My views towards swear words

Then there s the quagmire of public forum / private medium. It s like the bakery shop that will not bake a cake for a gay couples marriage, and the gay couple sues. Who s right, and who s wrong? :thinking:

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Great question - one that we still struggle with.

Even apart from federal funding, if private parties offer a “public accommodation” then anti-discrimination laws can be extended to apply. If a patron is a member of a protected class, then “public accommodations” (e.g., hotels, restaurants, bars …) are not allowed to discriminate. This became the basis of much of the civil rights law enforcement.

But more recently, the argument that you cannot force me to produce a creative work that conflicts with my personal convictions as an artist (cake decorator, web designer, tattoo artist…) has come into play. Forcing someone (via a federal law passed by Congress) to make a creative statement against their will is a violation of that artist’s own freedom of speech under that 1st Amendment.

It gets interesting how such seemingly competing ideas find each other somewhere in the evolving middle.

It gets more interesting when it relates to public forums monitored by ai algorithms, along with real people moderators. Considering the fact that one agrees to a forum user agreement all bets are off concerning real freedom to express ones self. Check a box, and a swear word, or an “offending word”, engages an automated response from big brother ai. Something like this:

Hello,

This is an automated message from EndeavourOS, (the ai,) to let you know that your post was removed.

Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines.

This post was flagged by the community and a staff member opted to remove it.

...

Please review our community guidelines for details.

I suppose all a real person mod has to do is include swear words as flagable, and that s it. Easy peasy. In other words; you are not driving. You are just along for the ride. Choose to enjoy, or go else where. :index_pointing_at_the_viewer:

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To err is human. To royally screw up repeatedly at a blindingly fast clip requires a computer.

…or is the computer :rofl:

In your example you are not even abiding by the “rule”, if we are calling it that. You said exactly the word you wanted to say, you just replaced a vowel with an asterisk. Everyone knows what the word is when they look at it. You have not lost any of the highly specific meaning you believe this word imparts on your message.

If anything, this makes the point you are trying to illustrate less clear. Your grievance comes across as “the loophole I am using to circumvent a forum rule is inconvenient for me. I shouldn’t have to press a different key in order to break the rule I am choosing to ignore.”

I sympathize with the fact that for many folks profanity is a casual part of their language. However, for many people it is not, and can be upsetting or even shocking to see. Depending on where you are from or the culture you were raised in, there may be more community members in the latter group than you would expect.

If it does not seem worth it to chill out on the profanity just for the sake of making those folks feel more comfortable participating in the community, then it is unlikely anything in this conversation–or any other one–will convince you of that.

Hmm, you are certainly at no risk of glorifying the role of the moderators. :smirk:

The “absolute disgusting filth some have said” can be very time-consuming to deal with. A post getting flagged because it had language that someone found upsetting can turn into a full-blown discussion on the mod team. Is it inappropriate if it has a curse but it isn’t hostile? Or what if it is kind of hostile, but they didn’t say the f-word they said something more tame? What do you do, take it down? Leave it up? Send a message to the user, ask for an edit? Give them a warning? Suspend them?

The mod team is relatively small, and even the most active mods usually only come on for an hour or two a day. Removing this huge, unsolvable can of worms by just banning some words reduces the thankless drudge work the mods have to do when they sign in so they can actually spend some time reading issue topics and helping people.

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When I was elementary school age kid I thought I struck gold when I found a nudy magazine. Fast forward to now, and elementary age kids, along with everyone else need only to log on to the net, and search for there chosen carnal desire. I understand some s search for civility, and it s noteworthy, but profanity shouldn t be shocking considering the times we now live in.

Your opinion is certainly valid, however your personal experience is irrelevant when you are talking about someone else’s personal experience. The fact that you saw some magazine when you were a kid doesn’t have anything to do with how sensitive people happen to be with abrasive language. They may have grown up in a different culture, or hold different beliefs than you do for this reason or that.

Some folks would find your stance on profanity just as surprising and confounding as you find theirs.

