Avalon Lodges a Formal Complaint

[flak attack]

The term itself predates the Godwin aspect you note above.

Regardless, the inference is valid. You have an alliance that is elitist based on race and restrict those that want to be in your group into a separate colony so that you don't intermingle the races.

Correct?

EDIT: I saw your tag and believed you to be in FOK. The comment was directed to FOK and iFOK respectively, not the cardboard people, who are a superior race unto themselves.

Linguistics, actually. FOK requires members to speak Dutch, not be Dutch. Does your alliance not require applicants to speak English? What FOK does is little different.

[Ivan Moldavi]

Linguistics, actually. FOK requires members to speak Dutch, not be Dutch. Does your alliance not require applicants to speak English? What FOK does is little different.

No, it has never come up. But if it did I wouldn't tell people that we weren't discriminating against those that don't speak English, because we would be.

EDIT: Actually, it has come up. We have at least one member that speaks German and we have had to get translators to help him through several of the issues so no, we do not discriminate based on language preference. You just might not get talked to as regularly as some of the others.

Edited October 17, 2009 by Ivan Moldavi

[Alterego]

Linguistics, actually. FOK requires members to speak Dutch, not be Dutch. Does your alliance not require applicants to speak English? What FOK does is little different.

This is the difference.

[OOC]English

Official language in 53 countries, 400m native speakers and 1.4 billion as a 2nd language.

Dutch

Official language in 5 countries 22m native speakers and 5m as a 2nd language.

Alliances can recruit whoever they want but it still is a mild form of discrimination. I would put money on every single member of Fok also speaking English.[OOC]

Hopefully Stickmen will show Avalon the respect they are asking for when the vote opens up again next week.

Edited October 17, 2009 by Alterego

[Tromp]

The term itself predates the Godwin aspect you note above.

Regardless, the inference is valid. You have an alliance that is elitist based on race and restrict those that want to be in your group into a separate colony so that you don't intermingle the races.

Partly OOC:

But no, seriously... We don't accept people that don't speak Dutch. That's something entirely different than a racist motivated policy.

The reason we have put that in our charter, is because we came over from a large Dutch forum (www.fok.nl) and wanted to keep our group as tightly knit as we could.

As everyone is well aware, people from all over the world play this game. To communicate with others we ofcourse will speak English (or try to), but we wanted to be able to talk in our own language at our own forum.

So a tip from me: if you want to join FOK, take a course Dutch language, and maybe you'll get in.

As to this tasteless "Untermensch" reference, I'll just say that this kind of thought is despised by almost all Europeans nowadays, because of the marks ideologies like nazism left on us.

[Tromp]

This is the difference.

[OOC]English

Official language in 53 countries, 400m native speakers and 1.4 billion as a 2nd language.

Dutch

Official language in 5 countries 22m native speakers and 5m as a 2nd language.

Alliances can recruit whoever they want but it still is a mild form of discrimination. I would put money on every single member of Fok also speaking English.[OOC]

Hopefully Stickmen will show Avalon the respect they are asking for when the vote opens up again next week.

OOC:

We are well aware this is a form of discrimination, however, every alliance discriminates. That's the very purpose of an alliance, that you have to apply and that the group you're applying to may decide wheter they accept you or not based on what the alliance's application requirements were.

FOK decided being able to talk in the Dutch language is one of these requirements. Other alliances chose to select on teamcolour, knowledge of the game mechanics or activity. Or these combined.

As such, I don't see why one would want to call us a 'racist' alliance.

Oh, and ofcourse, not every member of FOK speaks English. In fact, there are plenty of us that can't. They're missing a lot of pointless drama on these forums, and that's something I'm jealous ofat times.

Edited October 17, 2009 by Tromp

[Bob Janova]

It's pretty ridiculous to claim that a requirement to speak the language that alliance business is conducted in is racism. Just because the vast majority of alliances have a requirement to speak English does not make them racist, and so neither does one having a requirement to speak Dutch. (Several other alliances have a different language of business, too – there's Filipino and Malay that I know of.)

[OOC: Your point would logically make Cybernations and Invision 'racist' by the same criteria.]

Is it 'discrimination'? Well, yeah. To discriminate is to pick some and not others; every alliance does it. To bring 'untermenschen' into it is extremely poor form, and if I were in iFOK I'd be very insulted by that.

[Ivan Moldavi]

I don't recall claiming anyone or anything to be racist. I said it was discriminatory. Thank you for agreeing with me. *rollseyes*

And, as I said, who cares? Just pointing out that it is so isn't the same as claiming it is wrong or in some way not allowed, or shouldn't be allowed. I was just pointing out that the comparison brought up by Mussolandia is valid, tastes are relative. FOK has established themselves, legally via their own charter, to be set apart through the use of a different language with no exceptions. In the Cyberverse that is just as good as blood.

[OOC]Anyone can be anything they wish to be in CN. While certain symbols are not allowed a player can, and many do, RP themselves as fascists, racists, sexists, whatever and the use of a term like untermenschen does not automatically mean the one being labelled as such is equivalent to a World War II era Nazi, unless the one being addressed is RPing as such. People take offense at so much these days when it really isn't necessary. Just relax, it is just a game.[/OOC]

[Tromp]

I don't recall claiming anyone or anything to be racist. I said it was discriminatory. Thank you for agreeing with me. *rollseyes*

Make up your mind, you said:

You have an alliance that is elitist based on race

And:

selecting a nation to take part in your alliance on an individual case by case basis is not even close to the same thing as deciding beforehand that a nation can not take part if their nationality is not a specific class.

And, as I said, who cares? Just pointing out that it is so isn't the same as claiming it is wrong or in some way not allowed, or shouldn't be allowed. I was just pointing out that the comparison brought up by Mussolandia is valid, tastes are relative. FOK has established themselves, legally via their own charter, to be set apart through the use of a different language with no exceptions. In the Cyberverse that is just as good as blood.

I disagree.

The comparison is not valid, for there is a difference between racism and discrimination. That's what I was objecting to.

[OOC]Anyone can be anything they wish to be in CN. While certain symbols are not allowed a player can, and many do, RP themselves as fascists, racists, sexists, whatever and the use of a term like untermenschen does not automatically mean the one being labelled as such is equivalent to a World War II era Nazi, unless the one being addressed is RPing as such. People take offense at so much these days when it really isn't necessary. Just relax, it is just a game.[/OOC]

OOC:

Don't worry about that. I haven't taken any offense over the comment Mussolandia made, I merely pointed out that his comparison was invalid, why some people could object to it and furthermore I explained why we chose to select on being able to speak the Dutch language, thus proving him wrong.

Edited October 17, 2009 by Tromp

[Inspector Zenigata]

This thread has not been on topic for some time. If you wish to continue this discussion on FOK's admission policies then start another thread on it. Closing thread.