Slashdot Mirror
Cleaning up Thunder Bluff
An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"
Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
We call it the ignore button. It...ignores people. And amazingly enough...it works!
If you want to control this problem, you will need moderation. That is simply the only way to achieve it. You can be just as offensive typing fvck as you can typing fuck, and it won't get caught by the majority of filters. And in terms of speech, well, why would you ever want to hear anyone who isn't on your team? And why would you want to play with a bunch of foulmouths unless you were one?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was just threatening to yank the impromptu slashdot chat room after a (literally) 12 year old chatter was getting out of hand. You know, I remember being a young teenager with loads of "hacking" scripts. I *don't* remember being so annoying about them.
:P
On the other hand, it's always funny when they fall for the "Alt-F4 to kickban" trick.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Seriously, when I group with people and they have vent or Team Speak I am not amazed that most of them do not have any relationship except with their mom upstairs. When my girlfriend comes on the microphone at least half the time they make lewd remarks. I am using a decent headset is there a way to filter out background noise or make it just broadcast my voice?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Gabe said it best.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
And it's the one that one of the people who commented on TFA proposed: do away with anonymity. Require the account holder's real name, address, and phone number to be publicly viewable. This would result in some real-world repercussions for the griefer, when those who had been griefed got torqued enough to go to the kid's house and beat him up. That happens a few times, and people will start being more careful.
This is not a good idea, of course, but it would solve the problem.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.
There was some show on HBO awhile back called DeadWoor (or something) basically set during thr gold rush era. My fiance and I watched one show and that was it. The language was so hrash and so often it took away from our enjoyment.
Now I am used to bad language woked many years in a Bar as a bouncer/bartender. But even that show was too much for me.
...But what the hell is this article about? One more iota of randomness and the summary could be used as an entropy bucket for a PRNG.
Bot Assisted Blogging
But Thunder Bluff is full of easy-going Tauren. I mean, I've had people moo at me rudely, but I wouldn't call them "racist junk-monkeys". I'm sick of people stereotyping Tauren! First it's "Tauren are stupid cows" and "Tauren aren't allowed in my house because they'll break the china". Now it's "Tauren are racists". When will it all end...
-William Brendel
If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.
Try Settlers of Catan or Uno on Live, i guess they are too boring for the teeners every game I have played so far has been civil and even pleasant.
It would be nice to play a game against my nephew (the only person I know with an unhacked 360) without having to worry about colorful metaphors. Yes I know its nothing he hasnt heard before and its probably more distubing to me than him, but for grown-ups live is almost unusable for 90% of the games out there.
While I hate censorship, I do wish Xbox Live had some sort of rating system for games with a reporting structure for violators. I think it would work, they could still allow free-for-all matchups that let the explicatives fly, just allow an easy way to designate gamers that dont want to hear it. Maybe an icon on the gamertag? It just looks like there should be some way to do it that allows freedom for both people who want to hear 12 year olds cuss and those that dont.
I think you mean Barrens General.
Please understand that I curse all the time in real-life, play on PvP servers without problem (e.g. shadowbane), and so on.
That said, they really should ban people who curse in public chat (no, guild chat is not "public"). Someone who gets banned a few times for cursing ends up with a perma-ban.
Again, I curse in real-life. But I see no positive reason to allow cursing in general chat channels.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Just leave gerneral chat when riding through the barrens, problem fixed.
I like the idea of online gaming being the "Wild West". It is one of the few frontiers left and I, for one, don't want it changed.
A Slashdot thread without a flawed analogy is like a frozen fishstick without a train conductor. - Odin's Raven
I completely understand that people are offended by foul language, but I don't understand why. The only reason I see for people to take offense is that it's learned behavior- i.e. "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should."
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I must say, I was disappointed. I hate running around Thunder Bluff trying to find anything, and I'd love to see it cleaned up. And I've only played Tauren.
Seriously though, I play on a RP server, just so I don't have to deal with idiotic crap. Sure, we get plenty of dumb drama that keeps my playtime to less than 8 hours a month anymore. I do wonder, if the novelty of race-baiting and idiocy would be better than the age-old drudgery of dealing with tiny little egos crying to me about other tiny little egos crying to me. Word of advice, don't ever run a massive guild, don't ever sit on a playtest team, don't ever be friends with a successful and popular guild leader. If you do, you aren't playing a game any longer.
The problem is a lack of real-world accountability.
If someone were to act in real life the way some of those idiots act online, they'd get punched in the face pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there's no way to punch someone in the face over the net.
[Note: Ironic Sarcasm?]
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
"Just words"? Language is the core of human culture. Language affects emotion, if it didn't literature, poetry, song--these things would be pretty much pointless. If language can create positive emotions, why is it so hard to believe it can create negative ones?
Plus I love the English language. If you have to put profanity in every sentence, you're doing a lousy job of speaking it, and that annoys me. It's like watching someone drive a ferrari without knowing how to shift; it makes me wince.
This is a slippery slope. I don't know what server she is on but in WoW i'm on Magtheridon (US), Hyjal, and Whisperwind. I don't find the chatter on any of these servers very offensive. In fact, I find the chat to be quite tame in all of those aformentioned servers. Maybe this particular individual is cursed with being on a bad server. So, please, take advantage of Blizzard's for-pay services and transfer to a different server, or complain enough and get a free transfer. Even Barrens chat on Magtheridon isn't too bad. Chuck Norris jokes and Skullflame Shield links aside...
Moderating chat in an MMO environment would undercut Blizzard's bottom line a little, and that would most likely make them raise subscription fees. I'm also of the opinion that there is a block\ignore button, and a profanity filter, as well as the ability to leave General Chat, Trade etc. Really, I think what it comes down to is that Blizzard provides the user with the necessary tools, the user just needs to take advantage of those tools. Personally, nothing interesting happens in General chat anyway. This is why I personally gravitate toward a guild. Guilds are a more moderated environment in any case; you can bring guild complaints to the GM and hopefully they're a good person and they do something about it.
This issue doesn't ultimately have a solution, though, I don't think. Not a practical easily-enacted one, at any rate. You can put band-aids on the problem, you can assign moderators up the yin yang if you want, but it's the kids attitudes that need to be changed, not the game. When you're bringing up an issue like this you shouldn't be lambasting the game and blaming Blizzard, you should probably be looking at more of a widespread problem that seems to be a serious problem in America today: Parenting, and Big Brother. Letting a game teach your kids, letting snotty potty mouthed 12 year olds that need REAL parents teach your kids, and expecting the government or some sort of regulation to fix your own lack of parenting skills is not an excuse.
Um... you mean Deadwood?