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Vulgarity does nothing for speech. It shows a person’s limited vocabulary in my opinion. You can be mad but it doesn’t have to amplify vulgarity. . . Expressing anger by swearing shows that limited vocabulary is a problem. Some people swear all the time. Conveying anger or ignorance doesn’t solve problems and by amplifying a person’s emotional character does nothing for the conversation at hand. Vulgarity used as adjectives doesn’t enhance the conversation. It is affront to intellectual conversation. Leave emotions and vulgarity out of conversations. It serves no purpose for the audience.

Rich;)

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Sure. I’m a member of an unmoderated forum, where a lot of people enjoy throwing shit at each other. It is often fun, and it works when you use common sense. Keep it to people who apprecate it, be on-topic and civil with other people, don’t flood threads.

But there’s always that one person who lacks common sense and come to see the forum as a personal playground. A gentle reminder, and the forum is always back on track again.

What is my stance?I certainly cant say off the top of my head. I use profanity. I also pride myself on the ability to find the words to convey my meaning. A quick and dirty answer would be; there are just some situations where the fword or a derivative of such seems appropriate. Also every culture-has swear words. I dont believe any user young or old thats spent any time on the net is shocked by them. They may dis like them sure. They may see this venue as a safe harbor from the cruel world of vice mayham and profane reality of our world. Or maybe they just live under a rock, but shocked? I doubt it.

Well, I can’t say that I didn’t expect this sort of reply to the thread. I will try to follow the rule as best as I can and if I can’t find the word to express myself as I want, I guess I just won’t say anything.

Well, yeah… I’m not a native English speaker and even if I was, I doubt I were to be able to find the correct words to use to express myself. It’s fine, though.

A forum is a public place for communication in a 1:N manner. 1 sender, many receivers. If you make heavy use of swear words this might be good for you and you like it, but it might piss of several hundred guests in this forum.

This is similar in the real world. If you enter a pub and you start shouting and swearing you will offend a lot of guests and the bar keeper will eventually kick you out.

The forum moderators are the bar keepers. They have to make sure that all guests feel good and save. Swearing has a very high potential to offend a lot of people. Therefore it makes total sense to be very restrictive with it.

And if you need swear words to express yourself you need a language / retoric course in the first place. I do not understand how swear words can help someone to talk about IT problems. Swear words in an IT forum are simply not necessary.

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Constraint necessitates creativity.

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I’m going to have to disagree with that because not everyone’s first language is English, for none-English speakers some English swear words maybe easier to remember than a specific words used to describe something.

Also there’s a big difference as in how the word is used, are you using the word to personally attack and abuse someone or you using the word the describe a situation or product. If it’s the first than it’s unacceptable on a forum, if it’s the latter it’s less of a problem.

Also take for example comedy, when used in comedy it can be hilarious when it is over done with swear words or used to ridicule certain situations , just look at the success of South Park and certain standup comedians( Ricky Gervais, Dave Chapelle, etc) .

Just a suggestion but if you have trouble maybe use a search engine or some AI tool to look up alternative phrasing. It will help you learn how to express yourself without the need to swear. I used to have trouble with this myself but with practice it will become natural.

Most people love swear words. I love my swear words. But it always depends on the context. - We are not in the in the alternative reality of a South Park episode here. We are not a group of people who all agreed to participate in an hour of standup comedy.

It’s also noteworthy that in those cases we often deal with deliberate exaggerations for a performance. If someone says “Nivida this” or “Wayland that” they are not on the way becoming the next Chapelle. They are mostly just unmannered people who swear in public.

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I agree, that’s why I did mention context is important as well.

Most People? How do you know? I disagree.

I am tempted to say, that somebody who is using swear words in an IT forum while writing about IT problems is lacking emotional maturity.

The problem with a forum is, that it is not a social interaction. People seem to believe that it is ok to use swear words while communicating with foreigners in a forum because it is not face-to-face. While, when it is face-to-face, like in a pub, people tend to be more cool. Especially towards foreigners.

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And tone, here is an example with the word mate and how it can mean quite a few different things. This can be hard to convey in text form though especially if the recipient is a non English speaker and even other countries that do speak English can get confused with it.

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