Swearing on the VOC Forum

[Graham Smith]

Do you think certain swear words should be censored on this forum?

 

[CollingsBob]

I vote strongly in favour of censoring swear words on this forum..

Profanity is the currency of a bankrupt vocabulary.

 

[Tnecniv Edipar]

Agreed and well said.

 

[minivin]

Profanity is the currency of a bankrupt vocabulary.

Tiz true, with Britain bankrupt with Heir Brown at the helm, it is a true British past time!

 

[Albervin]

I vote strongly in favour of censoring swear words on this forum..

Profanity is the currency of a bankrupt vocabulary.

I agree BUT you must consider this is an international forum. What is a swear word in one country is just part of the everyday vernacular in another. In Australia we had an advertisement for the tourist industry that finished with the line "Where the bloody hell are you?". This was shown internationally & was (I believe) only banned in 2 countries. As long as the membership write as if they were talking on the mainstream radio or TV I think we can rely on good manners prevailing.
I just remembered that the British programme "Have I Got News For You" pushes the limits in acceptable language BUT it is often in a context that is hammering a point home or extremely funny.

 

[indianken]

faux pas

I agree BUT you must consider this is an international forum. What is a swear word in one country is just part of the everyday vernacular in another. In Australia we had an advertisement for the tourist industry that finished with the line "Where the bloody hell are you?". This was shown internationally & was (I believe) only banned in 2 countries. As long as the membership write as if they were talking on the mainstream radio or TV I think we can rely on good manners prevailing.
I just remembered that the British programme "Have I Got News For You" pushes the limits in acceptable language BUT it is often in a context that is hammering a point home or extremely funny.

I had a bad experience when I used the American word the buttocks =
(f---y), on my first visit to England. What a faux pas!
Ken Smith

 

[Albervin]

I had a bad experience when I used the American word the buttocks =
(f---y), on my first visit to England. What a faux pas!
Ken Smith

Two countries divided by a common language!!

 

[nobby]

Would that mean censorship in the public part or the members part?

And would the beginning of censorship also mean I am soon not allowed anymore to use my real first name? (For those who do not understand: see mph705, and no: it isn't censored already in this reply).

Can I still use 'strong' language when the 'sensible used just as new parts' are totally £$%^&*($%^ ???

With the upcoming sharia in my hometown Rotterdam I am against everything except modified D's that make me think of Orwells' Thought Police...

 

[Graham Smith]

With the automatic censorship, it would mean that if the word 'crap' was banned - when someone typed the word 'crap' when it was entered into the forum, it would just come out as ****.

However, if someone typed 'crapper', you would see ****per.

Unfortunately the system isn't so intelligent that it could just censor words one one forum and not the other. The censorship has to be across the board.

If we do decide to ban certain swear words, who wants to help me draw up the list?!

 

[Tnecniv Edipar]

Censoring is a difficult issue. Although I voted for censoring I don't claim to be a saint when it comes to a bit of Anglo Saxon expression. However , some other forum's of which I am a member, which don't use censoring are frequently violated by certain individuals who seem to be incapable of debate without a vile and prolific potty mouth. This I find offensive as I would if I encountered such dialogue face to face. Some use of the profane is fine by me , there are times when it is somehow appropriate and even funny , but it is difficult to regulate on a forum. How do you say it is ok to swear a little bit and don't use some word's ? Personally , I don't see censoring in this context as Orwellian , particularly as the members were polled for opinion.

 

[deejay499]

I voted in favour of the ban, but I guess most of us are not offended by the mild swear words but do not want to see the real bad ones on here, after all, women and children can, and do, read this forum as well.
DJ

 

[Rapide]

I must have too much *%!$****!!* time on my hands but I have just undertaken a series of searches using the 'search forums' button on the top menu bar. I could find no obscene words at all? Only 16 craps and 21 bloodys ( I appologise immediately) and nothing else. I can only conclude what I originally thought that we are in the main a well mannered and polite bunch upon whom censorship would be **!**$!!** unnecessary.
Unless of course Graham the bad words have already been deleted from the forum history?

 

[Graham Smith]

yes, any obscene words would have already been deleted.

The best thing to search for would be asterisks, as these replace any banned words.

 

[Rapide]

OK I wasnt aware we were already filtering out swear words in the forum.
I think most people are offended by the use of certain 'vulgar' swear words.
Compiling 'lists' seems a little excessive surely there are only about 3 or 4 seriously offensive swear words in common use or have I led too sheltered a life?