Make a juried legal system part of the game. Let people press charges and sue people, in game. Conviction could mean anything from confiscation of in game resources through "imprisonment" of your avatar, all the way to the "death penalty" of losing your account. Heck, make people pay a month's deposit which is forfeit if you are convicted. Sure, people would try to game the system, but people have been trying to game legal systems since they were invented, I think we know ways to protect against that by now.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
General rule: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Therefore: If 'poo' isn't offensive to you, and 'shit' is equivalent to 'poo', then 'shit' should not be offensive to you. There is no inherent property in words which makes them 'bad'. If there is a euphamism or generally accepted substitute for the 'bad word', then it is not really bad. Check your premise, 'offended' people.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Oh ya that's it. As I said watched it only once...
Since we're using "Cleaning up Thunder Bluff" as the subject, I'll assume that most of this is directed at the text seen in World of Warcraft. Here are a couple of things you can do to prevent seeing things that might be offensive:
- Use the profanity filter. This will block out the most offensive words that you may come across in chat.
- Put them on your ignore list. I know that there's a limited number of people you can put on the ignore list, but if one person's irritating you enough, put them there.
- Leave general chat. You can always rejoin it at a later time.
- Finally, you can report someone that's being excessively rude and using slurs. Bans are usually temporary, but they can get the point across. Too many temporary bans will result in a permanent one.
Of course, these are the options that are present in WoW, I can only assume that other MMOs have similar steps. YMMV.
On behalf of the Taurahe people, I for one am highly offended at the implication that our peaceful, majestic city in the clouds needs cleaning up. Our Bluffwatchers are some of the most efficient custodians I have ever seen, and our program to recycle waste products into compost to aid in Arch Druid Runetotem's morrorwgrain research sets an example for capital cities across Azeroth.
/spit on all rogues, both Alliance and Horde, would be acceptable.
Despite our bovine nature, and its accompanying production of large piles of waste product, we boast of the cleanest cities on Azeroth or Outlands, free from the usual blight of urban sprawl, like the putrid sewers of Undercity, the molten magma "waste processing" of Ironforge, or the dumbasses in Stormwind who let a dragon take over the city just because she could shapeshift into a "hawt bb." Meanwhile, we have continued to maintain a healthy tourism industry, and, unlike our druidic friends in Darnassus, people actually go to Thunder Bluff on purpose, not just because their cat hit the mouse and they were trying to go to Winterspring to farm.
In summary, I expect a full apology to be delivered to Cairne by the end of the week. Reparations in the form of well chewed grass, some decent low level balance druid armor, or a free pass to
Celticow
(Azjol-Nerub)
Make people pay a nominal fee to join. To do that, they'll need a real name and contact information. If Johnny the moronic, racist, foul-mouthed 14 year old gets on and breaks the ToS for spewing more racist filth than a 1940s klan rally, blacklist him for a while. Yes, blacklist him as in ban him from that game, and every game the publisher makes for several years. Go one step better and share the list between publishers. Ohhhh little Johnny want to play Halo 3? Too bad, you shouldn't have been acting like a racist fucktard in World of Warcraft.
Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...
I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.
It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.
So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.
In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
No I don't think that's it.
my 2 cents:
I think when you have a situation where swearing is appropriate to the movie/show/etc then it works. When it just seems to use it after every other word I think it shows a lack of imagination on the writers part. I need a verb...fuck...I need a name...fuck...I need a subject...fuck. Ya know? A lot of swearing in DeadWood just seemed out of place and ruined the actual conversations..
Granted I'm sure there are kids who are decent and fun to play online with. I'm talking about the vast majority though. This crap doesn't just happen online. The online factor is only spreading it to the masses. And souring many of the older generations online enjoyment.
As for WoW and all the rest it would be nice to see some features that allow you a global ignore list so regardless of which character you're playing or the asshat is playing they're still /ignored. GuildWars is one of the only MMOs I know of with a feature like this.
This new generation needs to learn some respect. Without it our future is screwed.
~Vexed and loving it!
One of the things I've noticed as I've gotten older (I'm 24 now) and worked in an office environment is the natural tendency for people to be civil towards each other. There's some petty politics, sure, but this common courtesy is what keeps a collection of strangers (ie, society) together. It's instinctual, but can break down when one is granted anonymity. Teenagers just aren't like this. Some of the things I said - and were said to me - in high school really were pretty fucking mean. Most adults in the real world wouldn't last a second if they talked that way to each other and it's still hard for us to believe that kids say such graphic stuff to other kids' faces. Did some of you have similar experiences? Younger people just don't have the verbal restraint and consequences instinct that older folks do, so they have no reason not to spew the garbage that goes through their minds. If I'd had a large forum like an MMOG to be offensive when I was 15 I probably would have done the same thing; instead, all I had were aol chat rooms. Teenagers just don't have the same social wiring as adults do, and we're used to interacting with obnoxious teens on our terms... and it's alarming to journey into their world where civilized behavior isn't compulsory. I don't think the answer is more authority. When have teenagers ever responded well to that? They'll grow out of it eventually.
...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.
What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.
You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Not to feed the flamebait, but he's right. If you don't like it, leave the channel.
The people who wish the internet was a sweet world of marshmallow fluff are doomed to perpetual disappointment; too much of our racial Freudian Id is floating around out there, and plenty of otherwise normal people can be complete dicks online. You just gotta learn to live with it, or keep playing neopets.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Well said.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I've never experienced anything remotely like that anywhere in WoW. Not even close. The most offensive things I've seen are the chuck norriss jokes in the barrens. While they're annoying, it's a stretch to find them offensive.
Step one is to take the problem seriously. A lot of people don't. "Sticks and stones may break my bones" most properly ends with "but words can sear my soul." That one stupid saying (in its original form) has probably done more damage than good.
Step two is to create some sort of social mechanism. My suggestion, which I haven't seen yet, is a sort of social network where you can indicate which players you like to play with and which you don't, and automated match-making software will help you hook up with people who have similar "tastes" in people. Thus, you don't have to "ban" the fucktards, you just let the system naturally put them together, where they can be immature at each other all they want (and continue paying subscription fees), whereas other gamers naturally gravitate towards people who want to play more like them. I don't know of anything that works this way; closest I've seen is ways to get some people "banned".
(It'd take some thought to make the system resistant to attacks, but to a first approximation, if you simply weight "I don't like this user" significantly higher than "I like them", then even a massive coordinated attack by the fucktards to "like" people won't work.)
