Cultural Differences and Forum Moderation

He's not my guy. If he was my guy he'd have purposefully dropped that UFO on an American city, then explained how he was doing the world a favour that way and gotten away with it, too. Or started a world war, but them's the breaks.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

I see these as completely new boards, not the EU being assimilated into the NA boards. As a matter of fact, I am employed by a multi-national firm that originates in South Korea so I like to think of us all as either employees or guests of the South Koreans.

Unfortunately we cannot accept all differences of behavior and simply allow EU players to use acceptable terms in the EU and NA players to use acceptable terms in the US because rules enforcement would be discriminatory (separate but equal has not proven to be very equal in a number of instances in the history of mankind) and that would be harmful to the community in the long run as well as creating a moderation nightmare.

Nor should we take a strictly subtractive approach and eliminate anything which potentially might be offensive to anyone (there are common terms which we need to communicate which are vulgar or obscene in certain languages).

We need to take a blended approach and accept certain behaviors as not offensive due to different cultures, but informing and making accommodation for what others might be offended by at the same time. Certain subjects are so harmful that they cannot be permitted (such as implications of racial abuse), other subjects can perhaps be given a bit more grace. In the example that was talked about in this thread extensively let me say that it would be highly likely had it been a former NA forumite they would not be posting currently had the same situation arisen.

If people have concerns about specific actions please pm a member of the Community Team (Avatea, Niviene, or myself in either this incarnation or as theOcho) as we can answer questions about specifics more directly in private.

But rest assured, anyone who thinks these are the NA forums and the EU members are only guests to be assimilated is sorely misinformed.

Not anymore he's not.

Damn, I'm just way too geeky to have let that pass even though there have been loads of pages after it.

Oh, I surely DO remember you, and vaguely, the disagreement about that audio comic.

I was wondering actually, how come the new account? Oh, and welcome back.

OK, you've set me off. I can't post on these new combi-boards now without diving into a mile-long rant...

It's an atrocity that here in the UK there are cellarmen so wet behind the ears that they don't know how to keep ale (I'm calling it that to differentiate from beer. There really is a difference ). Barrels of ale should be maintained at 55° Fahrenheit. That is NOT room temperature, except in some badly heated rooms in winter. In warm weather there are light summer ales which are fantasatic at reducing body temperature and quenching thirst on a hot day - although we tend not to get the extremes of brain-melting heat and humidity that you have to suffer in the US - hell's bells, I have to have a cool drink just watching True Blood... But ales and stouts have individual combinations of flavour and characteristic that are destroyed at freezing temperatures. Modern Guinness, for me, is an example of a truly awful excuse for a stout: it's flavours destroyed by the dreadful need to make it ultra-cold. Guinness is to stout what John Smitth Smooth is to bitter ale. It's great if you want a cold, bitter, pint of nondescript generic liquid with a lingering aftertaste of plastic, but for contrast I recommend trying some excellent independent English, Scottish or Welsh stouts and porters that have retained a delicacy of flavour and are brewed by people who care about their craft, rather than how swiftly the conveyor belt is rolling.

Pub culture has utterly changed in the UK and is, in fact, in a desperate crisis. Most pubs around here have closed or turned into bizarre theme-toilets for the 16-24 age group. Ale in pubs, along with the means of brewing it, has become so heavily taxed that only the under-age can afford it - while wine and vodka from the European Union is often subsidised and can be bought very cheaply indeed in supermarkets. Pubs are consequently dying as most people can't afford to use them like they used to, and the youth who do, when they're not buying cheap vodka shots or fruit-flavoured vodka-pops, are buying not ale, but cut-price pressurized beer-pop.

If you want to experience British pubs in Britain, you'll have to get over here pretty darn fast before they all disappear. Otherwise, find a British-style theme pub in the USA, because they're probably the closest you'll find to a decent pub from now on.

/rant over. But please, PLEASE stop describing British ale as "room temperature" or "warm" because it's NOT.

You'd think so, but you're wrong.

There's a strong Jewish lobby over here which likes to play the Holocaust card everytime they don't get their way. Likewise, some Israeli governments have liked to do so whenever they had a political agreement with the German state. Which, amusingly enough, leads to a certain amount of resentment towards Jews on the German side. Maybe cats and dogs really can't live in peace.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

The irony there is that Germany probably has the strongest anti-holocaust denial laws in the world!

Well you're entitled to your opinion of course, but I disagree, and think that comparing the movie industry to swallowing poisons is a little extreme lol.

I sympathise with you, and i agree it would be lovely if there were more films made showing the wonderful tales of heroism from all nationalities that have happened over the years (my own personal wish would be to see a film made of the story of The Orzel http://orporzel.prv.pl/)

It's not just the US that rewrites history in order to make it more entertaining for its audience, however. Enigma, the movie supposedly showing how the Enigma Machine was cracked in WWII, makes the traitor Polish, when in reality the only traitor at Bletchley park was British, and the Poles had a great deal to do with the cracking of the Enigma machine in reality. In was an American funded film, but the screenplay was written by the British playwright Tom Stoppard, and the book its based on, which also makes the same IMO grevious affronts to Poland was written by Richard Harris, a British novelist.

