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Suggestion: swear censors

Are you for or against the ability to toggle the swear censor?

  • For

    Votes: 79 78.2%
  • Against

    Votes: 22 21.8%

  • Total voters
    101

El Héroe Oscuro

IG: elheroeoscuro
7,239
Posts
15
Years
they could at least say "we can't really handle this issue right now but we'll take a look at it later," I haven't even gotten that. it's kind of frustrating. it feels like they're ignoring the problem. and I know they're not; I'd just like some sort of verification. I'm not angry, I'd just like to see something get done.

Like I said, I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but I can see where you're coming from. Everyone has been in this situation at one point or another - including myself - so I can see where your frustration is stemming from. Just be a little bit more patient is all I'm asking - I'm sure that they'll respond soon.
 

Belldandy

[color=teal][b]Ice-Type Fanatic[/b][/color]
3,979
Posts
10
Years
I don't think there's any harm in customization. People have brought up the IRC as a microcosm, and if it becomes a real problem, the decision could always be reformed.

I can see having the toggle mandatory for anyone under 14, even 16, being a good idea, since sure, they swear, but this age group is far more likely to abuse it. With that said, there are also infractions that could be in place for excessive swearing with no reasonable cause, and the punishments could be harsher if the swearing actually contributes to attacks more than just emphasis.

And even then, all that being said, not having the toggle would force users to actually think about reconstructing their phrase to acquire the same emphasis they believe swearing would deliver to their plight, just with more socially-acceptable language. It might make people more coherent and enhance their vocabulary instead of permitting laziness through profanity. I'm a bit of a Grammar Nazi and a linguist of sorts, so enabling people to dumb themselves down (as I would see it) is against my ethics; however, no one else should be making that decision for others (somewhat like how Republican men try to make decisions for women; it's really not their place now, is it?). If some users wish to dumb their vocabulary down use profanity to get their point across, as long as it's not attacking other users or is in incredible excess, I don't see an issue.

I understand that some users are more sensitive to swearing. I don't personally like it either. I try to avoid it. I think the little hearts are cute and really do inhibit people from swearing. It's a working system, in my opinion, and I like it.

But if people have the choice of toggling, they still can protect themselves from material they might find offensive, and the people who use swearing to emphasize points / phrases would be happy, too.

This would be a lot easier of a decision if we could guarantee that every user would be mature about not excessively swearing due to personally not seeing a filter.

Summary: I'm more for it, and if it gets out of hand it can always be reformed / revoked.
 

£

You're gonna have a bad time.
947
Posts
10
Years
That'd be for vBulletin 4.1, so it wouldn't be compatible with the 3.X line that PC is using. But still, it's at least a start. But yeah, looking back at this topic, it's one of those rare suggestions that really get a lot of PC members involved and there's all sorts of arguments for both sides of the suggestion. Not many suggestions do that here, so kudos to you, maccrash.

But yeah, the entire customization aspect of this potential suggestion is a really nice idea. The real issue is, though, that if someone lies about their age when registering, they can easily bypass the entire age restriction requirement. I'd simply leave it at "Do you or do you not want to see uncensored vulgar language in posts?" question in the User CP, that way, it's left up to the user to choose. Since we now enforce COPPA, which means users under 13 can't register without parental consent, I'm quite confident a 13-year-old can decide for themselves if they want to see that or not.

Heck, if you want a testing field to try this out on first, why not enable it first for supporters to work out all the kinks in the system, then allow all usergroups to use it afterwards?

Matt, Matt he's our man, if he can't petition for censor opting no-one can!

Wasn't too sure about specifics when it came to the software, though I did see a couple of other ones in my 10 second glance at that page! The art of mathematics/getting things done is to find nifty shortcuts and whatnot. <3

I don't think there's even a remote chance that we'd be allowing someone under the COPPA age to see vulgar language by the looks of the topic so far but I mean, it might be an idea to not even make it a default question and to simply hide it away in the settings so yes- it's an option and it's there, but it's not something actively being encouraged (removing the censors) but idk.

Not to be biased (which I am, ngl) but surely it'd be easier to simply enable it for everyone and test it with them? It'd take extra work to single out the specific groups of people that were testing it than it would to just do a global blanket addition?
 

Nihilego

[color=#95b4d4]ユービーゼロイチ パラサイト[/color]
8,875
Posts
13
Years
Just gonna chip in two things here:

a) this was actually brought up a couple of days ago in the admin forum and approaching someone directly about it would have been a better idea than to jump to conclusions about us not paying attention / ignoring you / whatever. A lot of the time an idea gets raised in a staff forum but it slips whoever posted it's mind to notify you in here. Just ask someone if you want to know what's going on. There are only six admins and PC is a massive forum; we can't always come to you with updates for stuff like this. Sometimes you're gonna need to ask us for them.

b) I'd rather not try this out for supporters only. Don't see the need if I'm honest, and I'd rather see how it impacts use of language and etc. on the community level, not just on a few people (especially when that few people isn't really a sample representative of the community as a whole). This isn't confirmation that we're going to try it, mind.
 

