Forumosa's auto-censor (words automatically edited - why?)

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1

Hey, I put up a post on the “discourse on the appropriateness of ethnic jokes…” that included the word “reggin” in it. as i reviewed my post, i noticed that the word had been replaced with “person of a minority group.” i don’t feel that such editing is correct or fair to the maturity of the forum community.

if a member of the forum goes off on a racial slurring fest, then he should be reprimanded or removed from the forum community due to disrespect of the forum space. however, when i aim to convey the pain of an experience of being slurred in the past (not to say that was the aim of the post in which i used the word) or merely want to mention something about the word, i will find this limitation prohibitive. i wonder, are other racial slurs, such as “kike,” “raghead,” “chink,” and the like also edited out?

i think none should be edited out. assuming that most of us on this board are adults, i think we as a group should be able to deal with the situation without words being edited like a war report by an embedded reporter.

just my thoughts.

2

i see that “knihc” has been edited…but the other two were not…

which racial slurs are ok to use in this forum and which ones aren’t? you either have to ban the whole lot or just leave them out as words to be used in expression, such as “fuck,” “shit,” and other “controversial,” sometimes disrespectful words.

3

I don’t know exactly which post you were referring to, but I assume you were talking about the appropiateness of certain words, that is difficult if you can’t mention you words.

[quote]I wonder, are other racial slurs, such as “kike,” “raghead,” “Asian from China,” and the like also edited out? [/quote] WTF ? “Asian from China,” is a racial slur ? It completely changes the meaning of the post because the word was vital, and makes the original poster look like an idiot. There was nothing to show that it had been edited.

Imagine if a post was edited and said “Someone came up to me in the street and called me an African-American to my face, can you believe that ?”

You are not necessarily using these words to be insulting. If you say, “I hate the word n*****r”(edited by me) that is not being insulting, that is being supportive if anything. There must be a better way to edit it in these cases, like the way I just did, you know what word I meant without seeing it.

If, on the other hand, it was unneccessary, such as “I saw a n****r in the street”, then it would be used in an insulting way and would be justified in being edited or even deleted, if it’s not insulting, leave it alone.

4

but my whole point is that i object to having to edit the word in the first place. why need i write “n*****” when it so obviously refers to “nigger” (which is going to be replaced by “someone of a minority group”)

why the need for editing in the first place? i feel there’s just some odd prohibition of actually writing the word, as if by putting it on the computer some race riot will ensue or something.

5

I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the decision to include certain racial slurs in the auto-censor.

This was a decision made years ago in the ol’ dot-ORG days. The censor list used by oriented.org at the time was about 8 words. Eight words. We felt these were words that would be used >90% of the time in hateful or malcious ways. After all, how many times do you hear the phrase “ch ink in your armour” used in regular discourse?

Since MOST of the time, these were words that would raise a ruckus when used, the reasoning goes: let’s save ourselves the time and get rid of them. That is: let’s save everyone from watching another flame war erupt, while the mods and admins move in to cleanup up the threads to dampen them down

Why change them to absurd phrases like “asian from China”? To underline the point that such language is simply not welcome here most of the time.

Why censor if we are adults here anyway? Because other “adults” are unhappy to see nothing done.

The very few words (slurs) that are on the list (less than five?) seem a very small sacrifice, imho

You may find it interesting that we PARED DOWN that list of 8 – mostly, we removed sexual references. Why? Well, more moderators came on board, and we became more active in changing the words manually, in asking people to edit their own posts, and in warning them outright if they did not censor themselves.

What may also interest you is that there is a phpBB Hack that lists “bad words” from many (most?) languages. Apparently, words are entered on one of John Abela’s websites and are somehow referenced by the mod. Abela is one of the original developers of phpBB. Now, I have chosen NOT to use this mod. I may be anal but not THAT uptight.

Tip: If you absolutely must use these words, stick a space in it (as I did above). If a moderator manually changes it, complain to them. State your case. But do not be surprised that we discourage some words.

