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Excessive Cursing

Should "excessive cursing" be against the rules?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • No

    Votes: 23 76.7%

  • Total voters
    30

Jamie

Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out...
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Gender
trans-pan-demi-ethno-christian-math-autis-genderfluid-cheesecake
So, I think most of us are aware that "excessive cursing" is against the rules in this forum. However, when was the last time it was enforced? I seriously can't recall. And now that there is an optional censor, I really don't see the issue myself.

However, Mases was quite upset when I "excessively cursed" in my post about Donald Trump:
http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/american-2016-elections-thread.53449/page-10#post-1014780

and recently, I received this PM from Jimmy regarding my posts in another thread, him citing excessive swearing as an issue and asking me to edit it (I complied):
cfd08b7a44.png


Now, I asked him why this rule change has happened, and I expect he will answer (I know he is very busy), but I have a sneaking suspicion that this was Mases' doing, considering he wasn't happy with my swearing in the aforementioned thread.

The question is, what do you think about "excessive cursing"? Should it be against the rules, despite the optional censor? Should a bunch of asterisks be disallowed? I personally think this is rather silly, but of course, I could be in the minority here. What do you all think?
 
Joined
Dec 16, 2015
If someone is so offended by swears, CENSORED swears then that's their problem, I don't think excessive cursing should be banned, unless like Deus said, it's spam. If someone is swearing excessively in a unnecessary point, but it's not yet spam, then I think it should be up to the other people in the conversation to call the person out, if they want.
 

Emma

The Cassandra
Site Staff
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Location
Vegas
This is kind of a genie in a bottle situation. Once you let it out, you cannot put it back in. We already gave leeway in swearing. It is not going to be possible to roll back on it. Every single time the staff here tried to get more strict, it's resulted in choatic problems. I have to strongly question the competency of trying to go back to that. It's as if we're being blind to our past. You try to tighten the leash and be too controlling of people, the people lash back and the staff quickly become an enemy of the people. That doesn't need to happen.

We have a swear filter. That handles this problem then and there. It makes the existence of the swearing rule mute and any attempt to go further on it look like nothing more than petty pride. If people choose to disable the filter, it's their own responsibility. Trying to enforce there not even being asterisks is going way too far. It's excessive.
 

Djinn

and Tonic
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Location
The Flying Mobile Opression fortress
It has not really been enforced since the swear censor was added with understandable reason. However Mases was a little disturbed at the amount of cursing that was appearing within a few threads and the shoutbox and has asked the staff to begin cutting down on the amount of swears that appear. I do not totally disagree since having five or six swears within a sentence does not help get a point across or make a statement any more valid than it would without. Also no one has been infracted or warned about it to my knowledge. Just asked to tone it down some.

We are mulling over adding the specific rule of "not too many swears within a sentence" to the rules and enforcing that. I would rather not make a set number or percentage per word ratio, Just a don't go crazy when posting kind of thing.

Note he did not say stop it completely or point out that cursing was against rules. Just that the amount per sentence should be lightened.
 

Jamie

Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out...
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Gender
trans-pan-demi-ethno-christian-math-autis-genderfluid-cheesecake
It has not really been enforced since the swear censor was added with understandable reason. However Mases was a little disturbed at the amount of cursing that was appearing within a few threads and the shoutbox and has asked the staff to begin cutting down on the amount of swears that appear. I do not totally disagree since having five or six swears within a sentence does not help get a point across or make a statement any more valid than it would without. Also no one has been infracted or warned about it to my knowledge. Just asked to tone it down some.

We are mulling over adding the specific rule of "not too many swears within a sentence" to the rules and enforcing that. I would rather not make a set number or percentage per word ratio, Just a don't go crazy when posting kind of thing.

Note he did not say stop it completely or point out that cursing was against rules. Just that the amount per sentence should be lightened.
The posts jimmy referred to only had a couple of swears each, and the post I linked that Mases referred to before only has a few swears. What's the issue? Why were those not okay?
 

Stitch

AKA Patrick
Joined
Aug 13, 2013
I can't think of a single example of people using five or six swears on a sentence here. Honestly, I think that these are actions being taken because one or two people find nearly any amount of swearing disturbing. For those people, I would like to point to our handy dandy swear filter. You'll never have to worry about seeing another swear word from us swearing ****s ever again. :D
 

Djinn

and Tonic
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Location
The Flying Mobile Opression fortress
The posts jimmy referred to only had a couple of swears each, and the post I linked that Mases referred to before only has a few swears. What's the issue? Why were those not okay?
It was not just you, but a few of the replies in the contest infractions and about pictures thread, and the reevaluate rules thread has some replies in it that together looked like things needed to change.
 
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Excessive cursing should not be against the rules. If a members posts consistently contains so many swears that their message is unintelligible then that is spam. We don't need another rule for cursing.

See, I'm all for condensing and combining rules as much as possible. I don't see the need to make excessive cursing a rule when it could simply be made an addendum to the spam rules. That's what excessive cursing pretty much is: it's spam that doesn't need to be there. Like, a little swearing here and there is fine, but I don't see the point of adding another rule when we can just change another rule to encompass the problem instead.

It's the same idea with the "no chan behavior" rule. While I think that was a good idea, I feel like that could have gone under "don't post explicit/illegal stuff", but that's a conversation we can have elsewhere. My point is that the rules page need not read like a book of law. I prefer to follow the policy of "KISS" - Keep It Simple Stupid.

It was not just you, but a few of the replies in the contest infractions and about pictures thread, and the reevaluate rules thread has some replies in it that together looked like things needed to change.

I just want to point out that this kind of stuff is exactly why that thread was made. I'm glad you guys are taking the initiative to address these problems so they don't hinder us as a community anymore.
 

Jimmu

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
My issue isn't so much swear words it, I do not think that banning them is needed since we have the censor anyway.

I just think that when members are fighting with each other (as you were in that thread) that swearing at each other should be avoided. Perhaps I should have clarified that more. It is not healthy debate and creates a bad atmosphere. Everyone gets frustrated but I feel as though people are getting at each others throats too much lately and swearing just makes this worse.

Mases has noted that he feels as though swearing is getting out of hand or being used too much but in this particular instance he had no influence on my PM. Which I didn't even consider a warning or a big deal, if you had waited a little longer for my response I would have clarified the points above (well, did before seeing that this thread was here too).
 

Emma

The Cassandra
Site Staff
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Location
Vegas
I just think that when members are fighting with each other (as you were in that thread) that swearing at each other should be avoided. Perhaps I should have clarified that more. It is not healthy debate and creates a bad atmosphere. Everyone gets frustrated but I feel as though people are getting at each others throats too much lately and swearing just makes this worse.
Of all the shady things people do when they fight each other on here, swearing is among the lowest priority ones. More seriously is shaming tactics. When people don't agree you will often see some trying to shame and ridicule the other side. Trying to embarrass them and make them look ridiculous so people don't take them seriously or to not trust them. This is what really hurts people, not seeing naughty words. And very little is usually done about this. In fact the staff often denies it's going on. And YES, the current staff too. Often, though not always, the same people who whine about being offended are the exact same people who use these shaming tactics. Focusing on the swearing looks like a deflection from the more serious issues.
 

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