Thanks :) I replied to you because you were the only voice of reason I saw ITT. I've been saying this for years, and for some reason (learned social behaviour is my guess) not many people seem to get it. Mostly, I get responses along the lines of, "Yeah, well....those words are just bad. You just have to accept it." To which I reply, "No."
http://xkcd.com/386/
It could be very workable in a MMORPG, though. Tagging someone with one "asshole" point could cost your avatar 5 points. Points could diminish at a rate of 1 per hour in-game. Anyone accumulating more than 25 points has an automatic 3 day suspension (or other punishment) applied to their account.
Yeah, it could be abused somewhat, but your gang of 25 griefers could punt a total of 5 people before needing to take a break.
User based moderation, with an attached cost.
I'm just curious here: would your reaction have been the same if they used 'darn' or 'golly' (or 'blankety' or 'ted' or 'um') instead of whatever they used? If you answered 'yes', then your point holds up. If you answered 'no', then you're a victim of learned behaviour. Not trying to be critical, but it is EXTREMELY difficult to change your perspective enough to see unconsciously learned behaviour.
http://xkcd.com/386/
My example is old, but with Battle.net for Diablo 2, anyone you squelch/ignore/block is only temporary. Next time you log in it's reset.
I haven't played that "soft crack" in a couple years (ok, not online...). Nor have I graduated to the "hard crack" known as WoW.
Perhaps the properties are not inherent to the words, but they are present nonetheless. Language has nuance, and its important. We let words have subtle shades so that we can use them to show what kind of person we are, what kind of mood we are in, who we are addressing, or what kind of reaction we want. Bang, Fuck, Screw, Make Love, Do it, Have Sex all mean the same basic thing, but they each have a more subtle meaning and people choose which word they use based on how they feel and what they want to communicate.
This isn't stupid, its important. I like that I can have one word to tell my daughter that she did a good job going poo, and another word to tell a coworker that his work looks like shit. Having a wide range of words with different positive and negative connotations lets me communicate more effectively.
If you want to argue that people shouldn't be so easily and deeply offended, go for it. But don't for a second think that all words with similar definitions should be equal.
Check your premise, it's double plus un good.
I would agree with you if it were concepts we were discussing here. However, it isn't the concepts that people object to. It's the words themselves. Every 'bad' word has several if not many socially acceptable analogues. How do you explain this?
http://xkcd.com/386/
Choose you servers more carefully.
For example, I play COD2 exclusively. I belong to a online gaming "clan" that hosts this game and a number of others (BF2, BF2142, UO). In support of these games, we maintain game servers, a Vent voice chat server, forums, and a public website. Our overall philosophy is to provide an environment for fun and cheat-free play. We do not allow in-game typed profanity or harassment of other players. As far as voice chat goes, we only allow profanity in our 16 and older Vent channels. All other channels are rated G. Also, regardless of what channel you are in, harassment (sexist, racial, or otherwise) is NEVER tolerated. How do we manage it? Mature RCONs and Vent channel admins...who are on most of the time and available via IM, email, and phone when necessary.
Are we unique? Not at all. There are many mature groups of players who have banded together to form such positive playing environments.
If you are stuck on a Blizzard server, my sympathies.
Sure, a civilized community sounds nice, but who decides what is civilized? If we limit people to one person's opinion of propriety, many others will feel needlessly limited by it. One solution is to let everyone say what they want without filters, a radical idea called freedom of speech. The other is to eliminate communication altogether. Then again, if you do that, it's not really a community anymore, is it? As others have suggested, I recommend the "/ignore" command. It can work wonders.
We have to spend cycles worrying about childish behaviour on the internet? Last I checked, we* were in a war, poverty is killing people in "the greatest country in the world", oppression is rampant throughout much of the world...but hey, fuck all that. Let's worry about the language people in a FUCKING GAME use. Sounds more important to me.
*yes, I'm from the U.S. If you aren't, replace "we were" with "America is" and go on about your day. Thanks.
http://xkcd.com/386/
STFU nub, lolz, wtf luzer, kthxbye!!!1!
All joking aside (yes, I meant that humorously), you pretty much have to deal with it. Use ignore. Report offenders. Don't play. Quit the game and make sure you let them know you're leaving because they don't enforce their own policies. Make a guild of tattle-tales. Make up your mind to ignore it and not let it bother you, instead of letting it dominate your game experience.
... named Anonymous:
If you don't like the language or behavior of the people playing... go play something else? Or, leave the general chat. Or, only talk to people in your guild. Or, go play a RP server (blocking the griefing nubs who bother you when their server is down).
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Can you please point out to me what distinguishes the 'good'-nuanced words from the 'bad'-nuanced ones? I'm not rejecting your assertion that nuance is important, I'm rejecting the theory that some words are 'bad' when they have 'non-bad' equivalents. I agree with you that certain connotations are more important in certain situations. However, that doesn't explain why words with extremely similar connotations ("crap" and "shit", for example) aren't similarly viewed by society. Who decided which words are 'bad' and which ones are 'acceptable'? What was the criteria? My premise is fine. As to why not just use 'poo' all the time, I would have no problem with that. I didn't bring my personal choices into the discussion because I don't see why they're relevant. We aren't talking about my habits, after all, we're talking about societal conventions.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Depends really. If they used golly once in a blue moon I'd be fine, it they used it as often as the work fuck ya I wouldn't watch it. it wasn't the word by itself which caused me to turn it off more of using in such a manner which detracted from the overall enjoyment of the show
I'd rather have a show with swearing and good writing vs. swearing and bad writing or no swearing and bad writing
What you say is true but you twist it in a profoundly stupid way.
To say that being offended by foul language is a learned behavior is obviously the case, but you present it as though only childish people would let a learned behavior influence them. The statement "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should." is obviously meant to belittle people who have learned that offensive language is offensive.
My question is what in life isn't learned? Did you pop out of your mom and look at the sky and say "hey that's what the color blue looks like"? Chances are you look at blue objects and know they are blue because your "mommy and daddy" told you they are. WOW what a loser to grow up and be confined by some learned behavior!
The reason people are offended by offensive language (i know it sounds simple when stated like that but i'll continue to explain in case it's still not clear) is because when people are learning the language they speak, they learn that when people say certain things they are trying to be... wait for it... offensive. What purpose does the word fuck have in the English language other than to be offensive? It can add meaning to a phrase but because of the way it has been defined in our language (as an obscenity) it adds that meaning in an offensive manner. Is it so unreasonable that someone gets offended by an offensive word?
I can understand not wanting it to be offensive, but since the word first appeared around the 1500s and has been considered obscene since then i doubt you'll have much luck getting it changed.
Also for all those who get upset that crap isn't obscene while shit is. Is it really so amazing that the language has a non obscene way of saying the same thing? Saying "I had sex with my wife" is not nearly as vulgar as saying "I fucked my wife" yet people take issue that "ah crap" is seen as not vulgar while "holy shit" is. Sorry but it's the way language works. There are different ways of conveying information and emotions and the fact that there are two different words that covey the same meaning but different emotions is a good thing, get over it (though they are much better ways of expressing yourself than using words like crap all the time).
