Use of text speak

[#1]

In my opinion, people who post incomprehensible rubbish either end up getting ignored, or irritate a swathe of forum users until they hop over the line of the rules and get banned for whatever reason.
So, I don't see any reason to specifically 'ban' or 'discourage' text speak, or l33t speak, or badly-translated-to-English speak.  It will just get generally ignored.
It's a hard life, but I don't understand why taking a few extra minutes to ensure your post is legible should be frowned upon?
B.

[#2]

Quote from: Jameseh

It annoys me too, but so do people that walk slowly and short people with umbrellas.

I'm with James on this. I hate text-speech, and even when texting would find it quicker to type full words (with a T9 word predictor) than re-arrange my brain to think up what the wierd symbols would be. And I'm techie, living in a world of TLA's!
In an arena where we largely choose whether we can be bothered to respond to a post, a language we cannot understand will get limited response - so perhaps it is a self-managed feature anyway! There are certain people who's posts I already mentally ignore, as they're usually long single paragraphs of unfollowable, unpunctuated, drivel. I imagine someone who posted in txt would get ignored in the same way.
But you can't ban it, though you can certainly point out it's shortcomings.
To me, Txt Speak is a way of either being lazy or speedy in the days when SMS text needed multiple keyclicks, and because the medium restricted you to 160 characters.
A generation of youth has grown up with this style of communications (in both size, speed and availability), and continued use of Txt speech outside SMS's becomes a kind of sign of membership of this club - the kind of thing a teenager does to exclude their parents. And nowadays, isn't use of the speech more an indication of the membership of the club?
I have to say that, as far as disability discussions goes, I would have thought that Txt speech was *more* discriminatory. If it makes things harder to understand to *anyone* it has to be bad, right? (That sentence is written from the perspective of an able-bodied person writing the txt-speech vs a disabled reader) So so far, I don't see the direction that thisoldman is coming from. I don't know anyone who has trouble articulating themselves who deliberately chooses to write in txt-speech instead. Does anyone *really* do that? I'd love to know.
If the EHRC though that even the existence of the poll was a bad thing, then I would immediately suspect they had the wrong end of the stick, and that they thought the proposal was to ban "Text-to-Speech", which can be enormously helpful to those who cannot see the written posts or cannot read or understand them.

[#3]

Quote from: artmo

I don't think Chris would have any say in the decision, except to cast a vote. Whatever is done will be decided by the moderators.

Isn't the job of the moderators to enforce the rules, rather than to set them?
Setting the rules *could* be done by the moderators, or by democratic votes, or by being set (or overridden) by PlusNet. By virtue of being long-standing members here with generally acceptable views, the moderator's opinions might be listened to more. But I don't think they get the ultimate decision on the rules - that has to be down to the owners... PlusNet.

[#4]

Nope, we set the rules. The idea has basically been, ever since the portal forums opened in 2003, that the moderators run the forums, not Plusnet. We have lost some control over the years, but still, Plusnet generally leave us alone with the day-to-day running of the forums. Of course they maintain the position of ultimate authority so they could put their foot down and say ‘we're not happy with this so you can't do it’ if they wanted to, and indeed that has happened on occasions (such as elements of last year's forum redesign) but generally speaking, what happens here is up to us.
Bear in mind, of course, that between us the team has quite a lot of acquired moderating experience, so that's not necessary a bad thing. Plus it allows Plusnet to say that the forums are run impartially, which is the main point of letting us have control really.

[#5]

Thanks Thomas, that's as I understood it.

[#6]

and just to emphasize the point in my first post
"Following the animated discussion on the last rule change I thought I would ask the opinion of the Community before raising it with the other Moderators"
This had not been discussed with the other moderators who, in the end, may very well not agree with any suggestion I may or indeed may not put forward.

[#7]

Yes It should be banned, Its lazy and I cant make out what's being said, Might be more work for you moderators though? Yes ban It, And now I go and vote.
PS Over on the TT forum theirs lots of this going on and It makes me not want to take part In the forum,( Not that I do ) But that's how It makes me feel personally.

[#8]

Thanks Thomas - That's about the split of responsibility that I both expected and agree with (though re-reading what I wrote earlier doesn't quite seem that way). Semi hands-off from PlusNet, but with the ultimate responsibility (it is both their domain and their business). However, I'm glad that, with the involvement of the digital care guys, that their support isn't hands-off.
I've never been clear about how the forum meshes with the user-group though...

[#9]

Voted Yes to ban text speak.
I don't like it and don't use it when I send a text message from my phone and would prefer not to see it on this forum.
I don't confuse text speak and forum style abbreviation and I also am able to distinguish between text speak and text posted by members with, for example Dyslexia.
Maybe I should change my vote to Discourage

[#10]

I would encourage discouragement, IYSWIM. 
Seriously though, I don't mind the occasional word, but if a post is full of text-speak and hard to follow, I'll just move on.
I think a ban would be unworkable, cause no end of arguments and recrimination, and seems to me to be making up rules for the sake of it. Where will it all end?

[#11]

Can I have clarification on one point please: if a ban were to be introduced would it include all shortened forms used in text speak, even if they are sometimes used in other forms of communication?

[#12]

Sorry - no
This poll was to get an idea of the thoughts of the community.
I haven't even thought of how to word it or even if it would be workable except that it would give the moderators the right to sort out the obviously annoying ones.
Assuming that the poll showed that the community by a significant majority didn't like their use then the moderators (not just me) would need to consider whether or indeed how to deal with it.
Obviously I wouldn't want to stop the use of acronyms but I remember that there was a big discussion a year or so back where technical acronyms were being used and the majority of the posters hadn't got the first idea what they meant. At that time I seem to remember that posters were asked to include the intended meaning at least once in the thread