Proposal: "Language Bot"

[Frost]

Jero's "guild" chat bot has been very useful in the game.
Maybe we could have another such bot with "chat channels" for specific languages.
Note that each character could use only one language channel. That's a limitation of how guild bot interacts with the server.

What do you think?
Would it be useful? Would it pose new problems? Would the existing guild bot functionality be enough to start? Are there changes that would make it significantly more useful as a language bot?

[Ginaria]

I like the idea, i think it will be easier for new players to find friends with the same main language. Some new players cannot speak english very well, but they like to join this world. People with the same main language could help such new players much more faster at such a language channel. And new players would not feel lonely, if they dont see anybody at beginning or if nobody understands them. But for such advantages it would be important, that every new player join one of these language channels automatically. Probably after people read the rules at their own language. And it should be possible to change language channel.

[Nard]

I find this idea a wonderful one! thanks for it.
Guild bot is actually used for both the dramatically missing guild features in game and for language Channels. This makes some of our members obliged to choose whether to participate to the guild channel or to the language one. I would be happy to be able to follow two language channels too (French and German in my case) to be able to practice more my second foreign language.
If possible I'd like to have a possibility of temporary invite to a channel. It could be useful for both guild and language channels (an application discussion for example)
For language channel, a list of available channels could be made available (!listchannels ?) in game, and in longer term an application mechanism to the channel too.
On the occasion, may I suggest too that TMW helps gnurfk' Auctionbot as some of it's features miss us a lot such as its little !mail function, or it's nice idea of auctions.

[Crush]

Language channels should not be invite-only. People should be able to join them on their own.

But note that the TMW team can only moderate English communication, so those bots can't be hosted by the TMW team (that's the reason why we made the "speak english in public" rule in the first place). They would have to be hosted by native speakers who take responsibility for banning those who abuse them.

[Nard]

Language channels should not be invite-only. People should be able to join them on their own.

sure, I was wrong, I had quild in mind.

But note that the TMW team can only moderate English communication, so those bots can't be hosted by the TMW team (that's the reason why we made the "speak english in public" rule in the first place). They would have to be hosted by native speakers who take responsibility for banning those who abuse them.

These channels should be governed by the same rules as the game's public chat, and have well known moderators. I think at least two per channel, 3 better. As this should be a server feature I think it should be hosted by TMW. Players hosted bots (private) are, in my opinion, a different topic. (I mentioned AuctionBot though)

May I suggest Babel as name?

[ChefChelios]

Maybe we could have another such bot with "chat channels" for specific languages.

woohooo ...best idea since a long time... Frost 4 President!

i dont think we need moderators for this kind of language tabs... cuz it is not public.. it is just a tab right?

plz guys.. dont make everything more complicated as it is...

[Crush]

These channels should be governed by the same rules as the game's public chat, and have well known moderators. I think at least two per channel, 3 better.

And who is going to manage all these moderators? We are talking about a staff of 10-20 people, and most of them will have problems speaking english, otherwise they wouldn't be interested in the job in the first place. That's going to be a full-time job for someone.

i dont think we need moderators for this kind of language tabs... cuz it is not public.. it is just a tab right?

When anyone can join, then the channels are public.

When you need to be invited, you already need moderators to invite people.

[ChefChelios]

When anyone can join, then the channels are public

that means we have to talk eng at a german tab cuz the rules say clearly "speak eng at public"

[Nard]

And who is going to manage all these moderators? We are talking about a staff of 10-20 people, and most of them will have problems speaking english, otherwise they wouldn't be interested in the job in the first place. That's going to be a full-time job for someone.[...]
When anyone can join, then the channels are public.

Moderators should of course be able to speak English correctly (not perfectly). They are required as anyone should be able to join as you wisely pointed it out. I think that you could trust players a bit more. There are actually language Channels on guild bot and I didn't hear about any problem about them at this moment. If hosted by Platinum, the moderators management will obviously rely on administrators. Anyway I wouldn't use a channel which is not hosted by a trustable someone. I do think the feature is worth a try (I am optimist, there are only 4 banned members in this forum, 2 dismissed GMs, I don't know about IRC) and will not give administrators a heavy burden. If it appears that many problems arise, it will be rather easy to revert to the actual situation.

Nard

Note: I spoke about several moderators, we can begin with one...

[Crush]

Anyway I wouldn't use a channel which is not hosted by a trustable someone.

Sorry, but I don't see the problem with that. What are you afraid of? Surveillance? We are talking about open channels. Anyone can log them anyway. Corrupt moderators? The TMW team couldn't control the moderators in the foreign language channels anyway. They don't understand the language so they can't decide if what they do is appropriate or not.

there are only 4 banned members in this forum

Where did you get that number? The current ban list is 848 names long, not counting expired bans (the vast majority of the permanent bans are spambots, though).

2 dismissed GMs

2 too many, when you ask me.

[Nard]

4 is the number of members of the "banned" usergroup : http://forums.themanaworld.org/memberli ... roup&g=968 (spammers should not be included in that group of course).
2 dismissed GMs is of course too much , no need to ask about it.
I didn't have a look to the banned members list in wiki, but I am sure it is not that important too. No public information is available concerning developers. Perhaps it is better like that.

Nard

[Crush]

We don't use that group anymore, because banning someone with the ban list is much more convenient and failsafe than changing the group associations of a user. But that has nothing to do with the topic. A much better metric for the behavior of our community is their ingame behavior. And a look at the GM log will show you that our GMs have to intervene daily because of chat rule violations.

[Big Crunch]

why have it as a channel? why not setup a translation bot instead. Whisper it in whatever language you use and it posts the same thing in english but publicly

for example

/w translate i would like to sell 5 iron ore < except in another language.

the bot would then announce publicly:

Big Crunch: i would like to sell 5 iron ore

etc

[Nard]

why have it as a channel? why not setup a translation bot instead. Whisper it in whatever language you use and it posts the same thing in english but publicly

for example

/w translate i would like to sell 5 iron ore < except in another language.

the bot would then announce publicly:

Big Crunch: i would like to sell 5 iron ore

etc

A Translation bot would be convenient for small simple sentences such as your example, not to give help for help on quests or status with several helping players such as it happens quite often. Or even having a loose chat such as the public, group, or guild tabs are allowing. Little English speaking players feel isolated a lot, even in a party. Parties are mostly international and it is nice.

Nard

[Narus]

I still wonder why the Lang tab should be moderated afaik a group tab is not, and guild bot is not, as long as they only talk privately I don't see why we should enforce the English in public, the Lang tab will not be public.
At this moment guild bot is hosted by Platinum and there is no Lang limitation on that tab, example: if we had a Spanish guild running they we can assume they are speaking Spanish all the time in that tab, is there anyone moderating them? nop.
And we do have many groups of player that speak other languages since it is private no one cares to check their conversations, why it should be different with this Lang tab when it will be also a private chat between a group of players in their chosen language. So if right now the host has to present the chat logs for anything they will have to present the log in the language they are written and the person, organism, government, etc that require it will have to check and translate.

BC about the translation, people at least in Spanish don't always write Spanish, they talk slangs, so many different countries talk Spanish and we all use different words, so it will be hard to implement a translator y and show a decent translation on the general or trade windows. one typo and it will have no sense example:"bendo 1 iron" he is trying to say i sell 1 iron ore, but used b instead of v and it will show up "bendo 1 iron" since bendo does not exist, vendo is "I sell" bendo will look like BAD Spanish in public.