I believe that rule 6 in our community guidelines should be changed.
The reasoning I am asking for this change is because we pride ourselves on the fact that we are a great international community of people, however never consider that people may particularly struggle with the English language, as it is very complicated, and that this may in fact be a disincentive to newer players. Since the arrival of some French-speakers this month, there was a comment to either enforce the rule or to get rid of it entirely. But I say it should be simply reconfigured, as I believe if staff need to understand or communicate something more clearly, we can use Google Translate if necessary, and a player can do the same for when we write in English. For example, the rule said “using /msg but only to players you know are comfortable speaking in that language”, however /msg only works two ways, and if there are more than a pair who prefer typing and not speaking for whatever the reason may be, our current rule makes communication much more complicated for them. If a player asks a staff a question, then we can enforce the rule that it should be asked in English for the staff here, however between player to player communication, I believe we can just allow those who want to speak, to be able to speak, as a growth in our player base whatever the case may be is always beneficial to this server. Similarly, being able to speak in a different language has also been proven to be beneficial. I will be giving an example of myself and Vir_Caeli. I am learning Italian, and Vir, living in Italy, happens to be fluent in it. So he offers his help while continuing to build, that way, instead of going to discord and swiping back and forth between screens or not being able to build, we can have a conversation in Italian where he could then improve my grammar or correct me on any mistakes. We’ve had conversations in Italian before, and as far as I could tell, no one was upset by the fact that anyone was speaking a different language at all. So that is why I believe as long as a player speaking a language other than English isn’t spamming or insulting another person, the rule is able to be edited without consequence.
My suggested rule change below:
(Bolded lines are to be either changed or removed)
"PCB is an English speaking server. Players should only speak English in chat, and should have the capacity to understand staff instructions given in English - You may speak in another language if you prefer, using /msg but only to players you know are comfortable speaking in that language",
Which would create this rule:
PCB is an English speaking server. Players may however speak in another language if others online speak the same language, and would like to talk, however should have the capacity to understand staff instructions given in English.