I'm guessing you have no appreciation for poetry. Language isn't simple arithmetic.
a is sort of like b, and b is sort of like c, and a well its sort of like c too. They aren't equivalent. Even if they both refer to the same steaming turd on the kitchen floor.
'poo' doesn't equal 'shit' doesn't equal 'turd' doesn't equal 'feces'...
Words have all sorts of associative baggage, nuance, and other elements. If you choose to use a euphemism, that choice is carried along with the sentence, and adds nuance to it. Even contractions; if someone says "do not" vs "don't" there can be nuance and meaning inherent in that choice. Perhaps they wished to emphasize 'not'. Or perhaps the extra syllable shifts how the sentence is balanced.
In a language where mere inflection or the placement of a pause can change the intended meaning of an entire sentence, or even invert its meaning, the suggestion that different words are simply equivalent is sheer idiocy.
Do you expect newcomers to /ignore 2 of the 3 hours they play?
You can't autoboot someone who is on X ammount of ignore lists. It'd make for some serious DoS potential.
Even on ignore people can still find a multitude of ways to be annoying.
The only sure way to assure the user community of nice and polite players is to have a RL mobile unit in each city that will personally visit the basement of the annoying troll and give him a nice and polite looking over with an aluminum baseball bat.
It certainly would ruin it for me. Using any word excessively just because you like how it sounds is aggravating. Case in point: my roommate a few years back just got his first honest-to-goodness girlfriend. He was happy. Good for him and all that. Unfortunately, due to watching too many TV shows or something, he insisted on calling her "baby" as often as possible. It didn't even sound natural as he always found some way to force it into the conversation. Conversations generally went along the lines of:
"Hey Baby whats up? Baby are you watching TV again Baby? Baby, I need to get a better TV for you Baby. Then, Baby, we can watch all the shows that you want to together Baby. Baby, Baby, you don't want an SDTV Baby. Trust me Baby, HDTV is the way to go Baby.".
Twenty minutes of that and I was ready to start searching for ways to hide a body. Apparently she found it annoying too though - it didn't last very long.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I personally do not want filters of any sort on the game as they hinder the communication that goes on between people. These are just words they can not hurt you at the very worst you are going to be offended but guess what... What you may find offensive I may find humorous and what you find humorous may be offensive to me.
For me, it's not that the internet isn't all nice (I accept and, sometimes, enjoy the hell out of that ;)), its just that I would like to be able to play a FPS online without being called a fag (or worse) by some 12yo.
The new Live rating system helps but, more times then not, I find myself in a room with "Capt. Shouty and Team Tourette's!". The only solution I've found is removing the headset.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Are you honestly saying that following a learned behavior is bad? When you say that you are "a victim" of your learning it sounds like you are. The alternatives to learned behavior is either knowing everything you know from the start of your existence, or acting on pure instincts. Either way if you are saying you are not a "victim" of learned behaviors then you would be a very interesting case study.
The sad part is how little developers and the various people involved do to prevent all the hating and racist crap in online gaming. I report the racists and such on XBL, does it do anything? I've no idea and I have my doubts based on how often I run into those folks. Could they stop it altogether? Probably not, but few seem to even try to do anything about it. I also would like to see some sort of system where you could choose to join games where people are just looking to have a good time without the childish trash talk, cursing at each other, racism and such. Some of my best gaming experiences are when you just get a bunch of folks together and everyone has fun together and we all enjoy the game and laugh together when something funny happens. On the other hand I avoid some games and playing online at times because of the pervasive jerk culture that has developed there.
I'm not saying that the meaning is exactly the same. It depends on your level of precision. 1.1 != 1 unless you're only expressing it to the nearest whole number. Think of it this way: "shit" = 1.0000000. "crap" = 1.0001. At the level of granularity that makes most sense for the discussion, they are equivalent. If you go deeper, they are different. This is just a rough description since I didn't expect anyone (especially someone so attuned to nuance) to miss this point.
I'm just saying that it makes no sense at all to take a concept with 500 ways of expressing said concept and then say that ONE of those ways is unacceptable.
Please provide me with an explanation for this and I'll concede the point. We have a ton of differently-nuanced words for "no", but we don't arbitrarily label one of them 'bad'. Why not? There are plenty of different ways of saying 'mad' or 'happy' or 'rain' but none of them are labelled 'bad'. Why not? Who chose which concepts would have 'bad' synonyms and which of those synonyms would be 'bad'? What, exactly, differentiates the 'bad' word from the acceptable versions?
I really don't see why I'm getting personally attacked for this. Why would you conclude that I can't appreciate poetry? I must be a moron because I enojy logic and reason? Or logical, reasonable people aren't capable of understanding poetry? What?
http://xkcd.com/386/
Welcome to society where we learn from a young age how to interact with each other.
Are you honestly saying that following a learned behavior is bad? When you say that you are "a victim" of your learning it sounds like you are. The alternatives to learned behavior is either knowing everything you know from the start of your existence, or acting on pure instincts. Either way if you are saying you are not a "victim" of learned behaviors then you would be a very interesting case study.
Are you honestly saying that all learned behaviour is good?
In this case, I believe that the particular example I gave of learned behaviour IS bad. Not in every case. I said 'a victim' because in this case, I believe learned behaviour to be harmful. Please note that this does not mean that I think all learned behaviour is bad, nor did I expect anyone to come to that conclusion.
http://xkcd.com/386/
This problem has been solved elsewhere. I used to spend a lot of time working in video production and in the theater; in 90% of theaters and studios, they use a headset intercom system made by ClearCom. It's a pretty simple "party line" (or sometimes 2 channel) system, where everybody has a headset and a belt pack, with a PTT switch. The PTT can also be locked on, if you need hands-free operation.
However, the designers realized that letting people lock on their mics could get pretty annoying in a hurry, for exactly the reasons you mentioned -- everybody else on the circuit doesn't need to hear you breathing, swallowing, talking to people not on the 'com, etc.
So they have a feature where the person at the master console can hit a button, and 'unlock' everyone's mics that are locked on. The way this is done is actually a pretty neat use of analog electronics, but it's not really relevant. The point is that the PTT-lock is a "soft lock" (the button doesn't lock down mechanically or anything), so it can be remotely unset. So that way if the person at the master console needs to break in, or just gets tired of hearing you breathe into your mic, they can just hit the button and shut you up (at least long enough to reach down and hit the button again).
