Trouble in River City - Terms of Service

[Otagiri Tatsuzou]

I just reread the terms of service. Get this

3. CONTENT RESTRICTIONS

Your web site must conform to the following standards to be eligible to utilize this service:

1. User's content must comply in a manner consistent with any and all applicable laws of the State of California and the US Federal Government.
2. User's web site may not contain content promoting the use of illegal drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, nudity, or any other form of adult content, profanity, hate, "spam," fraud, racism, mlm, pyramid schemes, or promote any illegal activity.
3. User's message board and Web site must be in English.

They have made exceptions for technical terminology on a Jewish religious board. One of the meta-moderators has a japlish sig. And I have a request for clarification in at the support forum.

I might have to pull the plug on this.

[Otagiri Tatsuzou]

The initial comments are not from the people that matter, but some of them have been around for a while.

A few words in Japanese = okay
An entire site in Japanese = not okay

What I sense is that it would be okay to quote Japanese to comment on it as a reference, but not to make the commentary in Japanese.

The problem, I suspect, is that the meta-moderators would be unable to tell the difference between what is being quoted for reference and a private Japanese discussion.

Of course it is unclear why they feel the need to prevent private foreign language conversation. Perhaps to prevent sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, or terrorism. Take your pick.

Tomorrow, one of the admins should be reviewing my request for clarification and I'll post more then. Once we understand the TOS, I'll post a poll as to whether we should stay or go.

[Draco Sezeski]

I vote stay even without the poll.

[Otagiri Tatsuzou]

As long as the core of your board is english, and it's just a few phrases and such, it is fine.

Craig

Craig is a board administrator.

So here is the situation as I see it:

• Japanese technical terminology may be used at any time
  
• Japanese may be quoted in context
  
• Japanese phrases may be used within an English discussion
  
• No post may be entirely in Japanese
  

The foreign language rules seem to be designed to support the rest of the Terms of Service. Moderators need to be able to assess whether slander, violations of the TOS, or criminal activity are occurring when such incidents are reported.

There may be as many as 500000 boards within proboards. Many of them run in a less than mature manner. Some of them have been put up as gateways to child porn, etc. So as long as we behave like adults and follow the above language guidelines, we are unlikely to encounter any problems.

In general, when the meta-moderators do have a problem with a board member's post, they contact the board admin and give them 72 hours to correct the problem. If they believe they have a problem with the board admin, they shut down the board with no notice - but are willing to examine an appeal of the shutdown on the support board. Most board problems seem to come from crackers who get admin passwords by hook or by crook or by just simply guessing. That and admins who like to really mess around with the look and feel of the boards (by changing board javascript) without knowing what their doing.

I can live with these guidelines. I will post a poll on Monday (the one week anniversary!) and leave it open for seven days.