# Political statements in posts



## Orlin

As far as I know, linguistics and politics are often related and political motives can easily appear in posts even if the poster has no intention to present a political idea (for example, it is almost always with everything related to the languages of the Balkan Peninsula).
I have the following questions:
1. How does WR team decide which post is acceptable and which is not according to the level of "politicalness"?
2. If a post is considered unacceptable because of being highly political rather than linguistic, what is done by the moderators besides the trivial editing or deleting the post because it is against the rules? Are members banned if they post political ideas (repeatedly or not)?


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## Hulalessar

I would interested to hear to have an answer to question 1 in particular since it ties in with this thread: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1631299


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## ampurdan

I don't know how long you've been participating in Wordreference nor what your particular reasons to ask this question are, but let me tell you I think you can get an idea about how these questions are dealt with here once you've been a while around the forums.

Anyway, What I can explain from my experience is that Wordreference forums purpose is mainly to discuss about translations, words and word usage in a cordial, respectful, serious atmosphere. This sometimes may involve political, religious, sociological and economic ideas and many other probably. However, when a political, religious, etc. comment is not strictly necessary to deal with the topic of the thread, it may be deleted (if there is no real danger that it may change the specific thread subject, it might as well be left alone).

If the topic of discussion is merely or mainly political, religious, etc. it shall be deemed out of the scope of the forums and the whole discussion is withdrawn.

Individual forums might have some special rule concerning a specific kind of political or religious discussions.

Of course, Cultural Discussions is an entirely different field, and I'd rather let some moderator of those forums explain how they deal with these issues.

I don't remember that any member has ever been banned because of repeated inappropriate political comments right now, but I haven't been here since the very beginning and my memory might not serve me well. I remember one particular forero who was once banned because he used the forum to proselytise and took no heed of moderators warnings against such behaviour. Hypothetically speaking, someone who did the same with their political ideas might eventually be banned too, if they did not change their attitude.


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## cuchuflete

ampurdan said:


> _* I don't remember that any member has ever been banned because of repeated inappropriate political comments*_ right now, but I haven't been here since the very beginning and my memory might not serve me well. I remember one particular forero who was once banned because he used the forum to proselytise and took no heed of moderators warnings against such behaviour. Hypothetically speaking, someone who did the same with their political ideas might eventually be banned too, if they did not change their attitude.


_Emphasis added

_
At least one member was banned for using language discussions as a pretext to engage in politics.  This person received numerous private messages from the moderator team explaining that the forums' purpose was language, and not nationalism.  The person was invited to participate in a civil, non-combative manner, and to leave his or her political agenda outside the forums.  Nothing changed.  Multiple warnings were sent. Nothing changed.  The member was expelled.

As ampurdan mentioned, we also banned one person, a few years ago, for trying to use the forums to engage in religious proselytizing.  Many messages were sent; many posts were deleted.  Finally, the member was banned.

It is rare, but when anyone abuses the forums by trying to use them for motives such as promotion of a political, religious or commercial viewpoint, they are asked to stop. Then they are told to stop.  If they do not stop, they are blocked from participating.


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## sokol

Orlin said:


> 1. How does WR team decide which post is acceptable and which is not according to the level of "politicalness"?



Obviously, moderators too are only ordinary human beings, living ordinary lives and trying their ordinary best to decide correctly when a post is crossing the border and needs to be deleted.

In many cases it is very clear when a post is going too far; in others it isn't: and I am the first one to admit that I've erred in my judgement several times (where at first I thought the case is clear and only later realised that I better should have discussed this case with other moderators).
But there also have been cases where we waited too long before stepping in because we didn't realise how highly offensive some topics are considered by some foreros.

Let's take this ancient thread about Montenegrin, posted in the year of independence of this new nation.
This thread easily could turn "political", and one or two posts already are almost critical.
As long as discussion is only about whether there is (or will be) a separate Montenegrin standard language (and what it will look like) the topic definitely is linguistic.

Posts claiming enthusiastically that Montenegrin is and always was a separate language however would be out of scope, as well as posts claiming that there never was and will be a Montenegrin language: this would be promoting a national point of view.
Unfortunately language and politics are extremely closely entwined on the Balkans, as you know, and one has to tread very carefully there.

Note the difference to the English speaking world: if somebody would claim that an English speaker from the US speaks English and that there "never will be an American language" then most likely Americans just would find this laughable.
For Americans it is completely normal to refer to their language as "English", and further they are very well aware that English as spoken and written in America is different from British English. But they don't see a need to call their language "American": they are well aware of the facts and the name of the language just is arbitrary, they still use their American variety of the English standard language.
The name is not so important because their nation is defined by the US constitution. (There isn't even an "American" Wikipedia. Why should there be, when they're all speaking English?)

This is different on the Balkans.  Here, as you know, a majority defines nation through language, and thus it is not uncommon to conclude from this that a nation couldn't exist without a national language with its own name.

And this is also why to claim either that _*there is*_ or that _*there isn't*_ something called a "Montenegrin language" alone (without leaving room for discussion) could very well be a political statement in itself - as we are talking about a region where the name of a language is considered to be of such great political significance.


I hope this example helps; it is only meant to illustrate the point (let's not discuss the case of Montenegro in more detail here  this discussion - that is, if you're interested at all - should take place in the Slavic where it is an accepted discussion topic as long as it stays on firm linguistic grounds, without turning political ).


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## Hulalessar

Perhaps what this site needs is a forum to deal with sociolinguistic issues.


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## cuchuflete

Hulalessar said:


> Perhaps what this site needs is a forum to deal with sociolinguistic issues.



There are sites that invite such discussions.


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## Hulalessar

cuchuflete said:


> There are sites that invite such discussions.



I know.

I am aware of what the main thrust of this site is. I also acknowledge that those who own/run it are perfectly entitled to include or exclude what they want. However, language is made by humans and humans are social beings. Language cannot in the end be fully understood except in its social context. It is impossible to ring fence discussions on language so that the real world does not intrude. So, if this is to be more than a "Have I used the correct form of verb here?" site and its aim is to promote understanding of language, it needs to expand a little.


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## ampurdan

In my opinion, if "real world" is what you want, do not engage in an Internet discussion about anything. By expanding the scope to any social issue more or less related to language, what you can get at most is but a “reality show”.

I believe that it works pretty well, the way things are now in WRF language forums. On-topic comments about politics are welcome; quarreling, however insightful it may seem from a sociological or pseudo-sociological point of view, is not. Of course, there is always room for improvement.


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## sokol

Hulalessar said:


> ... it needs to expand a little.


Well, take EHL forum - we're allowing sociolinguistic discussions there (for some time already, and while we were tolerating them only previously we're encouraging them now).

But that's not what you're referring to if I understand you correctly, you'd like to include sociolinguistic discussions in the language forums, right?
Their primary scope of course is to serve as a supplement for the dictionaries which certainly limits sociolinguistic discussions there.

Whatever - political issues still need to be kept out, even of EHL forum, and even in threads with sociolinguistic topics; and the more sensitive a topic the more important it is to NOT discuss politics here.
(Also I wouldn't enjoy at all having to act as mediator between foreros trying to settle a political argument; this only would get messy.)


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