Seems like this would be a good feature for video games that feature a team 'com, because essentially they're doing the same things as ClearComs in a production studio. You'd have a team leader, and they'd have the capability of unhooking people's stuck mics if they started yelling at their mom.
The only hardware change is that you have to have the PTT switch as a separate control line, rather than as part of the audio feed. (You have to have separate "headphone out," "mic in," and "PTT" lines, like most 2-way radios, rather than just "headphone" and "mic," with the PTT switch installed in the mic line.) This allows the mic keying to be done in the console, rather than in the headset -- which is really where it should be, even on a full-duplex connection. Also, it would let you actually use the PTT switch as more than just a switch for your own mic; you could set it up so that a quick double-tap of the PTT by the person in charge would unset other people's mics, and/or you could put the PTT switch any place you wanted, not just on your headset. (You could use it via a footswitch, or on your controller, or any other place you wanted.)
Anyway, 'teamspeak' and other systems are relatively new in the video game world, but the problems you're describing aren't new or very unique; they're all solved issues in other mediums, and hopefully someone in the video-game world will eventually take a look at some of those other systems and borrow the solutions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Great points. It's the intent that matters, as well as the words chosen.
;))
;)) goes a long way towards keeping the frustration level low in my WoW time.
If I'm in a game, and someone starts calling me gay, or a Jew, or a pig-[bleep]ing-[bleep]er, I know that they want to insult me, etc. Many times, I feel it's inappropriate. Saying someone is unskilled, or whatnot, can be done without reverting to profanity.
Also, for parents of young children, we'd rather they not hear profanity and use it in everyday conversation. I'd rather my kids didn't ask me, "Daddy, what's a hoe-biscuit?", just as I'd rather they didn't moon their teachers.
Do I accept some cursing? Of course. When bad things happen, my raid leaders curse in voice-chat, or when I get frutrated I will curse also. I do NOT, however, broadcast that over voice chat or in-game chat (unless I'm *very* frustrated, and even then I try not to).
I prefer that my gaming nights not consist of people calling each other homos, faggots, douchebags, or various racial slurs; nor would I like to hear them filled with a nonstop parroting of the F word. I can listen to rap music for that, and choose not to. This is the main reason that I never could stomache playing on public Counterstrike servers. (I can accept that I suck as a player -- and played for a long time on a server where I was not the best by a LONG shot, yet where the atmosphere was mature and people were banned for cursing. (I even got one for typo-ing "shotgun" as "shitgnu".
Muting general chat (and trade
Quite true. The flaw in your logic is quite simply that for most people "shit" is not equivalent to "poo". The two words have different semantic ranges, and while both of them include "faeces" as a core meaning, it is nonsensical to suggest that the English language has somehow managed to accumulate such massive redundancy that we have dozens of words that are totally interchangeable.
They are equivalent enough to be synonyms.
From Dictionary.com:
Synonym
1. a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another in the language, as joyful, elated, glad.
2. a word or expression accepted as another name for something, as Arcadia for pastoral simplicity; metonym.
If it were just nuance that made words bad, then there would be more than ONE 'bad' word per concept. What I am against is the arbitrariness that makes ONE way of expressing a concept "bad" simply because of the choice of letters used to spell the word which indicates that concept. Therefore, I understand your point but I think you're getting WAYYYYYYYY too into particulars here, and you still haven't provided anything to differentiate one synonym from another in such a way that one should be proscribed while another should not.
http://xkcd.com/386/
whether you like it or not.
...
Just as my Care Bear guild leader Kehrbehr will get a group of Druid Taureans to dance as bears whenever it pleases him.
Just use Ignore. I'm far more concerned with Gold Spamming, quite frankly
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fair enough. What you said represents a logical, reasoned position. That is something which none of the fanatical 'anti-cussing' people can seem to provide.
http://xkcd.com/386/
1) As others mentioned, leave general chat. This should resolve close to 90% of the problems.
2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity.
3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears.
4) If people are being offensive, report it to the Moderators (or whatever your game calls them). I do not think an MMO exists where there are not moderators of some form. Most of them are willing to help and will resolve issues like this, if you present the issues in a calm and reasonable manner.
Now, you can almost forget everyone suddenly changing their ways, and unfortunately there isn't much you can do to force them to change. While people can be muted or temporarily banned, you will almost never get permanent removal unless you blatantly violent the EULA. Short of making threats or committing some sort of illegal act, they will probably return. The best you can do is limit exposure using the tools provided by the game. It is not the best solution, but if the people acting like total idiots find out they are without any friends and that no one wants to play with them, perhaps they will finally leave. (Though, that may also be wishful thinking.)
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
But if you had an auto-ban feature on WoW where if you get 10 ban requests from ten different people in a small enough amount of time you'll automatically get kicked.
/2, /3) other than Party Chat (/p) and Guild Chat (/g) for 72 hours. Parties (/p) are only 5 people and Guilds can always demote you to a level not able to post to Guild Chat, so those are self-regulating.
A better auto-ban is if you curse and swear and 10 total people report you in a 72 hour period, you lose the ability to post to Chat (/1,
One guild I was in, Femme Fatale, had to kick a n00b who cursed all the time. Guild chat is used a lot in that guild, so it just became too much. It was a guy, of course.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Long before WoW brought the graphical MMO into the limelight, text MUDs were doing the same thing with no pictures. They're still around, and in my experience tend to attract far fewer of the people TFA complains of. When the user interface forces you to use words and words only, the kiddies/spambots/racist losers usually get bored very quickly and leave.
Not to say that griefing doesn't happen--it just tends to happen in complete, coherent sentences.:)
Jesus. That's the dumbest argument I've heard all day, and I've just come from the WoW forums. The idea that the words "shit" and "poo" are linguistically equal is just mind-boggling to me. "Shit" is not equivalent to "poo". "Shit" is more vulgar. It's vulgarity is what makes it different! Our language allows us to speak in varying degrees of politeness and formality depending on the situation. A word may not be intrinsically "bad", at least in the moral sense, but it can certainly be impolite or rude. As a matter of fact, the presence of a euphemism of substitute for a word is a great indication that it might not be appropriate for all audiences.
I love to swear as much as the next guy, but you're overlooking a great deal of the richness of our language if you think swear words are interchangeable with their less offensive brethren. There is a time and a place for both. Let's not pretend otherwise.
For a second I thought this article was going to be about improving child safety around Thunder Bluff. As it has been observed the reason you don't see many Tauren children around is because they all keep falling off Thunder Bluff to their deaths. More railing around Thunder Bluff would alleviate this serious World of Warcraft issue.
I think maybe the article would have made better use of an appropriate game reference...like "Cleaning up the The Barrens".
