I cannot be 'king serious

 

Seriously, I can't.

 

I'll level with you...

 

My initial idea was to propose turning the auto-censor off – after an initial feeding frenzy the actual levels of swearing would dissipate, probably to less than what we see at the moment (which I admit is not very much – but it is more that we were seeing six months ago, which is more than a year ago). On unregulated boards & forums the level of swearing is lower than here, but when it is used you can be damn sure the person means it. The big difference there is those forums are often a lot less antagonistic that we appear to be.

 

I have (had?) no real intention of changing any of the auto-censors translations - the purpose of the thread was to bring attention to lazy (or even deliberate) use of the auto-bleeper and to promote discussion on the general subject of swearing on the forum. My logic was simple - the worse kind of swearing occurs here when someone loses the plot and has a minor paddy in the middle of a thread - the discussion seldom recovers from that - it turns into a slanging match, people who were enjoying a good debate get disenchanted, spectators get bored and wander off, Admins are forced to step in and we're the bad guys again. To me, that’s not unlike an angry child chucking his teddy from the pram, so I thought how disarming it would be for the protagonists if the profanities they were hurling magically turned into cuddly toys. (I guess that's the hippy side of me wanting to turn bullets to flowers).

 

And it is a really silly idea – I’ll not deny that – but it is one that would encourage the determined swearer to be creative and to actually think about what they are saying - I cannot help wondering whether some of the people who are getting all hot under the collar about this are really concerned about free speech and censorship, or just fearing being made to look foolish by an impartial and unthinking piece of software, not because it modified their carefully chosen word but because in a moments heated passion they forgot to think and forgot they actually had a vocabulary to choose from.

 

The bottom line is - the auto-censor is there now, monitoring your every word, whether it replaces the colloquial term for fornication with f**k or cuddle is actually irrelevant – ('f**k' lost its power years ago, now it is just noise, like verbal punctuation – most 11 year-old kids in the UK use it with impunity) – we could reprogram it with any phrase from the marvelous list of euphemisms that Brian so kindly provided, but the f-word is never used here in that context (well, rarely anyway) so it wouldn’t be of much benefit. If we were so inclined we could program it to replace any word – we could make it replace “overrated” with “a band I don’t like very much”  - but we won’t because that is true censorship – the deliberate altering of the meaning of a phrase – not simply bleeping a choice selection of offensive words. Censorship prevents you from saying what you want to say, not how you say it. (yeah, yeah, I know technically ‘go cuddle yourself’ has altered the original meaning, but since that is a physically impossible request it never really had a meaning in the first place) – It is not about censoring language, it is about moderating language – two different concepts.

 

Like it or lump it, this site has two main “rules”: no illegal activities and be respectful (the other three are variants on the latter). The use of profanity is restricted because their original use was for abuse, offence, bigotry, blasphemy and personal attacks – regardless of how they are used colloquially now; they still have that meaning and that usein some contexts.

 

That is the crux of the matter – it is not about casual swearing – we all do that (in the pub with my b*****d mates getting sh*tfaced on cheap beer I’ll swear like a f**king docker) and casual swearing here is (again) irrelevant; it is about targeted profanity – words purposely chosen to offend - there are some words that are still have that power, that are highly emotive… we cannot allow these words to be used at any time (even casually) … there is no valid justification for using them on a Prog Rock website - I’m sure you’ll correct me if you think I’m wrong - but I would go as far as to say that even when these words are bleeped they are still offensive.

 

The auto-censor is a dumb machine – it has no idea of context or intent – it does not know the difference between casual swearing and actual abuse. It’s our job as collaborators to determine those properties of a particular post and decide whether to report it or not. This is easier if the profane words are not there and we could more easily identify the offensive individuals from those who think they are still in the pub getting drunk with their mates.

 

Of course people will find ways around it, but at least they will be thinking about what they type rather than typing "like wot they speak" and once they start actually thinking instead of posting through a haze of anger, then perhaps the level of discussion on the forum will be raised a tad for the better.

 

Then perhaps I'm hoping for too much but if there is a windmill nearby, bring me a horse and a long stick.