 

[Tnecniv Edipar]

Ask any yufe's and you will hear a few you didn't know of !!

 

[Hugo Myatt]

Swearing

I believe it is my inalienable right to be offended. Censorship of any kind is ‘them' telling ‘us’ what we are allowed to hear and what we are allowed to say. There is far too much of this about today masquerading under the heading of ‘Political Correctness’. It is an attempt at mind control reminiscent of totalitarian states. Making it illegal to say something doesn’t eradicate it, it merely drives it underground where it festers.
However, swearing, usually religious, sexual or scatological, is initially used to shock. Once it becomes commonplace it becomes simply tedious and indicates an indolent mind and a paucity of imagination.

“Although, over two thousand years having developed the most sophisticated and comprehensive language the world has ever known, the English seem fixated on one ‘ ----ing’ adjective.”

 

[Prosper Keating]

Members should be expected to moderate their language as they would were they in, say, a nice restaurant or visiting their grandmother in the old folks' home.

One appreciates the need to keep it clean because of elderly relatives, children and so on, but it becomes a bit silly when one is typing words like Scunthorpe or, as I did yesterday, Wankel, as in the man who made the supercharger on which DKW, Mazda, Suzuki and Norton rotary engines were based. What if we were discussing Thomas Crapper, toiletmaker to the gentry? Most participants don't need this kind of social policing. Why pander to the lowest common denominator all the time?

That said, I was approached by a doughnut-faced, canister-bodied mother with two porcine young children in a public bar in Portsmouth a while back, who rebuked me in a supremely passive-aggressive little-me tone of voice for my anglo-saxon vocabulary. It was past 9pm! I pointed out that public bars were not ideal places for faint-hearted women or children and that if I didn't drink in creches or fast food eateries in the daytime, requiring rug rats like hers to stop their noise as I necked my beers, then what was she doing in a public bar with kids at nighttime? I told her that if she was so concerned about her kids' welfare, she ought to do something about their obesity.

It's a similar situation where websites are concerned. While one understands the feelings of members who do not wish their children to see profane language in forum threads, one really has to wonder why children would be reading it in the first place. It is not as if websites like this are family-oriented. They're about men and their toys, with a few women in the mix. Instead of freaking out, rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues because Satan has entered the sitting room and said a rude word, why not stop shielding your kids from the inevitable and start educating them.

Education begins at home. Don't tell guys like me, who have earned the right to swear sometimes, that we are uneducated churls because the occasional profanity slips out. Teach your children that we are uneducated churls instead. That's fine by us. People have to fit in with one another. It isn't all about imposing your control freakery on more 'liberal' or libertine people.

On websites I have run, we took the 'public bar' section and made it a restricted entry zone. Then we imposed one rule" No Rules Apply. It settled down quite quickly and was self-policing, in that persistent swearers and trolls quickly made idiots of themselves and drifted away. I sometimes wonder if some of the people who object to pejorative terms like c**t, w**ker and so on do so simply because they know, every time they look in the mirror or at the screen, that so many of these terms apply to them. 95% of adults don't need to be policed. It causes more trouble than it solves.

Bravo for removing the filters. I think most of us are capable of behaving like men.

PK

 

[Tnecniv Edipar]

To Hugo,

I hear what you say but , whereas on TV , for example, there are warnings prior to showing programs with profane language and violence so you have a choice to be offended , entertained or watch something else a forum is in your face when a thread is selected for reading. Not everyone finds profanity acceptable or even palatable on a public forum. Ultimately though , the vote will decide the issue.

 

[Graham Smith]

Unless we just leave it with no censorship, and anyone who uses inappropriate language gets banned for a period of time?

 

[Tom Gaynor]

Swearing

Let me clarify my opinion. I think that most people can be trusted to use appropriate language, although Brits have an insatiable desire to have someone in authority make their decisions for them. "Britons, ever, ever, ever...shall be slaves". Suits Whitehall, too: it gives work to committees of "the great and the good" and other parasites.
However when it comes to "looking for dirty words" in "s****yard", "****aki mushroom" and "S****horpe", I think the whole thing is revealed as ridiculous. It is also self-defeating: it focusses on the very words that someone in authority thinks you shouldn't use.
I'm prepared to draw a dotted line at short words with a u in them, because most people (including me) find those offensive in the wrong circumstances (like this public forum), but the first two examples above have long lost any taboo that might have attached.
Who now knows or cares that "Zounds" is a contraction of "God's wounds", what "Sod off" implies, or that "Blimey" is a corruption of "Blind me"?