when intolerance slowly rot the game ...

[SwiftSpear]

Prejudice against "French" is racism. Racism apples to nationality and ethnic origin as well as color of the skin and physical traits.

The whole point of not being racist is not judging people based on what they look like or where they come from. It's one thing to not like France, it's another thing entirely to dislike someone because they ARE French.

[Neddie]

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Agreed, but could you add something to future quote posts? Like opinion...

[smoth]

The whole point of not being racist is not judging people based on what they look like or where they come from. It's one thing to not like France, it's another thing entirely to dislike someone because they ARE French.

That does not mean the host of said game was in any way racist. It was a single person saying he did not want french people in his game, which for all we know could have been up for five minutes to an hour. Fact of the matter is that the OP went and made the logical high jump to assume this was part of some nationalistic, racist whatever trend. This sort of oversensitivity is asinine.

So because one player decided to have a game where he didn't want french people, we have to suddenly get all worried about racism? No, I think the OP is being overly sensitive and I am offended that he would even suggest that this community is like that. For god's sake, ZWZSG is one of the TA old guard and a very helpful guy. If the op had looked a little deeper rather then knee jerk reaction crying about racism I would not be nearly as pissed about it.

[SwiftSpear]

Fair nough.

[hunterw]

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Actually I like it, goes to show the diversity of the community. Discrimination is not the flag's fault...

Agreed, but could you add something to future quote posts? Like opinion...

well, th

[Dragon45]

i don't like blacks, jews, or chinese people.

[LordMatt]

I don't like you.

[Dragon45]

+1 i dont like you neither

i also forgot mexicans; i don't like mexicans either.

[Dragon45]

i hereby issue a proclamation: NO BLACKS JEWS ASIANS MEXICANS INDIANS ESKIMOS OR LORDMATTS IN MY BATTLES

white powa!

[smoth]

Aaaaaaaaaaaand we go downhill from here

[Saktoth]

cant english

[Linus]

An attempt to give this thread some meaning back, since I do believe there is a point in raising this issue. Maybe there is something to be learned from this, and we shouldn't miss the possibility to do so. There are basically two aspects about it: Cultural differences and language barrier:

The cultural part is twofold: First part is that prejudices against a group of people, say, the French or the Americans, are not always totally wrong, but it is always wrong to express them publicly. People will get hurt. So,
1. Don't say something negative about nationalities. Shouldn't be so hard.

Then there's differences in communication culture. A German might express something as a proposal, an Asian guy as a question, a Frenchman as a demand, and they may mean the same thing. Just because their communication culture is different doesn't mean they're different, character-wise. We are an international community, we have to deal with that. So when we read something we might find offending or strange:
2. Don't feel personally offended if you haven't been attacked literally. Always consider the literal content, not the style.

Now, with the language barrier, I do respect the point that esp. young players (age 14 or so) from non-English countries have difficulties with English. I (being German) had. Still have some. Better than to exclude them is to allow foreign-language games and chat channels, but make them language-specific, not nationality-specific, in order to avoid problems like the one that caused this thread. Then it'd be perfectly OK to say "This game is English only", and if so. struggles with the language it'll be safe to say "please find another game, communicating with you is too difficult". Finalizing,
3. Solve problems at the language level, not at the cultural level

A bit of theoretical background on intercultural communication are those 12 rules there. No need to read it though to understand that it's easy to adhere these 3 rules here to make sure people's feelings won't get hurt.

[Smiff]

don't remove the flags, if people have a racism problem that's not the solution.. perhaps a mod would like to temp ban hosts who write anything too offensive in the description.. but otherwise i'd let the players sort it out. the flags make things more interesting, don't spoil things for the sake of the few who abuse it.
edit: here for example, i might write "please speak english" if i wanted that, i think gets the point without offending anyone?

[smoth]

one person, isolated incident, we don't need sensitivity training. Lets not make it a big deal, the community has been fine for 10+ years.

In the end bringing up angst about someone's nationality or political affiliation is not polite in the first place. It is a simple matter of propriety in our behavior. I am not saying we need to be 100% straight arrow either but fact of the matter is that we can simply ignore the person in question as well. I have come across servers in other games that said "NO AMERICANS" and didn't care, there are always other servers.