Going back further, plenty of British films do the same thing. The 1969 British film The Battle of Britain marginalizes the Polish air squadron 303 which was in fact responsible for the highest number of enemy casualties in the entire Battle. The great film Zulu makes the Swedish missionary Otto Witt out to be an alcoholic coward, when in fact he was neither. The Bridge Over The River Kwai's treatment of Risaburo Saito is historically innacurate as well.

So when you're banging on about the US and their penchant for being historically innacurate, remember that you can't claim that the UK is innocent of the exact same thing you're complaining about.

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

'Over here'? I don't know where you're referring to.

I'm not getting into a discussion on that anyway. I meant that a normal rational Jew should have no reason do dislike a normal rational german. i'm not talking about nutters of any nationality. And please remember why I said that in the first place - this is a sidetrack.

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Oh I dunno... Some of the dross coming out of Hollywood these days has almost made me want to swallow poison, if only just to make it stop!

I swear, some of them are even so bad that not even the pirates bother with them!!

'Over here' meaning 'in Germany'.

And this guy for example certainly is no nutter. He used to be a respected conservative politician before his little run-in with the law (and come on, it's blow and hookers... I know I'd do that if I had the spare cash so I can hardly blame him for that) and he's still a presence in the media. And he's very fond of playing the Holocaust card. But then he's a generally unlikable individual in his public persona.

Case in point is, you made an assumption that was not congruent with modern-day Jewish-German relations. I corrected you, having more of the facts due to actually living in Germany and having to put up with this ****. There really is no bleeding need to get defensive about it. Your supposition wasn't unreasonable, but it was still off-target.

And for the record, it is a sore point. I never tried to gas anyone. Beat a guy up pretty badly once, but he had it coming, and he was a non-denominational Canadian. Yet I still have to put up with some ***** going 'you owe me cause your grandpa gassed my grandpa' now and then. Which usually ends... badly.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

My only beef with Germans is with the buggers who continually hog all the sunbeds at Spanish resorts!

Getting up at 6am to sneak down to the pool, collect all the towels "reserving" the sunbeds that were placed there at about 2am, and chuck the lot into the pool is a pain!

Fair enough, you're there. I'm sorry if you've never met a reasonable jew. But I would call that guy a nutter.


EDIT - How do you do that thing where you put a URL in and it only shows up as a single word - the thing you did with 'this guy'?
Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

No worries there on my account. I spend all summer trying not to get a tan.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

Oh, I have met reasonable Jews. Often without knowing cause much like members of other religions they don't come up to you and say, 'Hi, I'm Bob, I'm a Jew'. It's only the ones with a beef to pick who stress it. (Like this guy who's apparently always been trouble even before coming to Germany.) But I've met a sizable enough group of the other variety to think it's not just a fluke.


As for the URL bit, it's just the same as with the old forums. (url=your URL)your text(/url) -- just replace the rounded brackets with square ones.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
Winston Churchill

With the old forums, i used to be able to do it without having to manually type in the BB codes. I guess there's no way to use the editor to do this with the new forums.

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Ok I feel the need to respond here: Firstly if it is not possible to accept the different cultural idioms between the continents, what on earth were you doing posting your original question? Surely you must have realised that you were opening a can of worms? If you are saying that I, as an Englishman first and foremost cannot express opinion and perspective in the light of my own upbringing, culture and experiences that may be at odds with others on this board then there is no place for any form of discussion whatsoever. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to have a universal view, nor indeed would it be very enlightening if they were to do so.

Disagreement is fine, and in some instances should be encouraged. Personally I see nothing wrong with impassioned, vibrant and emotional discussion - so long as that does not spill over into open animosity and blatant rule breaking. That's what mature debate's all about.

It is highly unlikely that there will ever be a universal concensus here, but I see no reason why we cannot express differing opinions and ideas so long as it is in - if not a constructive manner, at least not destructive. Sometimes it will be necessary to agree to disagree, which is also ok. Whichever continent we post from we are very fortunate in the Western World - of which Europe and North America is the majority shareholder - to hold free speech as a central tenet of our cutlture. To constrain that is the road to hell.

You may view us as "guests" of the South Koreans, I prefer to think of us as paying customers and as such I hope that so long as I express myself within the bounds of normal moral decency I can share my views and opinions with others. Cheers.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

There is: Type out the text that you want, highlight the bit you want to turn into a link, then click on the "world with a two-link chain" button in the post editor, paste in your URL and Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle.

Aha! Fantastic! Thanks v much!

