Suggestion for optional censorship

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RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-03-08 13:52

With certain words being censored, things are starting to feel awfully weird. People who have legitimate, non-derogatory reasons to use the words have to dance around the point. All it does is cause people to think of the words much longer anyway.

My suggestion is to make an optional censor. It could have two or three choices. One to keep it like it is, one to leave everything uncensored, and possibly even one for people who don't want to see any "bad words" at all.

I'm not sure how hard this would be to implement, but I'm willing to bet it's doable. It would allow people who are bothered by some words to see only what they want to see, and people who aren't to see everything. It would have no effects on the rules of harassment and people who insult each other with these words would still face the same punishment as before.
Cannibal wrote on 2012-03-08 13:58

As far as I know, the only words that are currently censored are the n-word and the f-word (another term for a gay person).

I'm not exactly sure how you could use those legitimately and non-derogatory, unless you're making a thread like Loopulse did earlier.

Could you provide some examples?
RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-03-08 14:04

That is an example.

Or maybe someone could mention that someone said it to them that day while they were at work. Or maybe they're just talking about a song. Things like that. There's a lot of reasons someone might use the words.
TA wrote on 2012-03-08 14:05

Only two words are censored. Surely it's not too hard to use one of any other hundreds of thousands of words for only those two?

With that said... no change like this would even be considered until after we make the move to Xenforo.
RebeccaBlack wrote on 2012-03-08 14:12

Quote from TA;801030:
Surely it's not too hard to use one of any other hundreds of thousands of words for only those two?

Does it really matter? It means some things can't even be spoken of/mentioned without evading the point and making everyone think about the words anyway. What's to stop you from just punishing people who use it in a bad way?

I mean, if we're going to keep going with these "what if" statements, couldn't we just argue as well that it wouldn't be too hard to use "poop" instead of "crap"? That makes an awful lot more sense, being that there's actually a substitute for the word when it isn't used in a derogatory way.
TA wrote on 2012-03-08 14:31

Quote from RebeccaBlack;801034:
Does it really matter? It means some things can't even be spoken of/mentioned without evading the point and making everyone think about the words anyway. What's to stop you from just punishing people who use it in a bad way?

I mean, if we're going to keep going with these "what if" statements, couldn't we just argue as well that it wouldn't be too hard to use "poop" instead of "crap"? That makes an awful lot more sense, being that there's actually a substitute for the word when it isn't used in a derogatory way.

Acceptable uses of it are very rare compared to the instances where it is not appropriate. The terms are generally offensive to quite a few people, even when they're used jokingly (and they were prevalently so).

The only real acceptable uses are abstract quotes of the words, and for the 1 or 2 times that may happen out of the hundreds of times that they are abused, I'm afraid you'll just have to accept this minor frustration.

Punishing every instance of these words creates a very reactive moderation style for our mods and creates a lot of unnecessary work while also punishing many members who would have otherwise not had to of been punished.

Also, using poop instead of crap isn't really a big deal, nor is using homosexual or black instead of their offensive counterparts.

We've given you a very big freedom of the amount of profanities, compared to most forums which just outright censor all of them.

In the short period of time that they were allowed to be typed and users were given the benefit of the doubt to use them appropriately while remaining uncensored, a number of users had to receive punishments, and one is even banned at present because of it. Though, that particular one thought it would be a good idea to include the word directly in his username after he had a thread closed and being told he couldn't use the word.

After we move to Xenforo, perhaps we can take another look at the idea of having a censor be optional with per user settings, but additional forum modifications won't be happening at this time and removing that particular filter has proved to be non-beneficial to our members.

So, I'm sorry this won't be implemented at this time, but thanks for the suggestion.