Hey there everyone,

I need some advice/suggestions/help regarding an ongoing issue with a player on a board that I am a co-admin of. To start I need to say that I was not an admin when this player's application was approved and therefore didn't have the opportunity to stop this issue before it even started, because yes, when I looked at the application it showed these same issues, even if on a smaller scale. Now on to the issue.

This player's character is a canon (fandom game). The player is very nice and friendly OOC and from the little I can tell, seems to have a decent grasp of the character's personality, etc. The problem comes when the player makes a post or tags. Her tags are... Well, they are honestly almost completely incoherent.

These posts read as if someone wrote the tag in another language and then ran it through bablefish to translate it and posted the results. I am not exaggerating by any stretch here either. I'm not certain that posting an excerpt from a tag as an example would be something that is permitted so, I won't do that. You'll just have to trust me that I am not, in fact overstating.

My first thought was that perhaps this player was doing just that and, for whatever reason, didn't want to tell anyone that English isn't her first Language. However, in her app she entered London as her time zone and seems to have okay (at least understandable) conversations on the c-box, so now I'm not sure what to think.

My question is, how do we, the admins, deal with this player now? We don't want to drive them or away anything like that, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually play with this person. My idea was to send the player a PM about the issue, but I honestly have no idea what to say or where to start. This is an issue that I have never had to deal with before and I REALLY don't want to offend the player or hurt their feelings and at the same time I don't think it's fair to our other players to allow the issue to go unaddressed.

Comments, suggestions and/or help please?

I would say that you need to sit them down and just either have a discussion with them or send them something along the lines of:
"Hey, <person's name>, someone sent an anonymous email to us saying that they were having a hard time playing with you but they didn't want to cause problems. So they asked us to take a look. So we've examined some of your posts and we can see that things really are all over the place. We're just curious what's going on? Is there anything we can do to help?"

This way you don't have to single anyone out as the sender and you still can talk to them about the issue. Maybe they don't speak English as a first language... Or maybe they're just writing like they are because they know they can get away with it. (No one called them on it before, so why now?) Whatever the reason, gotta find out and see if you can help somehow.

At any rate, good luck.

I'm not sure I agree with VirusZero here, because if I got that message, I would most likely start feeling very self-conscious about my posts and paranoid about which of my roleplaying partners had PMed the admins about me. I'm not sure that's the way to go.

If I were the one dealing with that situation, I would leave out the "someone e-mailed us" bit altogether and simply say that I had noticed that some of her posts haven't been quite up to the level of her previous posts. That way, if she happens to get offended or upset, she can blame me and doesn't have to feel like someone she probably considers a friend is "having a hard time playing with her" or has even gone so far as to contact the admins about her.

Even if her previous posts weren't much better than her current ones, saying that you've noticed a difference could help to reassure her that she is "good enough" for your forum and that you have faith in her abilities that she can once again return to a "higher" level of writing skill.

I would probably include that seeing the difference has just made me a little worried about her and that I hoped that everything was okay. Hopefully, that would give her an open opportunity to explain the situation (if there is one) on her own terms without possibly feeling defensive.

Of course, it's impossible to know how other people will react to such things, but I know that as someone who hasn't always been confident in her writing abilities (and sometimes still isn't), being approached in that manner would put me more at ease.

Hope that helps. :)

Eh, I'd hesitate to tell them that it was an anonymous user. Then the member would get all scared that the site is against her or something. :S

"Dear [Member],

"While I enjoy your plots/characters/energy/whatever, I have noticed that it has become difficult to understand your posts. This is what I have observed: [insert the chaotic trends]. I like your [insert something good here], but the [problem] has enveloped the posts, and things are lost in translation. Here are my suggestions: [insert suggestions]. Thank you for your time, and if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. This PM is not to attack you but to help you become a better writer."

Thanks for the suggestions thus far!

@Gleefan, the problem is that the posts haven't changed or worsened by degrees, they started out this bad and, thus far have stayed that way. Honestly, while I would like to avoid hurting feelings I don't think lying about it will help at all, and in any case it's something that I refuse to do.

I also don't have any issue putting myself out there as being the "complainer" as I too am one of the people on the site attempting to maintain a thread with her character. I tend to be very direct and forward, but polite when dealing with issues on games that I admin/mod, but was just trying to get a feel for how direct might be TOO direct for a situation that could be as delicate as this one.


