what language they do know. Perhaps someone else on your forum knows their language and they could become friends from it?

In the case of multiple posts this way, I'd edit the post or maybe just quote it and say I think they mean.... "yada yada yada" that way other members can try and relate to said member.

 

[DixieKongJD2]

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't lock them out since English is a widespread second language and these people might be learning, forums could help them understand the syntax of everyday English in my opinion. 🙂

Locking someone out for their English skill, even if you don't want to be politically correct, would seem pointless.

 

[VirusZero]

On my site we do accept people who may not have great English skills... However, they are expected to learn and improve.

I will try to help where I can, (and I have spent some time to write up guides to help people improve too) but if they obviously aren't putting in any effort to try to do better then I will ask them to leave. My apologies, but we are a site based around writing stories. It's integral to our site's function that users be able to read and reply to each other. And when someone posts an illegible mess it does a disservice to all (including the person who is struggling).

Now this doesn't mean the odd spelling mistake... No, I mean when they don't use any punctuation at all, use no capitalization and spelling mistakes are rampant. That's the sort of person whom I'd expect to have to ask to leave.
Thankfully so far I've never actually had to ask anyone to leave... Most people are either proficient enough already or they have improved.

 

[Tixxt]

Iam not english but thanks to the internet lol

 

[John]

It depends on their grammar level. Posts should be written in good grammar. With that being said; if someone has horrible grammar to the point their posts are unreadable, I'd probably ban them. However, if their posts were readable, I wouldn't do anything. Forums are a form of communication, and if you're unable to communicate, you probably don't need to be on them. Some forums are different than others, but your posts should always be readable.

 

[Optic]

Have you ever had to deal with members who have very poor English skills? I'm not talking about members who may know English as a second language and may make a mistake from time to time, but more members who will post replies that don't really have anything to do with the topic, and will respond with confusion when you send reminders.

I had one member that would seemingly make random posts and embed up to 10-15+ images and YouTube embeds throughout various threads. 😕

Despite gentle warnings and messages, it never got through and in the end I had to ban the member as it was causing huge confusion in my threads.

I am almost certain there was a language barrier at play here..

 

[HomaQadoro]

try to learn english now 🙂

 

[ents_fan98]

Up to a point it shouldn't really matter. I had a co-admin with very poor grammar and spelling but he was still a likeable guy willing to help.

I'd just be happy to have members to be honest. 🙂

 

[Forces of Steel]

The funny thing is that most Europeans speak English far better than Americans. 😀

Greeks, Danes, Swedes, and Russians are very fluent.

 

[Teg]

Most of my forums require users to post in English or British English. Simply because there are not enough people that become staff that are fluent in English and another language so things can't be translated properly.

So, I don't allow any other languages--other than English--to be written on my forums. That said, I do speak enough Spanish to translate it to English. However, in my rules I specify the languages that I allow.

 

[Cierra]

Any staff I hire has to have at least a decent grasp on the English language. It doesn't really look professional otherwise. In our applications we've recently added questions to kind of see what level they are at with grammar, spelling, etc.

As far as members, we allow them to post in other languages as long as they include an English translation. We use to not require that and it quickly became a pain to keep on translating things. On forum might have more tolerance for this overall due to the niche (languages/travel) though. As long as members are giving English a shot it's fine with us. Not everyone knows or wants to know English.

 

[MasterA]

I would try to help them and understand the situation. I think this will be dealt on a case to case basis. If their posts are seriously unreadable and no one can understand it, then I would put them on Mod queue. I wouldn't ban them because there may be language barriers and it is unfair to do that. If there are other reasons behind it like they just post to advertise their site in their signature and making no effort in their posts, then I may decide to ban them.

I think the key is finding out whether or not they want to contribute to the forum. If they do, then I will try my best to help them.

 

[Thomasss]

Honestly, in the beginning they seem like spam bots. 😛 Though, it's really hard to say what the right thing is and the wrong thing is. You cannot just ban them because they make no sense whatsoever, (I mean, you could...but why?) and you cannot really let them continue posting because it's probably not only going to look bad on the forum when people read those posts, but it might confuse the members and halt any discussion. I've even had members report the posts and think it was spam. 😛

I usually delete the posts that don't make sense in hopes they just leave, as sad as that is, I don't want to message them and say you cannot be here because of your lack of decent English skills.