UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase Swearing and cussing

I, coming from a Christian family, am totally against it, and everybody at my board knows it. It's the most enforced rule. Some people might call me picky. But then again, it should be for all ages anyways.

What do you think? Should swearing be allowed? Or should it be censored?

~Jon

I have it censored on my forums. Just so there isn't any arguments over it. I'm not against it though, I don't really care.

It all depends on the type of community you are running. If you're running a general audience site (targeting all age groups) you better use the censors for vulgar and obscene words. On the other hand if you're running a gaming forum about Grand Theft Auto 3, for example, you can pretty much forget about censoring anything as it fits the audience and you'll loose all your members.

Nonetheless, it is my opinion that every community should be censoring racial slurs and epithets.

I have a very extensive censor list of multilingual vulgar and racial epithets if anyone needs a copy. Just e-mail me at steve at holodeckcorp dot com and use "Censor List" as your subject please.

I think that quality manners and ethics from admins and moderators brings forth quality conversation from your members. Act mature and you'll get mature. On my board I have no cersoring and no banning on any swear words, yet I rarely have any course language that rises above (or should I say "below") a "PG" rating.

If you allow immature, flame-happy, a-cussword-every-three-words hotheads to run your forums, you'll get more of the same from normal members.

And I agree that that racism should never be tolerated.

All depends on what you deem to be appropriate on your board. Some do, some don't.

But regardless, you need to be wary of what is being said on the board, and how your members feel about it, or your host for that matter...some material could possibly violate your TOS. Also keep in mind any COPPA members on your site.

I personally like to see people post as adults...but then again, not all of the users are adults, and not all that are adults act as one.




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Since my site is full of 18-25 year olds we get our fair share of "four letter words"

we do our best to instill in people that swearing should not be part of a post title

we even had to create a forum for "XXX" posts to keep the general areas free of nakedness

on my personal forums? i dont censor a thing. say what you want, when you want. you dont like me, or my momma? thats ok. thats you.

but thats what i want on my forums. i want free thinking, free expression. i want pure and complete honesty. "how do you feel about iran? or the spider-man movie? or gay marriage?" if users feel the need to express themselves using terms comfortable with them, so be it. but if other users feel the need to express to the original users their discontent in the said word, be ready for it.

but again, thats my boards.

on a different forum, like the dc comics message boards, i have a completely different set of rules. the forum is populated by tens of thousands of members, each with different backgrounds, age ranges, cultures, opinions, affiliations and interests. so, really, i have to be wary of everything.

every swear, every slur, and every controversial term i could think of is censored.

the general rule i use there is that anything allowed on network tv or the comics themselves is fine on the message boards. granted, thats a pretty big whole, as certain books DO feature some pretty nasty put downs. and, shows like 'the simpsons' are often pretty creative at sneaking in attacks. so, in those cases, it comes down to a judgement call.

Jon,

Everyone has given solid advice; I am going to add two thoughts to the list.

First, you have to do what you're comfortable with; second, it's completely w/in your rights to set the standards that you see fit.

IOW, if someone tosses the Freedom of Speech amendment at you, point out that this is a law that says we have the right to speak freely amongst our government. It doesn't apply to private entities.

I wouldn't tolerate racism, but I allow swearing as it's a car site with an age range of 20 to 40yr old mostly blokes drinking beer talking about cars!