Profanity

[Grimm]

This appeared in a thread today:

Can we please keep titles of threads clean? Thanks.

The thread in question has the f-word in the title.

I want to solicit opinions on this. Is there a strong feeling for keeping this board clean? Maybe only certain areas? What do people think?

[onton]

Gosh darn vulgar it is!

[Galefury]

I don't give a shit. If it is decided that cursing is not okay there should be an automatic filter so people don't have to waste time on censoring themselves.

[evilmike]

I think you should request that people be polite, but allow people to use words they want. Don't censor posts, either with an automatic filter or by manually editing them. People should be responsible for themselves. If someone can't handle this simple rule and is extremely rude (after being warned), ban them. They're not the sort of person we'd want around here anyway.

[Jabberwocky]

I think profanity is fine in CYC as long as it isn't in thread titles and it isn't meant to harm any person or group. I think milder profanity should be permissible in CYC thread titles and in posts on every other board, as long as it isn't meant to harm any person or group. &*^%)*@&$)* &#*@^& %$*&^? and swearing to that effect should be permissible everywhere.

[yogaFLAME]

I basically agree with ??language.

[KoboldLord]

Any chance we can trust users to keep it in moderation? Occasional profanity is often useful for emphasis, and I would say that the thread in question is a pretty reasonable use of it. Dropping a cluster f-bomb or two is a different matter, however, and there are some things like ethnic slurs that are simply beyond the pale.

I don't see any reason why we can't just have a general expectation of decency, and allow moderator judgment on borderline cases.

[BlackSheep]

I'm in favor of prohibiting profanity from thread titles.

[XuaXua]

Frak the abyss.

[pratamawirya]

frick tha abyss! (don't you people use frickin to replace fuckin?)

[dassem]

Personally, I don't really mind either way. I must admit that the other thread title did make me laugh.

A good question for the people who do care is: Why?
Is it that they don't like it personally (e.g. religion), that it will trigger filters (e.g. at work/school), that they think it will lead to flame wars (e.g. escalation) or hurt feelings (e.g. if you are a dev who put in days of work on a feature that just gets insulted for no clear reason), that it just brings down the tone of the debate (e.g. anyone can swear, but it takes a brain to make a convincing case)?

I like occasional profanity for emphasis, but it can get discouraging if overdone. Slurs and insults would obviously lead to a very unpleasant place. I'd allow basic profanity, subject to moderator discretion, which is something like KoboldLord said.

[Grimm]

A good question for the people who do care is: Why?

I am interested in hearing sardonica's reasoning.

[XuaXua]

Global search and replace script all profanity with "Yiuf", or at least add as a per-user option.

[TehDruid]

George Carlin on the matter

[Stormfox]

So I round a corner and see, all in a line, a wandering mushroom, a green ugly thing, a yaktaur, a killer bee, Agnes, a necrophage, and a gnoll sergeant.

(Console-only joke. Apologies to tiles players.)

We've gone this long while operating under a code of conduct no stricter than Bill & Ted ("Be excellent to each other" and "Party on, dudes"). The number of posts/threads that have called for any moderator action at all (even non-punitive stuff like moving things to the appropriate forum) is very low compared to a lot of boards out there, and I don't think it's gotten worse over the last arbitrary period of time.

Users should exercise good sense. That's an unspoken requirement for getting better at Crawl anyhow, and since most of us are here to either learn how to get better at the game or how to help others learn that, lacking the ability to exercise good sense when called for makes one wonder why you're bothering to play Crawl in the first place. Emotions happen, of course, and just as it can lead to YASD in the game, it can lead to YASP in the forum. Fortunately the forum allows savescumming...once your head clears you can go back and edit. I've done that to amend some badforum-worthy posts to acknowledge my errors.

[TehDruid]

I'd say pretty much all moderation ever required was during the MD "scandal".

[Grimm]

What I'm hearing is that people would be cool with moderators editing the profanity out of post titles, apart perhaps from CYC, and for all the rest just carrying on as we have been doing.

I'd still like to hear sardonica chime in, but right now I'm going to take the f-bomb out of the thread title as she or he requested.

(don't you people use frickin to replace fuckin?)

We have a lot of substitutes, that being one, feck being another.

[sardonica]

The word was in a thread title, I kept seeing it over and over and it bothered me.

Yes, this is the Internet and profanity is everywhere. Doesn't mean it has to be here.

I don't get angry at profanity on a message board, because it's not worth getting upset over.

It's not a huge deal, just one person's view on having a nice, civil forum.

[Grimm]

I appreciate that. Please - and this applies to everyone - alert the mods if there's something you feel is amiss. PMs and report buttons work for this as well as full posts.

[Moose]

my thoughts:

I'm fine with profanity, especially in this case, "the fucking abyss" ... The abyss is an infuriating place, and causes one to want to swear when they die there. Makes total sense.
I think using "feck", "fsck", and other bowdlerizations of profanity is lame... It's not fooling anyone, and it totally emasculates the original intent of the word.

Either allow it, or don't, but please for the love of god, don't start misspelling "fuck" because you think it's going to keep people from getting offended.

[Grimm]

"Feck" is not a bowdlerization. It's a genuine word, used by Joyce as well as Father Jack Hackett.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feck

[Davion Fuxa]

In regards to profanity - Yes, there is a purpose to it, but I don't want to see it used all the time.

Apologies to anyone reading my post but here's where I start using the profanity.

My reference is in regards to a mature gaming group for Battlefield that was called 'Fuck The World'. Somewhere along the time I was playing with their members, someone came along and repeatedly kept saying 'Fuck the World' repeatedly and the leader called Strmtroopr banned him. His reasoning for it was 'while that was the name of the group, he didn't want it used all the time'. That group is now called Elite Battlefield Warriors and they have moved on to Battlefield 3 now I believe and their old leader is deceased.

I bring that old gaming group up because I could care less if profanity is used on this board - however the scenario brings up a point that while we might not care if we see profanity, we probably don't want to encourage it. Having a name like 'Fuck The World' was pretty well asking for someone to start spilling the word (or the group name) all over the place and thus encouraging it; much like having the word in a simple thread title might do so.

[danr]

Generally I don't mind mild profanity. There are other forms of rudeness without any bad words that bother me far more.

If something bothers you, I'd suggest as a first step PMing the person who posted it. Chances are they did not want to offend and will edit it themselves if you ask nicely enough. This goes for moderators themselves of course too.

If it's pretty bad and they won't change it, then it's probably okay to elevate it to a moderator for action.