DehumanizationFollow

Wait, what?

Can this forum even be disrupted? What is there to disrupt? It's a forum for random *********

That's awesome. I'll have to pay more attention to Alma's posts with that in mind

incidentally (on a Holiday note)
Here is one of the gifts I got for my wife

X 100,000,000

Yeah I really couldn't take anything he said seriously, and had trouble seeing it as objectionable because of that. A luxury of not being an admin I suppose.

I can pretty much guarantee you that he understands perfectly well.


I'm an advocate of the Asylum being truly "No holds barred". Do we need to have some sort of legal disclaimer to achieve that? Honest question. I'd prefer it if we didn't have banned words or wishy-washy subjective rules about where the line is verbally.

Edited, Dec 29th 2011 3:35pm by Eske

I think the point is that when an admin says don't do something or you'll get banned, that's pretty much that, and would be even if you had to check a disclaimer.

If that's the case then why should even the admins have to abide by any rules? They should just be able to ban people for their own sick amusement if it's really No Hold Barred.

So noted, and there are definitly those who agree with you. The nice thing about having been here first and being the senior forum admin is I get to make the rules.

For example, I personally prefer not to have my forum cluttered up by horse **** links or links to pictures of a certain number of females doing things with a certain number of cups. Or links from people who like to see goats. Not to mention the virus links, etc. Or the videos of people being decapitated by terrorists or being killed graphically by an unfortunate helicopter blade incident, or the one with the very realistic looking human babies being boiled. I find them to be "extremely objectionable". And yes, those are all examples from the forum history that I have had to deal with, and no, they don't pay any of us enough to deal with that ****. A number of people on here find derogetory slang terms for someone of african decent extremely objectionable and are vocal in their objection to them being used. Under a completely "No holds barred" forum, those would still be here. Also all the topic spamming, and the goldmongers and RMTers and people selling nike shoes at low low prices! Then there are legal aspects that we as a company have to uphold, specifically things like copyright violation (software key posts, etc). If we don't remove those, we condone them, and under various laws can be liable.

There have to be lines. There are really very few things that will get you banned in Asylum, especially compared to the gaming forums or OOT, but they are there. Usually you have to cross them multiple times before you get banned. We do adjust the rules from time to time, and if there were sufficeint backing we could certainly amend some asylum specific rules. Start a petition thread or something if you feel strongly about it.

Well, regardless of how I feel about BT getting banned (for the record, I wasn't shocked that he was banned, I was shocked that I wasn't aware of it, that he explicitly did something kao said not to do pretty much answers any questions I had), I do agree with the sentiment that "no holds barred" should be just that. I mean, I realize that it's obviously not worth the time/effort to try and finagle the coding to not filter words inside a single forum, or to to enact a filter option, and that at this point in time, zam's filters exist almost purely for the sake of saving face.

Honestly, filters are pretty unnecessary in practice, since most kids these days know, understand, and frequently use most commonly filtered swear words before they hit 10 years old. The problem arises from these children's parents, specifically the ones who delude themselves into thinking their child is an angel that doesn't understand what the word sh*t means, because those parents can, and regularly do, throw a sh*tstorm if they find out that their kid is using a site that claims to be "kid friendly" but allows swearing.

I can also understand the rule about words that are generally considered social taboo (racial/ethic slurs primarily), because even in a no holds barred discourse, most people will tend to shy away from those words just because their use makes one come off as uncouth and/or uneducated. That said, I do feel that if those words are grounds for a ban, shouldn't they be filtered?

Seriously, the words that get filtered are so bizarre and almost none of them are actually considered BAD words. I mean, take sh*t. sh*t is what my family says when we take a group photo (Instead of "Everybody say cheese!" we say "Everybody say sh*t!", and I don't just mean my immediate family, I mean my massive, extended, Irish Catholic family, including my 72 year old grandmother, her 6 brothers and sisters, their spouses, their kids, her kids (my aunts and uncles, and my mom), all of the grandkids (including myself), and even the growing number of great grandkids). On top of that, the sh*t filter can't even distinguish between when the word itself is being used, or if - s h i t - is just part of a longer word, (first example I can think of is an item from ffxi, Aikido Kosh*ta; but I know there are a couple people who get an * in their name if you quote them as well). And then there's words like Rectal Sphincter. Rectal Sphincter is filtered, but "asshat", "@#%^", "assclown", "assface", "jackass", and generic "***" are not, to my knowledge, filtered. The fact that Rectal Sphincter shares its filter with swear words that are far "worse" is kind of funny to me.

I mean, can understand certain words being filtered due to excessive over use, such as the legacymeme mnk item, or lol drg/pup from the FFXI boards (and I do so love how those filter), or uttering Mr. Norris's name, but having these filtered, but not racial slurs? I'm also well aware that the number of filters are generally kept to a limit because adding more slows down the site due to how they're coded, but honestly, that feels like a bit of a cop out given the list of words that are filtered.

Seriously... the filtered words I know of:
sh*t = sh*t
rectal sphincter = @#%^
sex = @#%^
racial slur for black people = @#%^ (only the one obvious one, and only a single spelling of it)
slurish term for lady parts = @#%^ (I know that this word isn't treated as so severe outside the US, hence the ish, but in the US it's definitely a slur)

unfiltered slurs: (edit: removed the spoilered swear slurs because kao's post wasn't there when I started this and I decided they weren't really necessary to make the point. I left the spoilered swear words though, because they're all fairly commonly used around zam and I figure people could use the mental exercise)
slurs for hispanic people
slurs for asian people (a little understandable given its alternative and far more common use and definition)
slurs for white people (because calling a white person by a racial slur for white people totally isn't racist.)
slurs for polish people (I live in IL, so I'm probably more aware of this one than most people)
slurs for jewsish people
slurs for muslim and arabic people
slurs for gay people
slurs for transexual/transgender people
note: after pulling slurs from memory and from a list of slurs (wikipedia goes, pulled out the ones that are common enough that I've heard them used as slurs), I must say, you brits are a @#%^ing hateful group of people

unfiltered swear/curse words, and also sex words that are considered vulgar
ache ee double hockey sticks Spoilerhell
female dog Spoiler*****
child born out of wedlock Spoiler*******
4 letter word for urine Spoiler**** (equivalent to sh*t in terms of the level of profanity, so that one is filtered and one isn't is rather inconsistent)
Hoover DamSpoilerdamn
Gluteus Maximus Spoiler***/**************
nonscientific terms for lady parts Spoiler****, @#%^, etc
nonscientific terms for gentleman parts Spoiler****, ****, prick, and variants, such as @#%^er, etc
mammaries Spoiler tits

tl;dr: inconsistent filters are silly and pointless.

edit:



Personally, I vote you guys just make a list of words that are deemed inappropriate and tack it into the rules somewhere, and then include guidelines defining which words are inappropriate where (ie: more strict guidelines for the wow forums, since they have younger posters, but far more relaxed for the assylum, because it's the assylum). Only needs to be done once, can have new words updated as they become a problem, and saves everyone the time/hassle/headache of dealing with the currently somewhat in effective list of filters

Edited, Dec 29th 2011 9:16pm by Jinte

ALSO: Spiders.

I would like to start a formal petition to ban all pictures or videos of spiders from being posted in any forum.