Respect and Courtesy Update

[Jave]

Originally Posted by sdp

While I'm not emo, I was just trying to point out that if they are going to be that strict they need to censor that word too. Most people don't even know what emo is and yet use it in as a derogatory term. Its hypocritical to ban other words that are used for a similar purpose and not emo.

And it has been a lifestyle for many years, since the 1980s, the recent wave of "emos" is no different than the 90s "marilyn manson goths", not the real subcuture it original was.

But TONS of words can be used in a derogatory manner. I've seen people use "special" in a derogatory manner. If someone uses "emo" to offend someone, that person is most likely going to be warned.

Most of the words that are censored here are either profanity or words that are mostly (or only) used as derogatory terms. If we start banning every word that can be used as derogatory term, we might as well ban every adjective.

[Uncle Beaglebub]

OK, I'll follow the rule. But nobody here should be allowed to call me a creep either (that includes the mods). Yes, I still remember those incidents.

[Ed Liu]

Originally Posted by Rolling Cloud

Curious, What if you're trying to quote something... like One Piece's Sanji's "Welcome to the S-ty restaurant!"?

Depends on the quote, where, and how you're doing it. Context is important (the Adult Swim forums are generally laxer on obscenity, although swear words will still get bleeped out, and talking about South Park meaningfully might (MIGHT) require it as well), but you can't just fall back on "I'm quoting!" to get away with violating our obscene language rules. Quoting a lot of Samuel Jackson's dialogue is not going to fly, but I'm fairly certain there's a decent discussion on Pulp Fiction somewhere on the Entertainment Board anyway.

Originally Posted by Master Moron

They already banned my favorite word(begins with r) and it's becoming increasingly difficult to ridicule crappy shows with the contempt that they deserve.

I don't seem to have had a problem with that without having forum censor problems, and I also happen to have one of the worst potty mouths in real life. My descriptions of a lot of those shows are a lot saltier than what sees print.

Be creative. It's fun.

I also feel the need to point out yet again that these are not new rules. They have been in place for years. The difference is one specific term that has been added to the forum censor.

[Dai_Maxwell]

I'm curious... if a member uses a profanity and it's caught by the censor filters, does the word show as asterisks or something else? If, as asterisks, can the mod/admin see what was originally posted?

[Jave]

No, the word gets replaced entirely so not even mods can see what was originally there, which is why we assume it's profanity or some banned word.

[Mek]

Originally Posted by GWOtaku

As for criticism, the English language has no shortage of words that can be used for the sake of demolishing the unworthy. Adapt. It isn't that hard. Seriously, find a copy of Ebert's Your Movie Sucks and see a master at work.

QFT.

On one hand, I'm okay with this.

But on the other hand, hm. Not that I really post here much anymore, but I've never really noticed language getting out of hand.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

Originally Posted by Mek

QFT.

On one hand, I'm okay with this.

But on the other hand, hm. Not that I really post here much anymore, but I've never really noticed language getting out of hand.

And it doesn't, necessarily. The rules are followed by the vast majority, this is simply a clarification of an (almost?) unspoken rule. Nothing is going to change unless people actually start using said phraseology, if I read right (I done got my dep-loma!)

[Shawn Hopkins]

Originally Posted by Ed Liu

Yes. By the time your post hits the forums, we have no idea whether you self-censored yourself or whether the forum censor caught you. The forum censor is there to catch you if you slip, not so you can swear with impunity because "you can't read the swear word." That's following the letter of the law without obeying its spirit -- saying someone is "a little ****" is not any better than seeing the actual censored word whether you can see the obscenity or not. This is also why censoring just one letter of the word or attempting to use a grawlix ("I am sick of these @($%*@! snakes on this @($%*@! plane") is considered a rule violation as well.

I think we should be allowed to use the grawlix to denote an unspecified swear. They use the grawlix in Family Circus, I find it hard to believe that Toonzone needs stricter content guidelines than Family Circus. The beauty of the grawlix is that it's an "unspecified" profanity, which is why it flies on the comics page of even the most conservative newspapers.

