Free the Swears!

this hard

As far as I'm concerned I don't think we need to lighten up on censors. It's a PG-13 site. We've already let up on censors in the cbox, we currently only have four words banned; c***, f***, b******, and n*****. There also haven't been any bans involving swears not directed at people. Necris's ban was because he called someone a f*ggot and told them to suck a penis. I don't think anyone else has been banned for swearing unless it was far to excessive. Even in context it violates the rules of the site. IC you can swear as long as you censor yourself, I do it all the time and have had no backlash.

• Want to swear IC: Use "*"s. Eg. f*ck 
• Want to swear in Cbox: You can for the most part, just don't swear at other members and don't do it too often. Hell use "*"s here as well.
• Don't think there have been any bans for non user related swearing

I think that can be chalked up to different staff having different opinions. Some get offended by swearing more than others. Yes, staff should probably agree on a consensus but as far as I know ban wise people don't get special treatment.

@ Zero

I feel that f*ck shouldn't be de-censored, lots of people find it offensive. I feel that as long as something has a star than it should be fine. But I agree with you almost entirely. Indicating something as a mature thread hadn't occurred to me but is a good idea. The point I see is that the suggestion in this thread isn't too far off from the current system. I feel that some clarification could be better used so the rules get across and staff reach a consensus so we don't have people getting treated differently based on who's online.

tl;dr: I like the idea of the mature thread. Suggestion and current system are pretty similar. Staff should agree on what they get hung up on people about.

Said Envy instead of Zero, awks

Okay, concerning lifting the censor, I don't foresee too much of a problem. A good percentage of us (site and chatbox wise at the moment) are well in our lives where we know when not to curse or if we went to. The problem is some people being limited right off the bat. It especially does not help when someone is told to watch their language and the staff member just happens to be younger than one of the members. Just seems a tad demeaning in a way, but I'm not saying something like that is rampant.

Several words being argued here I feel are not going to hurt anyone. If someone does feel offended, they're in their complete right to speak up and say it. On the topic of racial slurs, those should not even be on the table to begin with.

It's just when something like a few swears have such a diverse meaning for different people and we see some staff either not caring about it or being completely upright whenever they're in the chatbox, it's hard to come to a full agreement about it because there's different opinions about it which then leads to people feeling like they shouldn't even bother saying mature related in fear of getting hit with a warning or something. Heck, I saw someone say something involving nipples and being fine, someone used it in the same context later and was chastised.

Seriously, we're a PG-13 site, things on the level like mild swearing should be fine, or even just having the ability to do it to begin with. I understand that people don't want to step on any toes, but there's a thing of being too conservative and it causes a bit of mild fear if we don't figure out some level people should be advised to stop at [like being able to swear mildly, but nothing involving detailed sexual actions, gore, because it falls under another rating and we'd get smacked by Proboards.]

Snipe Edit: Mature thread idea sounds fine to me at the very most of it all. 

I have pretty foul-mouthed characters, and so far I've been fine going "f#ck" or "bullsh*t", but honestly that looks pretty childish and even draws more attention to the cuss than if it were just normally written.

Then with the cbox, I've said often enough that the censoring can get pretty dang ridiculous. ("*ing" everywhere)

That said, I've never been a fan of censoring, but I do feel kinda "meh" towards it when it's just censoring for cussing. Still, censoring it annoying.

And if you're thinking "but there are little kids on this site!", let's face it. Kids these days swear. They generally know the terms and use them all the time. Censoring is not gonna dampen their exposure to bad language. The "damage" (which I don't see as damage, because words are nothing more than, you know, words) has already been done.

So yeah. I vote for freedom of linguistic expression (but wouldn't be too upset if it doesn't happen).