It's not a big deal to use vulgarity.
And? Profanity can be elevated to an art form by some people. Others can be just as immature or annoying without touching it. Or, in other words, cry more.
And you should be able to handle other people saying "****" without crying. Your point?They're on the internet. "Delicate" people are just people out to get a rise out of others, or idiots with victim complexes. Either way, I really don't give a flying **** what they think.
Cool. Does this mean I can vote to be allowed to say "****?" Cuz I love that word, its just fun.
Oh, of course, free and open discussion is far less important than a hypothetical problem with no actual evidence of existing.
I don't see the problem.
[citation needed]
Because you say so with literally nothing to support you but baseless assertions? So convincing.

I also love how "[removing] flaming" includes scrubbing things that appear like things the mod in question doesn't like, such as pointing out crap like "****" and "****" being censored differently. It honestly looks very similar to an ORC raid, down to the vague non-answers, explanation that has nothing to do with the moderation, and going the extra mile, in this case removing various bits of grammatical **** just 'cuz.

the reason **** is censored differently is because it was manually configured to be different. the default for phpbb3 is to censor things with *. However, you can change that. Now, you could have just asked before, but now you know.

and what more are the mods supposed to say? zammm removed posts because tony and I were flaming each other. he said "I removed flaming from this thread". what more do you want?

You're almost snacking ironically now, but you're still just short of that thankfully.

I can understand that rationale behind some uses of the mod cave since I've been on the other side of that. That being said, it might behoove you to approach the use of said cave a little more delicately.

In the end for me, I'm really bothered by the fact that we have an enforced filter rather than an optional one that is on by default. It really is up to the user what content they want to imbibe, and I find miss_bun's point rather tenuous to be honest. If a user is swearing so much that their post VANISHES and becomes incomprehensible with a filter, that strongly indicates that that post should probably not fly to start with.

Ultimately, I stand on the side of an optional filter based entirely on artistic integrity. If it would be natural for a character I'm writing to say "****" it bothers me deeply that the forum will compromise my work.
Even having said that, I agree that there are certain words that should be off limits. If that sounds a little contradictory well... artistic prerogative.
In a lot of ways, it goes into the argument regarding the depiction of mature content in the source material this forum is built around. Keeper did a good job arguing about violence on magic cards being part of the game. In the written fiction as well, there is harsher language there. That being said, racial and sexual slurs are not something I think should be allowed. Gender based slurs have a bit of a different application, but if used for flaming it should be treated as flaming between users. But if I'm writing a story and need to use "bastard" or the like, well... I will be deeply upset for something to come through and ruin part of my efforts.

Yes, I talk about writing a lot here, that's because that's what drove our community here. Of course it's going to be primary in our concerns.

You see, I find this funny, because the more I read about this discussion both around the old and this forum, the more I think the pro-swearing group is the more anal one. (Though I am in the pro-group too, swearing just to make the point come across better is the best way to get an opposite result)

If you want a forum to be open for everyone, and that includes kids, you need to deal with the biggest group that may give issues. And that is the younger audience (their parents more specifically).
The people more familiar with how the internet works may agree that almost all slurs are pretty normal and that context is key (that's always been my view about it), it works a bit differently if you want to reach a younger audience as well. Now you have to think about parents as well. And like it or not (I don't), a lot of parents are getting extremely paranoid if there is even a word of slur somewhere, regardless of context.

The best way to solve this is to look at the target audience and encode rules or a censor to make sure said parents have no qualms about such stuff any more. And if that means that a small group of people can't use certain words, I'm assuming their vocabulary is big enough to use other means to convey the same message.

Not everything has to be decided by everyone. I think this is a thing that some people just don't get.
A forum is (almost) never a full-on democracy, and this topic in particular is just a choice the admin(s) has/have to make by looking at the target audience.

@Ravenclaw:

Maybe a discussion fork at this point would be useful? I mean, I don't really have the power to do that so...

Cool. You're wrong.
Yes, some parents are paranoid, impossible to please, and won't like this forum regardless. Some people also think the UN is sponsoring Gaia worship to undermine everyone's self-esteem in a convoluted attempt to take over the world. I fail to see why either viewpoint matters.
And I fail to see what that has to do with what should be.

If it makes you feel better, I'm not exactly on a side. I often make posts that argue against certain kinds of arguments, rather than being for or against an issue. It's true that I'm against a word filter, but I do see the rationale for having one. 1) People, even some who argue here for no word filter, will use that newfound freedom to be purposefully offensive with it, or use it to purposefully bait others into being offensive, (that is, their real desire, consciously or unconsciously, for the lack of a filter is less noble than they present) which leads to 2) It becomes more time-consuming for the mods to clean things up, a luxury they may not currently have. 3) The lack of a word filter empowers destructive conversation: statements like, "this is the dumbest **** I've ever read," "your opinion is **** stupid," etc., while not directly attacking the other person, also aren't constructive for a community environment — freeing those words from being filtered makes those statements stronger, escalates emotions faster, and makes a situation more difficult to peaceably resolve. There's certainly more reasons, but I won't go into it further now.

[...]

Anyways, back to the swear filter.

If the site *wants* to be a community that houses creative works, word filter are inhibitors to that goal. Do we have enough Mod-hours to ensure the site is able to stay constructive within its community instead of destructive?

Is the goal of being a creative works community being properly weighed against the goal of being "inclusive" for people who don't like bad words?

Good job getting the extremes and failing to see the big picture.

Am I?
Over the course of these 2-3 topics, the admin and staff said pretty clearly what the ideas where behind the censors and what should and should not be allowed based on the NWM-topic.
And a few of the pro-group can't get any further than using (allowed) slurs to call out to anyone disagreeing with them. You are one of the good ones, but you have to see that there are also some around that kinda undo what you're trying to do here.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
However, which language is appropriate is not one of those topics. Because that relies on the target audience, which none of us users know for sure.