Akiba

[img]http://i.imgur.com/o3RYT4v.png[/img]
4,262
Posts
13
Years
Now I'm not a fan of cursing, and I don't do it at all. I just voted in the thread poll not to have the option allowed.

I also agree with Matt, who noted that even when a curse is censored, we can still figure out what the curse meant, and often even exactly what word was used.

But I do believe that some here are confused about the repercussions of permitting the censor's configuration. If the option is added to the User Control Panel, users' settings would still be initially configured to censor swearing in posts. Only the people who then disable the censor would be able to see their own curses and others' curses. It wouldn't make a difference to those who haven't disabled the censor. As such, I don't think that enabling the censor to be toggled would lead to increased swearing on PC.

Code:
string[] allowedUserGroups = {"SupporterSilver", "SupporterGold", "SupporterCrystal", "SupporterPlatinum", "Mod", "SMod", "AAdmin", "Admin"};
if (LoggedInUser.UserGroup.Contains(allowedUserGroups) == true)
{
UserCP.Options.EnableOption(CensorBypass);
}

That code has quite the extra padding. ;)

Code:
string[] allowedUserGroups = {"SupporterSilver", "SupporterGold", "SupporterCrystal", "SupporterPlatinum", "Mod", "SMod", "AAdmin", "Admin"};
if (LoggedInUser.UserGroup.Contains(allowedUserGroups))
	UserCP.Options.EnableOption(CensorBypass);

Also I don't think they'd want to be evaluating everything with strings. That's just silly. Maybe something like this.

Code:
<if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid'] >= $usergroup->silver->id">
	<input type="radio" name="swear" value="swearfilter" />Filter Swearing
	<br />
	<input type="radio" name="swear" value="noswearfilter" />Don't Filter Swearing
</if>
 

curiousnathan

Starry-eyed
7,753
Posts
14
Years
I'm pretty indifferent on this. On one hand I'd argue that you can convey your viewpoint without the need for swearing, but on the other hand I can concur that swear words are just that, words. I'm sure we're a mature enough community to "handle" them. We practically live in a world where they're everywhere anyway.

Like I said, I'm not too fussed if the censor is kept or not. I'm not particularly bothered by swearing (except if you know, someone goes blatantly too far lol) or the censor, so eh. :)
 
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Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
@RL: But if you did, you could at least try it out with a decent percentage of the community. There are quite a few supporters after all.

But supporters are not "better" members than normal ones, they're just members with more free cash. Or members with friends with more free cash.
 

maccrash

foggy notion
3,583
Posts
10
Years
also this is totally unrelated but can we please specify which Matt we're talking about in this thread because my name is also Matt and I am pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum on this than elheroeosceuro Matt is. it would be much obliged. (0: even though I can pretty much figure it out anyway.
 

El Héroe Oscuro

IG: elheroeoscuro
7,239
Posts
15
Years
also this is totally unrelated but can we please specify which Matt we're talking about in this thread because my name is also Matt and I am pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum on this than elheroeosceuro Matt is. it would be much obliged. (0: even though I can pretty much figure it out anyway.

Isn't having such a generic name awesome? *confetti flies*
 
10,673
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 30
  • Seen Dec 30, 2023
This is the 21st century, people should always have the choice in the content they see. Just have an option to display or hide swears per member (off by default). Always filter derogatory terms and use the "censor bypass" punishment for those who bypass the censor. Continue to infract those who use these terms to insult members. It's literally that simple.
 

Racket

The TCG Professor
64
Posts
9
Years
I'd say there's really no point to swearing here tbh. We can make our points clearly without needed to resort to it. Furthermore, swearing is looked down upon through out most of the rest of the pokemon community (online, leagues, competitions, etc...). I'd say we might as well keep it consistant, otherwise if people start getting used to it, it might seep into other parts of the community. Even if we did cencer it for younger audiences, they'll still get the idea that "even older pokemon players swear", and they'll know what the idea is behind the words being bleeped out.

Philosophically, the only problem with swearing is the social stigma attached to the words, not the words themselves. If a kid thinks its cool to be defiant, and cool to be a bad guy, he'll see that they swear and he'll swear too (because of the social stigma, not really because of the word). Since society doesn't seem to be ready to remove the stigma from the words, I'd say if there is no point to swearing (censored or not), we should avoid it (even if small communities are mature enough to relise that swears are just words with bad stigma, and remove the stigma from the community itself, outsiders will disagree).

Also to add onto this, if young'uns go googling (this forum is public) for stuff related to their pokemon game, and they start seeing swears or censor bars (or their parents start seeing swears), it creates uneccassary unease about this site.

My 2 cents.
 
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Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
I'd say there's really no point to swearing here tbh. We can make our points clearly without needed to resort to it. Furthermore, swearing is looked down upon through out most of the rest of the pokemon community (online, leagues, competitions, etc...). I'd say we might as well keep it consistant, otherwise if people start getting used to it, it might seep into other parts of the community. Even if we did cencer it for younger audiences, they'll still get the idea that "even older pokemon players swear", and they'll know what the idea is behind the words being bleeped out.