Of course, it shouldn't be allowed in an insult. But that falls under the current insulting other members guidelines anyway, it doesn't matter what you use. You could just as easily get a warning for calling someone a craphead or a dumbass, two words that make it past the censor.

And we've been encouraged to find other alternatives to these words, but sometimes even ones that you think would be perfectly safe can get you modded and there's no guidance on it. I thought I had found a perfectly PG, CBS sitcom safe replacement for a compound word, often used to describe people who wear Ed Hardy shirts and get fake tans, that combines words for a feminine hygiene product and a sack. But I got a warning for using it.

None of this stuff keeps the truly inappropriate stuff from showing up on the board, anyway. We always get these weird fetish posts about underwear or blue aliens or various animated and live-action lolis or anything else you can think of that is icky. It doesn't keep people from insulting other members, either, sometimes you'll be having a respectful conversation about something and someone with a chip on their shoulder will just come along and blindside you.

Finally, I agree that we should encourage respect and courtesy but I think it's the wrong thing to make a point of offering special protection to minorities and special interests. And I'm disappointed that there are some people in this thread that are asking (the ones that weren't being ironic like sdp) for even more. If you've read Fahrenheit 451 you know that the dystopian bookburning society in that didn't come about because it was passed down from on high by an autocratic government, it developed gradually as each special interest group and minority got people to stop saying things that offended them.

If we banned every word that could potentially be used to insult somebody there wouldn't be a lot left to say. You could describe me pejoratively as redneck, cracker, whitey, hillbilly, white trash, breeder, wallflower, geek, nerd, liberal, godless, egghead, gringo and a host of others and some of those would sting, but looking at the bigger picture I wouldn't want these words banned or censored because I believe one's right to express themselves is more important than protecting my feelings.

It's not my forum, of course, and not a democracy so I'm not going to start crying about free speech or anything. This is just my opinion on the situation.

[Antiyonder]

Originally Posted by Shawn Hopkins

It's not my forum, of course, and not a democracy so I'm not going to start crying about free speech or anything. This is just my opinion on the situation.

It's not just certain forums that try to maintain the responsibility part. I mean if you cried out fire in a public theater or rats in a restaraunt, the Freedom of Speech will not protect one in those situations.

In a way, freedom is power. To quote a certain comic book character, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". Many people who abuse the Freedom of Speech seems to forget about responsibility when making their statements.

[CyclonatorZ]

As someone who has had bad experiences with other forums that don't encourage respect of other members, I'm glad that toonzone has taken care to clarify and enforce this essential concept. In my honest opinion, any person who insults or demeans someone on serious discussion forum should either learn from their mistakes or be barred from posting if they refuse to improve their manners. Similarly, I also feel that any discussion forum that does not hold members responsible for derogatory or insulting remarks should not get the attention of respectable internet browsers, as by doing that we are simply encouraging them to continue.

Anyway, thanks to the moderators for making this site a lot better than many other forums out there, which I can tell just from the year I've spent lurking and the few weeks I've been a member.

[TripleS]

Originally Posted by Matt Hazuda

I understand that, but why not utilize the rules already in place instead of plunking down new ones for the reason of what amounts to mollycoddling a specific group? Personal attacks as always have been off-limits and so has being demeaning to other members. Why not encourage users to report when problems occur?

It seems that a lot of people just have no clue that the feature even exists. You (the mods) need to better-inform people of the report button and its function. I always looked to the handy report button as a way of fixing the problems. It lets you mods know "Hey, step in and fix this." You don't need even more rules, you need to encourage people take the appropriate action and use the rules we already have.

Again, Matt is spot-on. I think we need to be less concerned about the rules and more concerned about the mods themselves.

Look, I don't want to look like the bad guy here, but I'm going to be honest... the staff needs reorganization, if anything needs to be changed. I think there's some inactive members that still are listed as mods... isn't that essentially useless? Shouldn't they be demoted?

