I'm originally from Liverpool UK, so my wife says not.  ;>

And sorry, I don't think I made my response clear enough - as I was trying to explain, I had to guess at the problem, because your original post didn't give enough information - I hadn't seen whatever post it was that was moderated and I couldn't find it with a quick look about in the usual places.

The word itself (now I've worked out you were using the phonetic alphabet and not a frat house reference ! - as facemaker says some things don't traverse cultures well, though I should have picked it - I'm more familiar with the phonetic alphabet than the Greek alphabet which doesn't have a Sierra, though maybe they'll have it as a demonstration letter at some point in the future) ... on it's own, it doesn't worry me - mostly because with my background it's just another word for donkey.  :>

Though again without knowing the larger word it was part of, or the context, I'm still speaking hypothetically.

And again, again, as facemaker kindly points out, it's just an edit - we're not accusing you of any heinous crimes here.

having no idea which game this was used in, would it not  be taken care of  by having the  game in question be 'mature' ?

 depending  on who is reading, and what kind of  day they were having, you could  beat up almost everyone on this site, one time or another.

 But, If you stick an 'M' on your game and watch who you let in?..should be no problem.

I'd figured it was a public forum, not a game thread.

Actually, if it was moderated, then it probably wasn't in a game, but a public forum.  If it was in a game, then the issue needs to be taken to the GM, not to this forum.

And our rules are very clear on this - profanity is not permitted in posts in public forums (note that the level of profanity (mild, serious, or "you're going to burn in Hades for even thinking that word") is not specified).  Also... if a word is considered profanity (using a dictionary to check it), you will not get away with using it just because you don't consider it to be such.

Skald, Yeah...like I said, I do not know where it was used....in the end? its who it was used in the Public  forums?

 In any case, it is a Minor thing, and one needs only to use their head  when posting.

As someone who had done some moderating in other places, I wish to point out the various types of words that might be unacceptable in public forums here.  The swear words, usually related to one or another religion but used in a way not used in that religious context, the words referring to bodily functions not normally carried out in public, at least in polite society, and derogatory words referring to race, gender, religions etc.  And besides all these there are probably words that, as others have suggested, are acceptable in one language/culture, but not in others.  (the reason English is generally the only language to be used in public chat and forums on the site I moderate, so that no one is sneaking in unacceptable words that aren't recognized by some of the moderators - and yes, IIRC we did have someone try that)

In the end, the moderators have the final word, based on the directions jase has given them.  You'll make your life a lot easier if you just try to figure out the trigger words and avoid them, or replace them yourself with a fruit or pastry word.

Or just accept that it's not a big deal and go on. :-)

Personally, I love the people who fruit/dessert themselves.  It makes for a lot more amusing reading.

The moderators don't go 'OMG! THEY USED AN EVIL WORD! FIE! SHAME!' -- and at least in my case, I doubt that I even remember whose post was changed or anything beyond the fact that I might have changed 'a' post to fruit something out in the last day/week/month.

Only if it's a oft repeated case, or the word in question required a lot of thought to come up with a same-letter pastry' does it capture any real attention at all, and only the former has a negative appleociation.

for my part?. I would rather us explore unwanted posts on our Ad section, then nit picking over  certain words?

 If its in a Public forum..Admins  can delete it, send the person  a PM  saying.." hey  we deleted this"

 If its  in a game?...and one of your  Players complain. You might have to change your  style  or  cut the player..maybe both?

 This is the Best site I have been on since EZ-Boards  died  when they were hacked. We're all supposes to be doing this for fun...we shouldn't get over Officishish (sp)..over offended...or over  ignorant .

That's cute.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:35, Wed 27 Apr 2016.

You can currently have both.  If there are unwanted posts in the ad forums, please report them to us, via rMail, and we will deal with them appropriately.

Only you Americans use an alternative word for a donkey to mean your backside. Donkeys are traditionally stubborn. So the expression came about. Today I watched an episode of NCIS where a lady in her own home said she was going to the lady's room! I am sure her husband uses the same room. American programs have people going to the bathroom in public conveniences where there is no bath! I agree there should be no profanity or swearing in ordinary games, no overt sexual content. But banning evil donkey in the way
 it is normally expressed is having sex stupid.

In reply to Eber (msg # 18):

Um, there's plenty of English speakers who aren't American who use the other word for donkey to refer to your backside.  I've personally known people from England, Ireland, Australia, Wales, Russia, New Zealand, Romania and India who use the word that way...

I think they may be influenced by the American version, because here in the UK we don't spell it that way, we spell it like the word "parse" but with one letter missing ;).

   Speaking as someone who has run afoul of the mods, I personally enjoy and am amused by the "fruiting" method of dealing with improper language. Especially when it's not immediately obvious what the original word was and I have to try and figure it out. <grin>

Meanwhile while all heck breaks loose here, I'm just thinking up a plot to bring upon the grand "fruitening", where nothing but fruit dominates a post. I love you Rpol

In reply to Ameena (msg # 20):

I think that this american spelling was actually a way of claiming not to be saying what everyone knew one was. and the Slang euphemism became the common term.

There's actually a fascinating breakdown on all the word variations with apple as a stem word over on English Stack Exchange, including bad apple, big-apple, candy-apple, crazy-apple, dumb-apple, half-apple, jive-apple, lazy-apple, and smart-apple, along with musings on whether the word refers to donkeys or posteriors.  I didn't realize the usage was so recent.  It only dates back from the 1950s, and apparently originated in American English.