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

The first capture by the Allies of an Enigma machine was made by the Poles and smuggled to Britain, certainly. The "cracking" couldn't be done until the machine was subjected to the array of Allied brains, resources and several lucky breaks at Bletchley Park, though.

I'll have to dig out the DVD but I seem to remember the Polish contribution being specifically dramatised, especially their bravery and ferocity alongside strange-but-apparently-true comic references to contemporary English parochial europhobia (did I just make that work up?). The Battle of Britain also commemorates every nationality that contributed pilots - including a lone Israeli (even though Israel didn't formally exist at the time), during the long end-credit sequence. But that was the point of the film; to commemorate the courage and sacrifice of those involved at a time when the war was less than 25 years over. It's more of an action/adventure movie these days, but at the time the audiences had a very different set of memories and experiences.

Nit-picking over, but onto a hugely lengthy ramble that kind of lends support to your point suggested here:

I doubt anyone in Hollywood makes films purely because they have a Nationalist agenda to brainwash gullible moviegoers into thinking, for example, that the USA won WW2 all by themselves. Certainly not the executives of the foreign owned multimedia corporations that dominate Hollywood. The reason Hollywood has a tradition of playing fast and loose with “history” has everything to do with money, politics, and above all engaging its audience with the story, rather than jingoism.

Whether we like it or not, Hollywood is forced to consider history as inspiration, rather than gospel. The North American market is so much vaster and potentially rewarding than the relatively tiny UK market, and Hollywood’s resources are equally much greater than any that could be mobilized in the UK film industry’s wildest dreams. Because of that, Hollywood has a duty to offset its investment risk by maximising its product appeal to the best market it can. That often means changing the focus of a story inspired by a historical event.

For example; David Puttnam, an English producer who was briefly head of Columbia, had for years been trying to turn Len Deighton’s excellent novel Bomber into a feature motion picture but could never quite put the investment together. When the financial backing was finally in place, however, the American investors insisted on maximising their chances of success by pitching the movie as something an American audience would be more likely to spend their money on. So out went the grim and gritty movie about the RAF Lancaster and in came the poignant movie of the USAAF B-17, Memphis Belle. Otherwise the film is a British affair: filmed in England, directed by a Scot, produced by an Englishman, advised by former RAF Lancaster bomber crewmen. But the star of the movie is a Flying Fortress with a star on the fuselage - which doesn’t fundamentally alter the nature of the story at all, and it’s still a fine movie.

Much more notorious is Objective, Burma!, which has, at times, been utterly reviled in the UK for apparently ignoring the tremendous effort of Commonwealth forces to drive the Japanese out of Burma and Malaya during WW2. What these people seem to forget, however, is that by the end of 1944, when the film was being made, Hollywood had a duty to the war effort to remind America that, even though the war in Europe was almost at an end, their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers may not be coming home because there was still a lot of fighting to be done, that there were reasons why, and that the war effort needed the continued support of the American people before the Japanese could be overcome in the Pacific theatre. Raoul Walsh delivers that by having Errol Flynn lead a bunch of GIs through a hellish jungle to help set up an Allied victory. It works as an excellent propaganda piece for a US audience when the same film but with David Niven leading a platoon of Chindits would not. It’s also an excellent war movie (and stars an Australian, too ).

As for U-571, well, like The Battle of Britain, at least the movie’s end credits do indeed list all the Royal Navy vessels who secured the intelligence, making it abundantly clear that what we’ve just seen is an imagined fiction born out of the real activities of those RN crews. And Enigma is just a period thriller, with the real-life story behind the antagonists’ motive no longer a politically sensitive issue by the time of the film’s release - and the conspiratorial tone fits neatly into a pattern of activities, real and imagined, undertaken by British Intelligence during WW2.

But I wouldn't fault Saving Private Ryan for a failure to include sequences of, for example, British and Commonwealth forces campaigning elsewhere along the front. The Rangers' mission in Ryan takes place in a purely American sector. The only non-US Allied activity would likely have been air support or French Resistance. What I find more annoying are the narratively unnecessary insertions in Saving Private Ryan, which draws upon some dubious analysis by an historian with debatable methodology in order to apparently endorse a populist dislike of Montgomery and underestimation of the contribution of non-US forces.

I especially detest “docu-drama” and other supposed education productions that just don’t do the research and can not, therefore, reach any kind of productive analysis, let alone pretend to draw conclusions. And yet some of our more vaunted institutions, like the BBC, are amongst the worst practitioners. No-one expects U-571 to be a history lesson, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable that it uses tales of historical heroism as a source of mythic adventures, just as storytellers have done since the human species first learnt to speak. But a lot of people watching documentary and factual programming on our TVs put their faith in them. When that faith is betrayed, by either incompetence or design, then that’s surely far less acceptable.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I better not tell you that they can reserve them online before the even get to the resort now lol

I already know!

Still not gonna stop me chucking their bloody towels in the pool tho!