But in lower status, I honestly think that there are a lot of reporters and reviewers who have some questionable opinions and seem to miss the entire point of their job. I apologize if I come off as rude, but I think that people shouldn't be given these titles if they don't know how to review for a movie or show's intended audience. Less important to the forums, but I feel the need to speak my honest opinion.

But I understand that it's tough being a moderator/admin, there will always be complaints. Some complaints are worth considering though, and as Matt said, the Help button is hardly ever enforced.

There's a lot of moments of members breaking the rules that are irrelevant to this new rule and are more along the issue of mods taking notice or action. That's where the enforcement comes in.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Originally Posted by Antiyonder

It's not just certain forums that try to maintain the responsibility part. I mean if you cried out fire in a public theater or rats in a restaraunt, the Freedom of Speech will not protect one in those situations.

Like I said, I wasn't talking about free speech, only what I thought would make for better and less restricted discussion on the board and why it's a bad idea to give, or even appear to give by banning a specific word, special protections to certain groups.

But in the real world, the fire exception is an incredibly narrow restriction that doesn't apply to anything here. It just means you can't say anything that both isn't true and will cause a panic. The second one is an example of defamation, only if it isn't true and causes substantial harm to the business. Using a word that offends someone or hurts their feelings, however, doesn't cause a panic or cause substantial harm to anyone.

There are other recognized exceptions to the First Amendment, such as fighting words, sedition and the sticky, hard to define wicket obscenity, although all of these have been the subject of controversy. But I believe that no one, not even a hate-mongering Nazi, is "abusing" his right to free speech just because he says something that makes you feel bad, or offends your or the community's morals (as long as you can't prove in court it's obscene), or is something you disagree with, or is something you think is irresponsible. Expecting people to have a code of "responsibility" in their speech is essentially prior restraint on speech, something our courts have rather consistently ruled is unconstitutional.

Now, I just allowed myself that brief tangent because it's interesting and you brought it up. None of that applies to this forum, of course, because it's not governed by the United States Constitution, it's governed by the site owner. There could be a rule that we all have to speak like comedic upper-clash British stereotypes with the pip pip and cheerio and the only right one would have to do something about it would be to post somewhere else.

[Jave]

Originally Posted by TripleS

Look, I don't want to look like the bad guy here, but I'm going to be honest... the staff needs reorganization, if anything needs to be changed. I think there's some inactive members that still are listed as mods... isn't that essentially useless? Shouldn't they be demoted?

Did a quick rundown. With one exception, every moderator has been active on the forums for the past week. And the exception has several other mods on his board so I don't see the problem.

[Matt Hazuda]

Originally Posted by TripleS

Look, I don't want to look like the bad guy here, but I'm going to be honest... the staff needs reorganization, if anything needs to be changed. I think there's some inactive members that still are listed as mods... isn't that essentially useless? Shouldn't they be demoted?

This is something I've gone on about previously and it's just ignored for the most part, so I resigned myself to the fact that it will never change.

Edit: I want to correct myself with Jave's findings if they are true. Previously TZ had been terrible about removing inactive mods (it happened never), but if it changed, more power to them for finally listening.

But I understand that it's tough being a moderator/admin, there will always be complaints. Some complaints are worth considering though, and as Matt said, the Help button is hardly ever enforced.

That's only partially correct. Yes, it does depend on members actually clicking the report button, but some of the forums are painfully slow to respond to it. Others have near-instant reactions in some cases. The Entertainment Board is a great example of a well-moderated board in this respect, just to give credit where it's due.

[Harley]

I'm closing this thread. It has run its course. We're just answering the same questions and responding to feedback that has nothing to do with the announcement.

You may PM me with further concerns. I may take awhile to respond, but I will do so as soon as time permits. The crew and I have an absurdly long list of things to get done and I need our focus back on knocking items off that list.

Thanks for your understanding.