Nobody hangs around Thunder Bluff long enough to needing "clean up".
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Actually, I was listening to a historian on NPR talk about Deadwood, and he assured us all that, despite the "wince-effect" it has on modern ears, folks in that era and location actually spoke that way. We had that same reaction as you did when we first started watching, but it eventually sounded no stranger than listening to Shakepeare's plays - a little odd at first, then you just adjust.
Too bad you stopped watching - it was an incredibly good series while it lasted.
We can't help it if our older population doesn't drop their bovine excrement where it belongs.
As Taurens get older, they lose control.
How silly would a Tauren wearing a diaper look?
It's harmful because it's arbitrary and it teaches poor critical thinking skills. There is no reason for why the particular words which society labels 'unacceptable' are so labelled. If there was logic behind it I wouldn't think it harmful. If the CONCEPTS were labelled bad I would understand it. But they are not. It is perfectly acceptable to express an idea using certain words, but unacceptable to express it with 'bad' words. That is nonsensical and that is why I believe it to be harmful.
http://xkcd.com/386/
i believe this is utterly appropriate at this time.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
In practice, I've found that the best way to minimize the amount of 'negative energy' that you encounter in-game is to simply roll your character on a role play server. All of the teenie-boppers and frat boys who seem to live to spew bile and idiocy avoid these servers like the plague*. People are more polite and more helpful -- even the teenagers. Overall it's a night-and-day experience. The best part? Unless you're in an RP guild, nobody really cares if you role-play or not!
/ignore a much more reasonable tool, and you just won't run into them as much. Even Barrens chat is mostly tolerable, if you can believe that. Highly recommended.
It's not completely devoid of idiots, and no they generally will not be banned from the server for being idiots. However the greatly reduced volume makes
* I guess the theory is that in order to not feel like the giant dorks that they are for playing WoW they need to find an ever bigger dork to feel superior to. Whatever keeps them away, I say.
The enemies of Democracy are
Otherwise does "look a the fucking snow" mean the same as "observe the snow, it fornicates" or "gee, there's sure a bunch of snow out there" or "there's too much snow out there for me to get to my car?"?
Newsflash: Civility on the 'net in games died in the mid 90's. Once the "user-friendly" bar reached a certain point where any dumb schmuck could play, dumb schmucks started playing. There were asshats before, sure, but the ratios were way different.
As for stopping profanity...well, good luck with that. Your only hope is to mask it from delicate eyes on your end, because humans have this thing about swearing to express strong emotions of certain types.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
Please explain the difference between 'look at the fucking snow' and 'look at the freaking snow' other than that you can say one on t.v. and not the other. I'm not looking for how each makes you feel, either, as your feelings are irrelevant to the fundamental meaning of the sentence, considering that your feelings may not be shared by others. I'm looking for a concrete, logical difference.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I more or less agree with you, but just want to point out something. I don't think any word by itself is bad, nor can it ever be bad. A word is just a word, it's a building block to express a concept. What could be seen as bad is the underlying concept and as such the way certain words are used in sentences, or how certain sentences are used could be construed as bad. For instance, I could say "When people resort to personal attacks against someone in an attempt to defend their position, that's a really shitty thing to do" and that would be an acceptable thing because it conveys accurately my feeling on a topic in a effective manner, and the concept is not objectionable. If on the other hand I said "All these people are full of shit" that would be unacceptable because the concept is without merit. It wasn't he use of the word shit that made either one acceptable or not, but the intent behind it. This is the concept everyone seems to be so completely incapable of grasping. Saying fuck after something bad has happened and your upset is perfectly fine, you're expressing your opinion, and if others don't care to listen to your opinion then they can ignore you, or avoid you. Putting an outright ban on the use of the word fuck however is totally missing the point.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
...That will work, but nobody will like. Dispense with anonymity, use people's full names. The most civil forum I post on uses this rule.
Good point.
http://xkcd.com/386/
From an Internet long, long ago ...
Chapter One of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life, 1998.
(First published in somewhat different form in The Village Voice, December 1993.)
Call me Dr. Bombay.
Mr. Bungle was a problem.
"They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room -- right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace -- of a house I came later to think of as my second home."
It's an object lesson.
If they start "meowing", well, it's time to leave.
http://gandalf.home.digital.net/trollfaq.html
~hylas
That's oversimplifying things a bit. It is learned behaviour, but not because "mommy and daddy" told us to dislike those words (nice patronizing there, dude). Those words happen to be associated with anger, malice, frustration, simply because that's what *everyone* intends them to mean. Due to that, there is a knee-jerk apprehensive reaction even just from hearing that same word. Nothing wrong with that, just how we all (even you) work. And I, personally, would rather not have that reaction invoked unless it is actually necessary. I appreciate swearing when I am upset, because it relieves the tension; but abusing foul language is simply annoying and devaluing its "proper" use.
Not a perfect comparison, but imagine if everyone kept saying "murder, rape, murder" in casual conversation online?
Anyway, kids swear exactly because their mommy and daddy told them not to. But that's just how kids work anyway. There should be just a "skill testing question" or a 18+ age requirement for the game, that's it. Not that the real solution would be that simple either.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
America's Army still has the best solution. Their in-game implementation of the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. They just put griefers in a barred cell from which there is no escape, and keep them there for a while. There's nothing to do in the cell, except peer out the little barred window and watch the sun go down.
Venn diagrams, learn about them back in the day? They are synonyms because they have the same meaning in some contexts. For instance, their dictionary meanings are very similar. We call this denotation, because we explicitly state the meaning.
But there are also connotations, which are the "unsaid" parts of a word's meaning. A good dictionary will mention these as well, but it will have to be updated frequently, because they change faster than the 'official' meaning.
For instance, gate has a specific meaning: a device which can be opened to control access to some area. But the suffix -gate has a very different meaning in certain very specific contexts. Ever since a particular event in the early 70s, it has come to imply a scandal of some sort, usually grand, and is derived from the name of a popular Washington hotel.
As another example, how many times have you called someone a bastard whose parents were not unwed at the time of their conception? And why is that considered to be insulting in the first place?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Very relevant sidenote is that Tseric just quit his community moderator position after two years at Blizzard. He apparently got tired of the extremely bad treatment he received on a day-to-day basis.
So they're exact synonyms? Then tell me. Why does the word 'shit' actually exist, and why does it continue to be used? Do you use the word "poo" all the time, if not, why not?