I suspect part of the lack of clarity with regards to referencing an animal or an anatomical feature my be due to it being a little of both.  Dumb-apple could very easily be a comparison to a dim-witted farm animal, while something like fat-apple is likely acommentary on a body part.  When you have the same word referring to two very different things, which then takes on a third usage as a common part of daily parlance, it's easy to get caught up in tracing origins of the third to oneof the first two, without considering the other.

And this is exactly why we don't have an automated profanity filter - because a Moderator can tell the difference between an ass (the animal) and an apple (the body part).

Would that schools could filter so intelligently. I still recall trying to look up woodpeckers on the Audubon Society site at work, to find out which one I was seeing outside my kitchen window every day. The school filter blocked the Audubon site for inappropriate content....

Fortunately, since I work in the library, I just went out and found the information in the Audubon book on the shelf. :)

Personally, I find the ‘profanity’ label for such words on this site to be amusing, though perhaps not harmlessly amusing. I abide by it because it’s the law of the site and I’m a law-abiding citizen - but it doesn’t stop me thinking that in this case the law is a donkey.

I was talking to a mild-mannered nine year old child only yesterday, and swearing came up in the conversation. He informed me that he thought the alternative to ‘dash it’ was quite appropriate for him to hear and use (and he did so) but he shouldn’t use the ‘f-bomb’ or the ‘c-word’ (the last two were his terms, not mine; I very appropriately introduced no new terminology to the conversation).

Evidently, then, since he is no tearaway, the existence of some of our coarsest language (and their euphemisms for when talking to adults) is well known to an average nine-year old and has not apparently resulted in the corruption and eternal dashnation (how far do we go with this silliness?) of his immortal soul. I would be very surprised if whatever he knows is not also shared with his seven year old brother.

Of course, I’m not for a moment advocating that we pepper our forums with the letters F, C and N, and I’m aware that our site is open to younger children than these  (though I cannot imagine why an under-seven would want to visit such a site in preference to the Disney Channel, nor why their parents would allow them to do so unaccompanied, nor why it should be our fault if they do...) but there are thousands, millions, of web sites and forums out there, readily and publicly accessible from Google, that include very coarse language, and they’re not shut down. (I assume this is the admins’ fear - if not, what is?) So what makes Rpol think it’s so special that it will be singled out for using an alternative for ‘donkey’, or another word for the underworld (sorry, am I allowed to say ‘underworld’?) I’m quite sure the internet thought police (such as they are) have much greater worries than closing down a gaming site for using an alternative term for ‘Richard Cranium’. Times have changed and, as someone up-thread pointed out, there is currently worse language on The Simpsons.

I can picture the scene now, where the censors are trying to get the closure order through the court:
“...And I suggest to you m’lud that these villains, these profiteers of this den of iniquity and depravity, did permit to be used a word which I shall not suffer myself to use in open court, but which (if Your Honour will allow) may alternatively be used to describe... ...a donkey! And furthermore, they did commit the heinous crime of permitting to be used the name of that terrible place where unclean souls are sent for eternal chastisement.

"Clearly, these nefarious individuals have no right to peddle such sordid language in a public forum where it may threaten the purity of our recklessly unsupervised children - children who go there in all innocence to vicariously slice the heads off werewolves and massacre fire-breathing lizard species to extinction.

“Your Honour, my colleagues and I must insist that the only righteous course of action that this court can take is to permanently and irrevocably shut down this despicable coven of filth and evil lest it spread its peculiar brand of depraved language across the internet!”

I shake my head.
In fact, I shake my whole body - in mirth.

On a more serious note, the use of mild bad language doesn’t worry me at all. What worries me far more is promoting the concept of a community which governs itself according to the strictures of its least-permissive members. IMO that is something from which our children really need protecting.

Actually you are dead wrong in your assumption.  We do not fear that the site would be shut down due to the presence of coarse language - if that were the case, then we would also ban it from games (which we don't).

However, just as you get to choose what constitutes acceptable behaviour in your own home (within the limits of the Law), we also reserve the right to decide what is acceptable on this privately owned site.  And that's it - not a legal concern, but the personal preference of the people who own and run the site, and allow other people to use it for free.

Please respect that preference.

Also bear in mind that we have members here from all over the globe.  What might be acceptable to a person from one country is not necessarily acceptable to somebody from another country.

I found the comments on what a child finds acceptable quite amusing.  Personally, I stopped acting like a nine year old, and accepting their judgement on how I should behave, a long time ago.


And another assumption which is wrong.  If it were actually the case that the community was governed by its least permissive members then profanity would not be permitted even in games, and there would be no adult games here, at all - many members of this community are actually far less permissive than the Admin and Moderators.

So you can stop worrying about that.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:04, Sat 18 June 2016.

Umm ... not sure what that says about the wider society we live in, given the censors gave the Deadpool movie an R rating ?  Obviously they failed to consult the average 9 year old ...  ;P

Frankly, I think it cuts down on the number of outright rude flameouts that could occur if there were no censorship. When people do get insulting, at least they have to stop and come up with a modicum of creativity in substituting their foul language for fruit. I find those at least moderately entertaining to read.

Well, I started to write some witty response, but then I just couldn’t be appled.

No matter what opinion I express, nothing’s going to change. Nobody’s going to have an epiphany about how repressed they’ve been and how, thanks to my illumination, they’ve suddenly discovered freedom of expression, so what’s the point? :)

Each to their own, eh? Like I said, it’s more of an amusement than an inconvenience for me - like watching people covering up table legs. While I’m in Rome I’ll keep speaking Latin. :)