Language Petition

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Winston
PH, that's one of the worst justifications I've ever heard. You could say the same about observing children starving to death or totalitarian regimes conducting genocide. Numerous wrongs don't make any rights for all I know.

I agree with the message of DarkCloud's post although I don't percieve it as big a problem as he does - but his observation is correct and I for one respect it...

Get a damn sense of proportion. How in the name of buggery is a naughty word even remotely comparable with watching children starving and totalitarian regimes? If you think the two are on a par, you must be very naive indeed. They are articulated noises which have been given a special status and taboo nature in our society. It is still silly though.

[Winston]

Take it easy, PH. Of course there's no connection between the phenomena. It was just an allegory of how your justification of "don't worry; once you've been exposed to it long enough, you won't notice anymore" can be used to legitimize just about anything.

You have to admit it was a pretty silly thing to say, no?

[KrazyHorse]

No it wasn't. There's no inherent harm in individual words. There may be in actions. To equate the two is ridiculous.

[Winston]

Well, I respectfully disagree. If anyone can come up with a real reason why people shouldn't be offended by inherently offensive words, I'm all ears.

Try to respect the position of others who would rather see the language toned down a bit, in this case DarkCloud.

Saying things like "Ah, you'll get used to it" doesn't really cut it...

[KrazyHorse]

Why are the words inherently offensive? I'm inherently offended by very few words, and none of them are colloquialisms for bodily functions. The words I am offended by are those such as: ni**er, w*p, k*ke, fa**ot, etc. These are offensive to me because of the possible inference by the person using them that the group in question is inferior. None of these words are banned, but something like *sshole is? I'm not in favour of the words which offend me being banned, though. If somebody comes up with a legitimate reason to use them, then it's fine with me.

Somebody recently got banned for telling paiktis that he (the soon-to-be-banned poster) would have forcible oral sex with paiktis (in a slightly cruder way than this). I'm in full support of the banning, because the meaning of what the person posted was clear, even if half of his words were blanked out.

[Loud Medicine]

Originally posted by DanQ
If you find a thread that you find particular offensive, email us and we will look into it privately.

Originally posted by MarkG2:
it probably didnt pass the "doestheposterhavearealproblemorishejustplayingsil lygames" filter....

[Provost Harrison]

You can gain tolerance to the sight of anything Winston, including starvation and poverty. That is still not a moral justification for them.

[MarkG]

LM, a great man that we both know, once posted about the greatness of not using smilies when you're joking, in order to not ruin the joke. I guess he was wrong after all. Not using smilies might lead people to take your joke seriously....

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


It's only been used oh, a thousand times or so. If you want to use it in some context or another, feel free. You certainly won't be banned for it.

Wow shows how time shave changed, if i said that word when i was a kid i would have been belted for it, yet i probalby would have just been reprimanded for using the S word for crap...

Now in apolyton forums we can use the word w**ker with no penalty but we dare not mention the sh!t word.... Does this seem weird or what...

Society has definatly changed , for the worse IMHO.. but nothing we do will stop that, so why are we differentiating between these words, why is one word banned and not anothr, is it mark and dans call on what gets banned or is there a Dictionary of "bad words"

[MichaeltheGreat]

All of the rules are Mark and Dan's call - while they may ask us for our opinions, it's their site. Mostly (from what I've observed) whether a word is banned or not has a lot to do with how often it's used, and either how patently offensive it is, or how many complaints it triggers.

[Rasputin]

thankyou MTG ..

Markos / Dan can we please add the "W" Word to tthe banend list it upsets me to see it used !!!