Please eliminate text-speak in PF Chat.

[turbo]

So many lazy people type ur instead of you are and other text-speak short-cuts. It doesn't parse well (at least for me) and it makes PF Chat look trashy, IMO.

Thanks for considering it.
turbo

 

[Nugatory]

How would we go about eliminating it? That's a question, not an argument.

 

[Evo]

Chat is very temporary, anything posted quickly scrolls off the screen and nothing is kept for later viewing. There is no need to do anything, I rarely see anyone use text speak in chat except as maybe a joke. It's just not a problem.

 

[MostlyHarmless]

I find text speak a good way of developing a nice strong bias towards someone's response before actually having read it. :)

 

[micromass]

PF chat is a collection of very distinct individuals. You simply can't make everybody happy. Some people might hate text-speak. Other people hate discussions about mathematics. Other people hate that people talk about their pets all the time. Etc.

If we attempt to make everybody happy, then might forbid everything that people hate. But it will turn out that we will just have to forbid everything. And we can just quit having PF chat.

So the best option is not forbidding things, and to have a little tolerance with respect to other people.

 

[StevieTNZ]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Its no big deal.

 

[turbo]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Its no big deal.

I don't worry about it. Test-speak is forbidden on the forums, and I feel that rule ought to be extended to chat, as well. PF has a lot of guests from non-English speaking countries, and many of them preface their posts with "I am sorry for my poor English". Why put an extra hurdle in their way if we would like them to participate in chat? Obviously, I am not referring to somebody like Borek, whose grasp of English is excellent, but it would be nice for all of PF to be inclusive.

Just my thoughts. No biggie. Text-speak is merely annoying to me, but might throw some foreign students for a loop.

 

[micromass]

I don't worry about it. Test-speak is forbidden on the forums, and I feel that rule ought to be extended to chat, as well. PF has a lot of guests from non-English speaking countries, and many of them preface their posts with "I am sorry for my poor English". Why put an extra hurdle in their way if we would like them to participate in chat? Obviously, I am not referring to somebody like Borek, whose grasp of English is excellent, but it would be nice for all of PF to be inclusive.

Just my thoughts. No biggie. Text-speak is merely annoying to me, but might throw some foreign students for a loop.

OK, but are there actually foreign students with limited english on chat? If there are no foreign students on chat, then we shouldn't implement such a rule.

 

[turbo]

OK, but are there actually foreign students with limited english on chat? If there are no foreign students on chat, then we shouldn't implement such a rule.

I have no idea, micro. The problem is that a lot of foreign PF guests seem to do pretty well with reading and writing, but that doesn't mean that they have a good grasp of pronunciation, nor of homonyms.

Never mind. It seems that among the mentors this request is dead in the water.

 

[dextercioby]

And <micro> is text-speak for <micromass>, right ?

 

[phinds]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Its no big deal.

You might give some thought about whether or not YOU get to decide what is or is not a big deal for someone other than yourself.

 

[Evo]

You might give some thought about whether or not YOU get to decide what is or is not a big deal for someone other than yourself.

I believe what stevie is saying is that text speak is very rare in chat, it's not an issue.

 

[DavidSnider]

The end result of making the main chat too sensitive and politically correct will be that somebody spawns off an unmoderated IRC channel that leeches away conversation from the main site.

 

[StevieTNZ]

You might give some thought about whether or not YOU get to decide what is or is not a big deal for someone other than yourself.

I don't think we need to go down that road. It is, in my opinion, a minor issue that doesn't need to be made into international news (or local/national news).

 

[OmCheeto]

I don't think we need to go down that road. It is, in my opinion, a minor issue that doesn't need to be made into international news (or local/national news).

That would be interesting one day, to see an Al-Jazeera blog entry, commenting on PF chat.

...

The world is getting so small lately. It used to be really big, back when I was a child.