Thread: English Only

What do you think of the "English only" rule on forums? Is it a rule on your forum?

I've always enforced an English only rule on my forum, even though it's not listed as a rule. I believe the rule itself is a bit of discrimination, but, it's unfair for one or two people to speak in a non English language when no one else can even understand or chip in and reply. On the moderation side, it's difficult for the admin and moderators to keep rules enforced when they can't even understand something that's being said. Sure, we can use translators, but they aren't 100% reliable.

I wouldn't join a Russian-based community and expect to be able to just speak English in every thread. Sure, they may understand me, but it would be rude of me to not just be speaking the same as everyone else. Along those same lines, I don't mind English-only rules and I don't mind if there's broken English used even. The grammer doesn't have to be perfect and if you're not a native speaker, it's all good, but at least giving it their best shot to speak the same language is appreciated.

As I'm bilingual, at first I had a Spanish section on my site, that was mostly for my friends to join when my forum was still quite new. As that section kept on growing, I decided to move it to a complete different board. It was getting way too hard to manage both sites, so I had to close the Spanish one (that got eventually inactive anyway).

Therefore, now, "Only English" is one of my rules too. If people don't speak English, they can use a translator, or get someone to translate their messages for them.

You can add a different language section to your website if you think you will receive traffic for it. Most of the forums that are internationally recognized are mostly in the English language.

I would keep my forum to the English language only, purely because most of my visitors would be English and wouldn't be able to read other posts, etc. I wouldn't allow others on my forum, as most forums are english only!