Striking the right balance between having a welcoming environment and salty language

[hungryonion]

Thank you all for the feedback. Let me get back to what I meant by PG-13 when I came up with the site guideline

The intent is that profanities and more salty language can be used in ways they are used in a PG-13 movie (instead of PG/ G). Drunk sailor language that creates an unwelcoming/ hostile environment for fellow participants and potential participants are meant to be excluded from the site. Attacks on others using these words are meant to be excluded.

I am not in favor of auto censor that blanks out words deemed ‘offensive’ by default. Besides being ineffective, I am of the opinion that one should take responsibility of his/her own language in the interaction with others.

I am not in favor of censorship because of saltiness. I certainly recognize the irony that this came from me given of what many perceived to be excessive censorship on the Hooters thread. When the salty language definitely wades into offensive territory like racism, sexism, etc then it should be removed. The grey area is what should be debated- the area where it may be offensive or has the potential to get into offensive territory but not there yet dependent on whom you ask.

The hooters thread- food should be a topic to discuss of course. The attire of the servers as its business model and impact on tips to me, and this is a personal opinion, is fair game as long as the discussion is done in a respectful manner, to correct on a statement made earlier.

If you go look at the Hooter’s thread now, people are forbidden from talking about anything but the “food.”

Some potential solutions for threads with explicit language that has concerns:

• Label the thread title with Explicit language once complaints are received to warn people of language and enter at your own risk. I am leaning towards this one.
• Move all those threads into one board where these things go. Similar idea, just put them all one place. More work and seems more random to have various topics on cooking, cookware, restaurants all lumped into this place just because of the language)
• Censor with various method like (which I am not a big fan of)

1. asterisks,
2. word replacement,
3. with the spoiler feature

Spoiler Alert- blurring the spoilers for your fellow users

You really don’t want to be that person who ruins it for everyone. Here’s what you can do to keep your popularity here: Just click the gear icon when you are typing up your post, click blur spoiler, and put the text you want to blur between the [spoiler ] and [/spoiler ] [image] The text and pictures will be blurred until clicked on. This spoiler tag seems to only work for text and paragraphs with no empty rows in between. Even with this feature, it’d still be nice if you indicate Spoiler…

I am all for intelligent discussions, like this one. Its certainly not easy, but I’d rather have an honest discussion as the site grows and figures things out, than to just hurl a new rule out that may or may not make sense.

Thanks.

One additional clarification, once the label is labeled Explicit language, that a reminder be posted to posters to keep it respectful. It doesn’t mean its a free-for-all afterwards. Offensive stuff is still offensive and should be dealt with.