December 17th, 2018: Changes to Censor Rules and Pokémon News Subforum Move

~Kilza~

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Personally, while I would never use it, I do think having a censor toggle is a good idea. That way, people who are uncomfortable with (or just don't want to see) swears don't have to see them, which could result in more members coming on here.

As for censor bypassing itself, I honestly don't care one way or the other. While the freedom granted by not having a censor bypass rule is nice, if we kept the censor bypassing rule, or we removed it but it came back in the future then okay, whatever, I'd just deal with it.
 
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Thundawave

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Since it’s unanimous that no one wants bypassing rules, the clause has been officially removed.

But back to the toggle. Besides the potential hassles that may occur when contacting the developer, it’s possible that it will also cost money. If we go for this, we want to make sure that people would actually use it. Would YOU personally have the censors turned on if we had a toggle?

Another thing to note is that there’s very little point in having a toggle if you want to continue having no punishment for bypassing. The faint of heart would still see the intentional misspellings of swears (the ones that are clear bypasses), which would have practically the same effect as seeing the swear. While common misspellings are already on the list, we can’t keep adding them exhaustively. The punishment for bypassing would certainly be much lower than what we had on Azurilland because we all agree that 10 points is too much, but having the toggle and enforcing the rule go hand in hand.

My personal opinion is that if practically no one in the community will use the toggle and if nobody wants enforcement for bypassing if the toggle exists, we should simply not go for it.
 

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I know that I personally wouldn't use it, but I still think a censor system is nice to have for those who would want to use it. I think it's important that MF remains open and accessible to anybody who wants to join. Maybe having something like this in place would sway more people to join.

I would absolutely be down for a list of acceptable misspellings that are used and having people just stick to those. What if the warning was decreased to 5 for any bypassing? It'd be easier to enforce and a good compromise, in my opinion.

If the community as a whole isn't worried about any of that, though, then I wouldn't bother putting money into developing this or time into figuring out a bypassing warning.
 
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Mystical

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If it costs money then I agree it's not worth it. Especially since probably the majority won't use it. If the censor only works for guests then have a warning when signing up. Then people signing up would know what to expect.

Maybe if it gets to the point that Marriland will not promote the forum unless we at least have the toggle, then we have to think about what we want. More restrained but with the possibility of more members or less restrained and the way it was on Azurilland. I'm fine with either.
 

shhmew

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Klave makes a very good point. I've been waiting to give further public input on this topic, but here's what I think. A censor toggle for logged in users would be a huge pain. Not only would it cost money and be something we have to seek outside of our power to get (we are not even entirely sure if it could happen), but as Regine stated, that and censor bypassing rules would have to go hand in hand. There is no point in letting users have censors if users are also allowed to bypass the censors whenever they please. If we implement censors for logged in users, we WILL enforce rules against censor bypassing.

There isn't much of a difference having censors if we let users bypass them. But as Klave mentioned - is there really any difference between having the actual swears around, and having a bunch of asterisks, anyway? It kinda gives off the same effect. For those who do genuinely prefer a more family-friendly and clean atmosphere, I'm pretty sure just having censors implemented won't help much. And we've already decided we wouldn't implement anything that replaces swears with "cleaner" words - at that point, we're altering what people are saying altogether which isn't what we want to do.

This is why I think it's most important to focus on disallowing language used in an offensive or hateful way, instead of worrying about swears in general. On their own, words are just words (mostly - slurs are the exception), but they can ALL be used as a tool to hurt others, and that's when the environment becomes unpleasant, unfriendly, etc and when staff should step in. That's my opinion

Thank you everyone for the input. It seems there isn't a lot of desire for censors among our community anyway.. there is a lot at play here so the more voices, the better
 

Luke Strife

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Being a new kid on the block, I wouldn't feel like my opinion has much weight, but I've seen this kind of circumstance rear its head time and time again so I feel like dropping in my two pennies. I agree with a lot of the points mentioned in the last few posts. At first I was going to be all for a toggle (it feels like it would make sense), but then upon realising the apparent cost (both with regards to actual monetary value, human time spent, and then even more rulings still by the end of it), it really does not seem worth it anymore.

I've been in forums where we've had a censor that replaced swears with gentler words, and we all just memed about it in all honesty. Wasn't taken seriously. The main one I'm thinking of, amusingly we were all super young at the time anyway, so it's almost kinda funny now to see the discussion revolving around whether kids should see swears when I've been knee deep in swears and swear related memes with other young people before. They're just as much little ******s as the rest of us when they want to be, they're not all innocent and necessarily need protecting from naughty words. If we were talking about giant text walls filled with nothing but curses (like they were writing the Swearing Compendium or something), that'd be one thing, but literally nobody is doing that. As has been said, it's been mostly pretty measured from what I've seen.

But that leads onto the next point, which is as Shhmew says, about the way they're used. I am really casual when it comes to language, and swear pretty frequently, but it's important to make the distinction between bad language used in jest (or some other casual setting), and language used with malicious intent. Beyond what's already been said, to go in the other direction: I would like to think I have a pretty good vocabulary and can be quite eloquent when I want to be, and I could still think of a few horrid, insulting and hateful things to say without using a single swear. Context matters. Banning swears won't stop hatred. Focusing on curbing bad intent rather than bad words sounds like a much better way of dealing with things.

But yeah. That's it from me for now.
 
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WindriderShiva

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Kinda new here, but here's what I think... which is pretty similar to what people have said before:

I'm "fine" with PG13, as in "I can deal with the rule if I have to". It's not my preferred thing, I kinda don't like having to constantly watch my language. Not necessarily because I have a potty mouth (I kinda do), but I wouldn't wanna "upset" someone by swearing either ways. So personally, I'd all be for a toggle. But... yeah, a toggle comes with bypass rules, and that can be a pain in the self-censored. 100% understandable.

This being said, I fully and completely agree that the intention and context behind matters a lot - this is generally understandable with people... except -those- edgy people who teeter on the line between acceptable and unacceptable. And that's generally how most of my online and offline interactions go. Deal with the attitude, not with the words.

Swearing is fine.
Slurs aren't fine.
Insulting people isn't fine either.
 
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