Philosophically, the only problem with swearing is the social stigma attached to the words, not the words themselves. If a kid thinks its cool to be defiant, and cool to be a bad guy, he'll see that they swear and he'll swear too (because of the social stigma, not really because of the word). Since society doesn't seem to be ready to remove the stigma from the words, I'd say if there is no point to swearing (censored or not), we should avoid it (even if small communities are mature enough to relise that swears are just words with bad stigma, and remove the stigma from the community itself, outsiders will disagree).

Also to add onto this, if young'uns go googling (this forum is public) for stuff related to their pokemon game, and they start seeing swears or censor bars (or their parents start seeing swears), it creates uneccassary unease about this site.

My 2 cents.

This thread isn't really about whether or not swearing should exist on PC, as there are already rules that cover swearing - no intentionally bypassing the censor and no posting with every other word a swear word and no swearing aggressively against other members. As the rules stand, swearing in general is allowed, and you can see how much it's "seeped" anywhere (not at all). :)
 
45
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 29
  • Seen Aug 19, 2015
am I allowed to bump this so it doesn't die a very sad death ):
Here ya go!

Anyway, personally, I don't care. I won't rehash what others have said earlier, but I'm neither for nor against it. (There should be an "indifferent" option in the poll, for us apathetic ones out there. :P) It wouldn't affect me much if it was implemented, as I would probably never bother with it. The censor doesn't annoy me in the least; I find the hearts filling in swear words to be mildly amusing, actually. {XD}
 

ANARCHit3cht

Call me Archie!
2,145
Posts
15
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  • Seen Sep 25, 2020
I don't excessively swear, but I do every once in a while. I'd say I use rather tactfully, and when I do, it has a purpose. So it'd be nice to see the actual word as opposed to a censor. That being said...

Ass Bastard ***** Cock **** Damn Dick **** Hell ****** Poon Prick Pussy **** ****

Less than half of the ones I can see being used are censored anyway. And for good reason, they would be offensive or used derogatorily in most cases. But a few of them, such as *** and ***** could be used in an entirely innocent context but still get censored due to their potentially offensive nature.
 

Akiba

[img]http://i.imgur.com/o3RYT4v.png[/img]
4,262
Posts
13
Years
I don't excessively swear, but I do every once in a while. I'd say I use rather tactfully, and when I do, it has a purpose. So it'd be nice to see the actual word as opposed to a censor. That being said...

Ass Bastard ***** Cock **** Damn Dick **** Hell ****** Poon Prick Pussy **** ****

Less than half of the ones I can see being used are censored anyway. And for good reason, they would be offensive or used derogatorily in most cases. But a few of them, such as *** and ***** could be used in an entirely innocent context but still get censored due to their potentially offensive nature.

Whoa there. Don't swear unnecessarily. In fact, your post may encourage some to exploit the censor by using those unfiltered words.

To progress my earlier discourse on swearing. It's really a matter of whether it is necessary to swear or not. While I do personally believe that swearing is almost never necessary with respect to the purpose of conveying one's opinion, it is tolerable for one to swear -- to a certain degree that may be considered appropriate for emphasis.

Loving the ABC's, though.
 

ANARCHit3cht

Call me Archie!
2,145
Posts
15
Years
  • Seen Sep 25, 2020
Whoa there. Don't swear unnecessarily. In fact, your post may encourage some to exploit the censor by using those unfiltered words.

To progress my earlier discourse on swearing. It's really a matter of whether it is necessary to swear or not. While I do personally believe that swearing is almost never necessary with respect to the purpose of conveying one's opinion, it is tolerable for one to swear -- to a certain degree that may be considered appropriate for emphasis.

Loving the ABC's, though.

Haha. Well, it wasn't all to unnecessarily. It was demonstrating a point that the curse words that are censored are because they don't really have a way to be used that isn't in a derogatory manner.
 
1,277
Posts
10
Years
In honestly am not bothered whether there is a blocker or not, like most people I do swear.

My main point is there is nothing worse than a forum thread that is full of people saying something/someone is (insert swear word one) (Insert swear word two) then other people replying back in the same manner. It just looks untidy, unprofessional and makes reading a thread difficult. Another unrelated thing I hate is the use of slang to refer to other posters like Mate, Pal, Love, Lad etc again that looks untidy.

Thankfully most people on PC are articulate and engaging in their posts and this is how it should stay.
Swearing works best in context so it is witty rather than being thrown around randomly.
 
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Sydian

fake your death.
33,379
Posts
16
Years
I also go on EGC where there is no filter and people don't go wild over there because of it. I don't understand the concern that people are going to go nuts and just start swearing up a storm. Obviously there will be an increase, but some of you are thinking worst case scenario. Have more faith in the userbase, guys.
 
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