Really?
The whole discussion is which slurs should and should not be allowed, I point out that this is an admin decision which should be based on the target audience and you fail to see what that has to do with things?

----------------------
Anyway, just look at the spam-bot issue from not too long ago.
It took quite a bit of time for them to get removed, because there was almost no-one online during US night time, except for us Europeans who kept reporting the things and saw them still around several hours later. If this shows us anything, it is that we cannot rely on a 24/7 mod coverage. Because of this, it is a lot more doable and responsible to prevent rather than to fix (no matter how much I'd like the fixing better).

I think each word needs to be considered in its own right, honestly. I really can't see, given the rampant sexism, racism, and homophobia within geek culture, that the benefits artistically of leaving sexist, racist, and homophobic slurs uncensored is outweighed by the fact that those words are going to be used to alienate, isolate, and drive away people that aren't part of the rather narrow boy's club of geekdom. It's not so much about the filtering itself, it's about making clear that those attitudes, in particular, are not tolerated here.

Granted, if we were making that clear, the hate speech certain users have already been using should have received a verbal warning at minimum, but I guess that ship has sailed.

On the other hand, curses... yeah, I don't see a reason to censor them, and I think I agree with you and Barinellos that the ability to write with a certain measure of verisimilitude is outweighed by people being uncomfortable with the f-word. I mean, this is a word that is acceptable to print in young adult literature, remember, and we're aiming to create works at an even higher than young adult reading level.

I'm not so sure I really even want to babysit a bunch of twelve year old writers, honestly, and if this isn't a "safe" place for them as far as cursing is concerned, I don't think Magic: Expanded Multiverse, at least, is going to lose anything. Is YMTC desperate for 12 year old designers? Is Worldbuilding desperate to draw in 12 year old DMs? Somehow, I kind of doubt it.

It's in the same category for me as explicit content. Art, in that case, trumps child-friendlyness, partly because I don't think anyone here involved with the creative side of things is interested in catering to a tween/young adult audience, and partly because the source material that we're working from is already quite explicit in many ways (admittedly leaning more towards violence than sex because America has its head stuck up its own ass when it comes to sexuality. Ironically. Ahaha.).

So yeah, to answer your question, I'm not sure that things are being weighed properly, and as I've repeatedly said (to no avail) there's at the very least a disconnect between how we're treating homophobic and racist slurs vs gendered slurs.

@JAC:

Do you have a proposal for who the target audience should be? I mean, like I said above, I think if we're making this a creative forum, then our target audience has to be a little older than PG-13, which is the standard that's been floated a few times.

Maybe part of the problem is that we actually don't have very clear goals about what we're trying to accomplish here. I think it's clear that I'm part of the Artist Bloc along with Barinellos, and we were given the impression that the forums would be geared towards supporting those aims, but maybe that's changed, or maybe not all the mods are on board with that idea?

The coverage issue is a good point. I know Ravenclaw is here at night, but he's really only able to cover two boards... Hmmm...

[citation needed] And why is "Your opinion is **** stupid" and different from it being uncensored. Everyone knows what you're saying regardless.
Why not?
No, I see the big picture. In this case, it's just stupid.
Yep.
Yes, but their "reasons" were either dodges or just stupid.
And I've made my opinion of those posters quite clear, I think.
Really? From what I've seen, it's the creative Magic-playing people. That's a pretty specific target audience, at least from where I'm standing.
Yep.

Face it, this is the internet. "The parents won't allow it" is stupid. Including children who need parental approval won't work at all for so many incredibly obvious reasons. I am assuming the mods aren't stupid, and so I'm not seeing at all what your statement has to do with what should be.
Or we could have a European mod. Or, even better, swap out an American mod for a European mod.
Okay, walk me through exactly how a filter prevents flame wars.

The fact that kids swear now is sad. But no I have nothing constructive to say, just like everyone else.

yeah its really sad that kids use arbitrarily bad words that mean basically nothing

I don't swear and neither will my kids. Except I don't like kids so.

I've yet to hear why you [i]need[/] to be able to use profanity.

On the flip side it's been explained why we need to avoid it.

All I'm seeing be said is rehashed complaining about nothing as well as some completely pointless trolling and personal attacks. Which I usually don't care about but the same posters are doing nothing but mindless bickering and complaining.

It's not a big deal.
It's not changing.
Stop crying about it.

This place is already devolving into source even with word filters because mods refuse to actually suspend or ban users who clearly deserve it. Taking even more limiters away is not going to result in anything positive.

I was suggesting reasons that hypothetically could be used, not actually providing support for those reasons. It doesn't need citation, because I don't necessarily hold it to be true; I was listing rationale that I might be inclined to agree with if the support for it was there.


The same reason that saying, "Your opinion is gosh darn stupid" is different from saying an uncensored version with stronger language, even though everyone knows what you're saying regardless. Each further level of censorship provides a new inhibition for strong emotional response, from 1) Modifying the text to make it unreadable, 2) Replacing stronger language with less strong language, 3) Removing emphatic language altogther. Actual swear words elicit emotional responses, and stronger emotional responses in people who use them the most sparingly. There's plenty of reading on the material, thousands of scholarly papers since the 1900's. Here's a good book for it:
Book Link

Here's a good expert for it:
http://www.mcla.edu/Undergraduate/majors/psychology/timothyjay/

I'll note that Dr. Jay is usually against censorship.


Because I didn't feel like it and felt I didn't have the time to continue it at that moment. I wanted to make my post without taking more time so that I could get a shower.

Ask and ye shall receive!

Thread split and reopened! Please use this thread to continue filter discussion, and the new thread to discuss the mod valley.