I would still like to hear a few more opinions on this matter before I sit down to try and write the actual PM, so keep them coming!


ETA:

@December, Esq - Thank you very much! I think that will give me place to start! Now I just have to figure out how to fill in those blanks, especially the [insert suggestions] one... I am honestly not sure what to suggest for this kind of issue.

I'm actually having the same problem, but the problem is the member is one of my RP friends and she's always had this problem. x.x I sometimes wonder if she reads what she writes at all and I, too, am considering how to react. She just posted an app on one of my sites and parts of it are... incoherent. So I'll be stalking this thread, hoping for a good way to approach her.

Best of luck to you and your situation and sorry I wasn't much help. =/

Just to clarify, I didn't say lie to her about it. lol

I think there is a difference in saying "hey, I've noticed that your posts have been a little off lately" and saying "wow, you were the world's best writer and not you're not...what's up?" XD

You did say, however, that her app was similar but "on a smaller scale" and that it was "increasingly" difficult to play with her lately, so that sounded to me as though she was getting "worse". Hence my suggestion.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were telling me to lie, I was just clarifying why, in this case, that suggestion, or phrasing, wasn't really going to work. Even saying "hey, I've noticed that your posts have been a little off lately" would be stretching at the truth a bit. Perhaps "We've noticed that your posts are off", but that just seems a little too mean...

I mean they are really like trying to read word salad. It seriously takes me between a half an hour to an hour of studying the tags just to figure out enough of it to be able to form my own tag around it and that's just... Not something that we can allow to continue.

London's time is also Portugal's time.. so maybe English is not her mother tongue anyway!

You can't pussyfoot around afraid to do anything about the problem lest it hurt someone's feelings. More than that will get hurt if this person is really disrupting your game.

You need to be honest but gentle with her. PM her something like this {because I've dealt with this problem before so I know what I'd say}:

"Hi. We've been noticing that your posts IC can be difficult to understand. We require correct grammar and spelling for all IC posts on this site and you are no different from anyone else. You need to check your posts over before you post them. If you have problems improving them, I can direct you to a few grammar tutorials online, as well as online spell checkers {not sure if your site has one already but Firefox has one built in}."

Something like this. It doesn't get personal but it addresses the problem. And it places the ability to improve the problem within easy reach of her by way of the grammar sites. Whenever you criticise, it's made a lot easier to take by offering a solution too. Rather than making them feel like they're stuck with the problem and no way out.

... Has anyone ever asked her... "What?"

No seriously, its a community first so I'd say ask as a community member first and admin later... if need be. I don't know, just to me, when I'm approached by the authority I always have the feeling of being attack even more so if I'm approached by an individual.

I'd suggest something like "Huh? lol, but no seriously I have no clue what's happening in that tag a little help?"

[they reply]

"Oh! Ok, now I get it. Its just when you do this and this like that its reads more like this instead of that."

At least it'll make her conscious of the issue before you active the POWER OF THE ADMIN! [THUNDER THUNDER CRACKLE CRACKLE] <.< >.> That is of course if she doesn't actively try to improve.

wynelle has it. If you are the site admin, it is good that you have the compassion to make this individual member feel good and have fun. However, you also have the responsibility to make things fun for all of your other members, and future members. I imagine this responsibility to the membership at large is why you have writing standards.

We have also been in this situation before. And yes: wynelle is right. No pussyfooting about. You don't have to be mean, but you should be honest, helpful and firm. Explain the rule, why you have that rule, and specific incidents where the player has broken the rule. Then, offer resources they can use to solve the problem. When we had a member who was having trouble writing up to standard, a staff member volunteered to read their post before they posted. It had some success. Anywho, don't forget to mention that the writer is a valued member of the community, and you're very happy she's writing with you all.

And definitely ask if she has any barriers to writing in appropriate English. She may not wish to disclose them, but if she does, it may help you find a solution. If she just is very excited and eager to post that she doesn't proofread - easy solution! Have her wait five minutes before posting and read it again.

If she's not a native speaker, be her English-language coach and offer to read her posts before she posts them.


Good luck. It's not mean to enforce the standards that keep all of your members having a good time.