A Rape in Cyberspace
(Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One)
Chapter One of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life, 1998
http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
~hylas
The mommy and daddy reference was a metaphor dumbed down to a level anyone could understand. I could have gone into a rant about censorship, moral values, the FCC and jesus; but frankly, I didn't want to type so much. While attaching an emotion to a word is as good an answer to my question as any, it simply reiterates the fact that you associate these words with feelings you have been conditioned to associate them with. I can say "eat crap" with the same inflection and emotion I use when saying "eat shit". My intended meaning of either statement is exactly the same. The only difference is in who hears it. If I can evoke an emotional response in someone with a word, not a personal attack, but a word, than it's an advantage I have over them. I believe we can become desensitized to the vulgarity of profanities. Look at how much more often we're hearing "ass" or "damn" on prime time television. These words lost some of their flare in the last 15 years or so. Has the meaning of these words changed? Not one bit. People are just used to hearing them, and they have become disassociated with their emotions. Why can't this happen to dirtier, meaner words like fuck, shit and cunt? Why empower the words so much?
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
What a total spazz of an article. Kids will be kids, as much as we all hate the "Lolz" and random racist comments, it is no ones job to nanny/moderate/ or block that content. Most devs have already included some kind of /ignore feature, or means of reporting that person to a GM. Thats as much as should be done. This "gamers unite, lets hold hands and eradicate the bad stuff" is so pathetic. Relax, go smoke a bowl and game.
I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.
Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.
Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.
The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.
Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.
When did I say they were 'exact' synonyms? Are you saying they are NOT synonyms?
I do not dispute that different words are appropriate for different situations. I do not dispute that some words have nuances that synonyms may not have. I DO dispute that some synonyms are 'bad' and shouldn't be used while some are just fine and may be used at any time.
http://xkcd.com/386/
This is not abuse-proof.What if griefers create throwaway characters,just to accumulate those points and spend them.
I am not disputing that connotations may be different. I am asking (and I will be bold and predict that I will never get a logical answer to this question) "Why are a few words considered unacceptable when they all have many, many socially-acceptable synonyms, most of which were designed to get around the societal stigma of saying the 'bad' word in the first place? "
For example: does anyone over the age of 5 have any trouble figuring out what words are 'bleeped' on T.V.? No. Yet 'bleeping' is completely socially acceptable. The EXACT same message is conveyed, as people simply 'plug in' the missing word mentally as they're hearing the 'bleep'. What is the difference? Is it to protect the ears of the young, who would not understand what they were hearing anyway?
http://xkcd.com/386/
They are strong words that can be very effective when used appropriately. When abused they just get annoying. Anyone who has to use fuck every 5 seconds just shows they have a poor vocabulary and are not worth listening to.
I can intend a statement to mean the exact same thing, with or without profanity. I can also use profanity without intending anger, malice or frustration (That's fucking awesome!!).
Using murder, rape, murder in casual conversation is fine by me. As is using fuck, shit and whore. If I am having a conversation with somebody and I hear these words from their mouth, in conversation, it does not phase me one bit. I am likely to use the same words myself, in conversation. If someone is listening to our conversation and is offended just by the words we are saying, it's their problem. They overhear the conversation, take the words out of context, and deem them bad based only on their personal feelings attached to the words. Now if someone says a profanity to someone else in order to attack that person, the offense taken is warranted. But this is also true of words that aren't profane.
Kids don't swear because mommy and daddy tell them not to. Kids swear because of the power people give these words.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I've been in many a chat over my Internet career -- I've been around since the beginning. It is my understanding that the entire purpose for most of these games is to celebrate freedom -- in a world without restrictions. To impose those restrictions -- moreso to mandate them -- is just retarded (in the proper sense of the word).
Many seem to complain that the majority of people are offensive -- I use the word "offensive" instead of "assault" because my term anchors on the complainer without judging the accused. Welcome to word choice. "Objectionable" would also have worked -- perhaps even better.
If your complaint is regarding the "majority" then you're just an idiot trying to ruin someone else's fun. No one is being hurt against his/her will. You can leave at any time, and you are not forced to return -- you weren't forced to arrive in the first place.
So I leave you with this additional point. Where would you suggest that a person go to act out an otherwise unacceptable desire? It seems to be that killing cows is the choice for a would-be serial killer, and that hand-drawing child pornography is the acceptable version of photographing actual children. So what of the customer service call centre person? The guy who spends all day being nice to people on the telephone -- people who call for no reason but to yell at him for something that his company's client has done. If he wants to yell at someone, to where should he go?
You're not going to eliminate the desire for evil. Most of us have the evolutionary urge to strangle a person with my bare hands. It's a fossil-feeling, but it's there -- like my tail-bone. There are, however, numerous outlets in modern civilization for any would-be killer. I'm quite confident that if we suddenly dropped violent video games, and violent movies, there'd be a wave of destruction and rampage.
Same goes for verbal environments. What do you do all day that leaves you in such a perfectly content state? I can make a few educated guesses. Hmm, things that leave human beings perfectly content: abusing children, killing other people, and drugs. Personally, I do none of those things. So I have some energy left to be upset with people that I find dissappointing. And this, right here, is a wonderful way to focus that energy before I get back to work. Yesterday, I killed a dozen friends -- with lasers, cannons, fire, and this weird purple stuff, multiple times each as I captured a flag and taunted them with cheesy movie quotes. Yeah, I got killed a hell-of-a-lot of times too.
World of Warcraft has an "Ignore Player" feature for a reason. You ignore him, you'll never, ever, read anything coming from him again.
And for "physical" abuse (for example, entering a guild meeting and ruining the photo), one can open a ticket to a game master and have him deal with the annoying player. Not that this is much fast, but it's nevertheless available.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Godless heathen.
Simple fix, probably meant by the poster. Account wide. Done. If you are willing to pay for a ton of accounts to grief people, then damn, I guess you can abuse it, but at $15/month I doubt you will really see that.
There's nothing inherently bad about an explicitive. The problem is that there are a great many people who defile these and other words. "Why the fuck did WoW just crash?" is acceptable usage for me. "Y fucking cock fucker WoW fuckingdkfickkc damn fuck whore piss crash!:!:!>!!>" is a blight upon humanity.
Explicitives mean very little when you don't save them for when they're important. No one pays attention when someone know to litter their cusses with other words drops a "fuck" or two. When some pious grandmother who'd never hurt a fly or swear drops a "Damn it", it's noticed.
Moderation in all things.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Personally, I think being censored by your peers is a lot worse than having a watchdog do it. We all play because we enjoy it and just because there's an unwelcome element shouldn't prevent us from continuing to play. I've read through the posts and there are some ideas I really like.
These could easily be implemented and would give the world some self regulation (empowerment?). This would also make it easier for the game makers than to setup a rudeness police.
Why would you conclude that I can't appreciate poetry?
Because you asserted that different words are equivalent. More than that you asserted they were equivalent by transitivity.
