8 ms·

"About -> Limitations: ASCII only because it works everywhere" This should be in the features. It is the strongest selling point of the site as I see it.

doomrobo 6y ago
I was surprised by this since it excludes billions of people, but then I saw it's explicitly an English-only forum
- uallo 6y ago
  English with a limitation to ASCII. There are many words in written English or topics that are not in ASCII, though. Subreply also disallows non-ASCII names with "First name should use English alphabet". Unicode should also work (close to) everywhere.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
LeoPanthera 6y ago
So this is not just a text-only social network, it is also an English-only social network.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  Really, as long as other people make text-only social networks for other languages, maybe that's a good thing. I'm not sure that having all languages on one social network really buys the user anything (esp. since they can switch to other social networks for other conversations). It buys the company running the social network something, if they're trying to have literally billions of users. But I'm not sure that's a good thing for the users, either.
  - biztos 6y ago
    So if I want to post something in a combination of English and Hungarian and German, for my fairly large set of friends who speak all three, which network should I use?
- rhizome 6y ago
  There's something to be said for greatly simplifying moderation.
crazygringo 6y ago
So... even if it's English-only, I can't quickly refer to a price in £ or € or ¥? Or that it's 90°F out? I can't talk about my fiancée? I can't even use “proper quotes”? Yikes. These days, talking about the "benefits" of ASCII-only is like talking about the "benefits" of HTTP over HTTPS, or the benefits of dial-up as opposed to broadband. No thanks. It's exclusionary and for zero good technical reason. For every reasonable programming language, there are functions to do everything in UTF-8 that you can do in ASCII, with about the same complexity. In 2020, why are you going out of your way to prevent people from typing the honest-to-goodness useful characters they want to communicate with? In English?! Where exactly does UTF-8 not work, that this site does?
- leephillips 6y ago
  Stay tuned for my uppercase-only social network. Also, we don’t allow the letter Z nor semicolons, as they are rarely used.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    Wanna try making that the letter E? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Yes, that always astonished me. This novel is famous, but I’ve never met anyone who’s actually read it.
      - bigiain 6y ago
        I have :-) It is, as you and everybody you know seems to have worked out, not really worth the effort, unless you are amused in just the right way by such things. (I did start the French novel influenced by it, but my decades-rusty high school French comprehension was not up to the task...)

doomrobo 6y ago

I was surprised by this since it excludes billions of people, but then I saw it's explicitly an English-only forum

uallo 6y ago
English with a limitation to ASCII. There are many words in written English or topics that are not in ASCII, though. Subreply also disallows non-ASCII names with "First name should use English alphabet". Unicode should also work (close to) everywhere.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

LeoPanthera 6y ago

So this is not just a text-only social network, it is also an English-only social network.

rossdavidh 6y ago
Really, as long as other people make text-only social networks for other languages, maybe that's a good thing. I'm not sure that having all languages on one social network really buys the user anything (esp. since they can switch to other social networks for other conversations). It buys the company running the social network something, if they're trying to have literally billions of users. But I'm not sure that's a good thing for the users, either.
- biztos 6y ago
  So if I want to post something in a combination of English and Hungarian and German, for my fairly large set of friends who speak all three, which network should I use?
rhizome 6y ago
There's something to be said for greatly simplifying moderation.

crazygringo 6y ago

So... even if it's English-only, I can't quickly refer to a price in £ or € or ¥? Or that it's 90°F out? I can't talk about my fiancée? I can't even use “proper quotes”? Yikes. These days, talking about the "benefits" of ASCII-only is like talking about the "benefits" of HTTP over HTTPS, or the benefits of dial-up as opposed to broadband. No thanks. It's exclusionary and for zero good technical reason. For every reasonable programming language, there are functions to do everything in UTF-8 that you can do in ASCII, with about the same complexity. In 2020, why are you going out of your way to prevent people from typing the honest-to-goodness useful characters they want to communicate with? In English?! Where exactly does UTF-8 not work, that this site does?

leephillips 6y ago
Stay tuned for my uppercase-only social network. Also, we don’t allow the letter Z nor semicolons, as they are rarely used.
- bigiain 6y ago
  Wanna try making that the letter E? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Yes, that always astonished me. This novel is famous, but I’ve never met anyone who’s actually read it.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      I have :-) It is, as you and everybody you know seems to have worked out, not really worth the effort, unless you are amused in just the right way by such things. (I did start the French novel influenced by it, but my decades-rusty high school French comprehension was not up to the task...)