6

thanks for your clarification.

i hadn’t a clue that this issue went way back to the .org days…it just seemed odd that some words were edited and others not.

i’ll use a clever way to reference it from now on.

one

7

So if I were to use the ch- word in the way you mentioned, Gus, then it would become “I was fencing at a renaissance festival and got a chink in my armor”…

Apparently so.

What kind of unenlightened neanderthal would come onto a forum for people living in Taiwan and post that word?

8

Whenever this subject has come up I’ve also come out on the side of no-censorship, for the following reasons:

It’s kind of condescending. Thanks for editing me Dad.

It’s so easy to get around by using misspellings like nigga, ch1nk, (what are the other 6 btw cunt, fuck, gook, wog, penis?)

As the above posters have said it makes some discussions seem pointless. In a group like this people are more likely to be used when discussing their use (so to speak) than in hate.

Much more offensive stuff could be said without usingh those, or any bad words.

I say just leave the words. Then if someone calls someone a nig nog (see that sounds even more offensive than n1gger to me), then everyone will know just why that tosser got the boot.

Shit, I just thought of something else. If I write "there’s a person from a minority group at my school … " everyone’ll think I just called him a nigga.

Brian

9

good point…

perhaps when a flamer comes on hurling slurs, we can flame him/her out instead of the words he/she chooses to use.

10

Yep, go for the user not the words. The words are not the problem.
M

11

I think censorship is unnecessary, especially auto-censorship of a select few words. for example, “niggger” can be used in a manner that is not offensive or it can be used in ways that are offensive. It depends entirely on the context in which the word is used. Equally “black man” could be used in a very offensive way, but I am sure it is not on the list of words on the auto-censor.

I suggest that moderators issue a standard warning when a post contains language that is considered offensive. e.g.

[quote]Dear xxxx,
The language in your post yyyy is considered offensive. Please edit it immediately or the post will be deleted.
love,
a moderator[/quote]

The moderator should also have the discretion to delete the post without warning, issue a warning to the person who posted the message or in extreme cases ban the user. I know this probably adds work for the moderator, but it seems ridiculous to ban the use of a few words. Everyone who posts here is an adult and should be able to live with the consequences of what they post.

12

taiwan boy, except in the context of discussing its meaning and usage (like in this thread), e-mail to me an example of how “niggger” can be used in a manner that is not offensive. I’m curious.

You seem to be disagreeing with the idea that most of the time this term is used in a hateful, offensive way.

gus@forumosa.com

13

I’d say, most of the time, on this forum, nigga is used in an inoffensive way - that is to say, discussing it’s use.

Brian

14

well,

for the time i’ve been on this website, i haven’t seen “niggerr” used in an offensive way. but then, i’ve only been a poster on this website for a few months, not years.

that’s just me though. like i said, perhaps we should note its offensive use when it happens. i haven’t seen it, though.

15

I think the auto-pinyiniser is good, but sometimes it causes problems, for example if you’re comparing the way a word is romanised in different systems etc.

Would it be possible to add another option at the bottom, where there’s options for ‘disbale HTML in this post’ etc. This one would be ‘disable pinyin in brackets for this post’ or something.

Brian

16

This mod almost does it: netclectic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=342

but…

  1. the team would have to decide as a group whether we want to allow members to override the pinyiniser

  2. the above phpbb mod is not a per post override, but a per profile override

for comparing different spellings of pinyin, I recommend inserting a space or period in an appropriate part of the chinese

chunghsiao chung.hsiao

17

Could we enclose it in the control character:

^insert non-standard pinyin here^

It’s just that inserting spaces or dots isn’t really compatible with pinyin, because every single character in pinyin is crucial.

18

I don’t think it would be good for profile, just for individual posts. It’s not that important - just of easy to do. Or maybe an optin like the ‘bold’, ‘quote’ etc.

I thought about putting in spaces, but I thought that wouldn’t work. Does the pinyiniser only work on a certain number of words then, not smaller words.

So chung siao is ok?

Looks like it. That seems pretty easy then, if you want to type non-hanyu pinyin without the pinyin in brackets, just insert a space.

Brian

19

What if you double the initial letter ?

Cchunghsiao

20

Or:
xChunghsiao xTung xTseng xTs’eng