Can't communicate in Japanese?

We got a new forum member today who is Japanese; their English is passable but it seems clear they could communicate more comfortably in Japanese. So I tried to send them a (private) welcome.


My text says: "Welcome to the forums! My name is Joe. I speak a little Japanese. If you have any Unity troubles, please ask me, and I'll try to help."

Why is this disallowed? I understand the official language of the public forums is English, but if two consenting adults want to engage in a private conversation in Japanese (or even Chinese), why shouldn't they?

 

The ban of these characters is mainly due to spam prevention as the majority of content hitting our spam filters are posts with Chinese characters.

We know it's far from perfect but with the tools we have, it's one of the more effective methods which sadly also brings on what you have highlighted.

As I've mentioned in previous posts and not to sound like a broken record as I've been saying this for over a year, there is significant progress being made with the future of the forums and we can hopefully be in a scenario where we don't need bandaids like this to prevent spam.

 

is there some thread for more info about this?

 

Nothing active, as there is nothing public to share at present.

 

ok.. just would be nice to know whats happening, so that history doesn't repeat itself : D

(you know how unity likes to work in the background - sometimes for many years, without asking what users might think, and then reveals some big change, and then *oops*)

 

I understand the sentiment entirely. I try to give out information as I have it provided it adds value to the public knowing. It would not sit well with me personally if I was telling you progress was being made when in fact, we're doing nothing at all.

 

I have a suggestion for spam prevention. There is this feature for setting a text to be shown instead of the URL of a link. Spammers seem to love using that. How about you instant ban every account who uses that feature while posting a URL in their first 10 posts? I don't think I've ever seen someone legitimately use this among their first posts on a forum. Noobs don't know about the feature, and pros rarely have a good reason to use it. So why not use that as a honeypot and add it to the spam filter?

 

I use this feature fairly often; I'll say "you may need to use a SphereCast for this" or whatever. Or, if new to programming, maybe check out my new book.

I probably didn't use it in my first 10 posts, though. So your suggestion is still a good one.