Transitive equality coupled with imprecision results in absurdity. A person who enjoys logic and reason should realize that:
If "1.1 = 1.0 for our purposes" then:
1.0 = 1.1 = 1.2 = 1.3 = 1.4 = 1.5 = 1.6 = 1.7 = 1.8 = 1.9 = 2.0
So by transitive equality 1 = 2, (and really anything equals anything else).
Equality is transitive, 'almost equal' is NOT.
What, exactly, differentiates the 'bad' word from the acceptable versions?
Societal norms in the 'associative baggage'. "Fuck off" is offensive precisely because its normal use in society at large is precisely to incite offense. That is -why- people choose that phrase over 'Get lost' or 'Please leave'. All three mean the same thing at some level, that speaker wishes the other to leave or cease what they are doing. But when you choose 'fuck off' you are sending that message not only that you want the other to leave, but that you want to offend them, that you wish to convey a complete and utter lack of respect for them in addition to wanting them to leave.
Of course, its more complex than that; 'society' isn't a homogeneous blob; there are subgroups and words within those groups take on different or additional semantics; and context matters too. Words like 'nigger' or 'redneck' can mean entirely different things depending on who is speaking them, and who is listening. Saying fuck off to a friend might be entirely different than saying it to the sweet little old lady at the mall, both in terms of what you meant to convey, and what you actually conveyed. When you say 'fuck off' to someone you have a rapport with then the desire to offend or convey disrespect might be 'tongue in cheek'; you know that he won't be horrendously offended, and your just playing with the language.
A lack of sensitivity to this itself speaks volumes.
To spew profanity into a public chat channel is either a deliberate show of insensitivity with the desire to offend at least part of the participants, or a display of just how ignorant you are (either you are ignorant that the words are offensive to a lot of people, or that you are ignorant that those people might be present in a public chat channel).
Some words are offensive because large groups within society attach offensive semantics to them. Those words are used by them to convey disrespect and offense. Simply using them is a cue to the listener that you have no respect for them and want to rub their faces in it. For the listener that is WHY people use those words, and if the listener were to use the words that would be what *they* would be trying to convey.
if poo = shit then we wouldn't have two different words for it. Language is far more complex than that, and there is a great deal of context, implication, and meaning tied to words beyond their dictionary definitions.
For example: 'Fuck', 'Sleep with', and 'Make love to' all mean functionally the same thing, sex. But each phrase adds context and emotion to the act. Choosing to ignore those subtle differences doesn't make you better than those who do not. In fact, it is more likely the opposite, as you fail to appreciate or even recognize the finer details of interpersonal communication.
You see, *I* play (and in fact, am a member of the clan that runs it) Day of Defeat:Source on a server where there are these things called "rules". And people who do not play by these "rules" get banned according to their Steam ID. Seeing as someone in the clan is almost invariably on the server at least 20 hours a day (and some offences can be enforced automatically by the server), this keeps behaviour remarkably civil. People don't spew unending streams of obscenities and hate speech into their mics. They don't grief. They don't spam.
There's really only a few people that do this. Once they're gone for good, the problem goes away. Other people learn that it's not acceptable to grief even if they're having a bad day, and they stop. Or they just don't bother coming back to the server, in which case everyone wins.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
How thoroughly delightful. We shall all talk like uncultured bores, saying the sorts of things that our betters would not in polite company, and be callow with respect to the feelings of our fellows. What fun! How enlightened we must be, and not at all like those dregs of society whose minds cannot conjure up suitably polite conversation out of their limited vocabularies.
Or, we could talk like decent people, and at least limit the use of profanities and obscenities for those times when we are simply too overcome with emotion to remember social niceties like good manners and proper behavior. At the very least, there are perfectly useful terms that are neither childish (as 'poo') nor vulgar (as 'shit') nor technical (as 'feces') when such things must be discussed in polite company. Or are you unfamiliar with 'manure'? Presumably, you are an adult. Might be time to start using language like one. Unless you enjoy looking like an uncouth oaf.
'Shit' is unacceptable in polite society, primarily because it is vulgar. It's crass. If you have to have that explained, then this conversation isn't worth having. You're either too poorly acculturated to be educated in this limited space, or you're being intentionally thick, whether for your own amusement or in the belabored service of some 'point' about how we should all behave like jackanapes because social distinctions are artificial. (As if that observation were novel or deep: of course good manners are largely artificial. Were they not, your dog would know to keep his elbows off the table and to eat with a knife and fork.) That society is so degraded that polite society is hard to find is no excuse to pretend that politeness is without value.
Canthros
"To say that being offended by foul language is a learned behavior is obviously the case, but you present it as though only childish people would let a learned behavior influence them. The statement "Those words upset me cause mommy and daddy told me they should." is obviously meant to belittle people who have learned that offensive language is offensive."
You learn not to curse from your mommy and daddy. You're reading something into it far beyond what he actually said, and that makes me wonder why.
"What purpose does the word fuck have in the English language other than to be offensive?"
Emphasis. Exclamation. If I stub my toe and no one else is around, when I yell "FUCK!" who is offended?
"Is it so unreasonable that someone gets offended by an offensive word?"
And there you admit the fatal flaw in your argument. Words don't offend, people ALLOW themselves to be offended by words. It is not the word, but the individual who ultimately decides if a word is offensive.
"Also for all those who get upset that crap isn't obscene while shit is."
My grandmother would vehemently disagree. Which proves my point quite nicely, while refuting yours as well.
Now go F yourself you F-ing C-sucking piece of dog S. (nothing offensive there, so no getting offended by you, your rules not mine)
For starters, 'freak' is not an obscenity. 'Fuck', in all its forms, is.
Canthros
True. However, that's a function of the repetition and not the repeated word. Same thing goes for someone who uses 'um' or 'like' every other word....yet those aren't 'bad' words.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Perhaps because people think that young children do not have the capability to understand the connotations of the words, and will use them indiscriminately? (Which is pretty much what happens in online voice comms)
Not saying that bleeping works, just I can understand the motive. They are words that often abandon their traditional definitions depending on context. (Often abandoning any meaning at all) You can't expect kids to fully understand these words when they're still getting their heads around the relatively simple aspects of language.
'make love' is an obscenity? 'have intercourse' is an obscenity? 'make whoopie' is an obscenity? well, since you're obviously such an authority on obscenity, what makes something obscene?
http://xkcd.com/386/
How can we expect kids to ever understand why those words are bad when it is quite apparent that no ADULTS understand it either? Why does it MATTER if kids use them? All I keep getting, over and over, is that they're bad because they're obscene because they're foul because they're swear words. Argh.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Try that at my workplace.
I'll see you out the door, with cause.
Attitudes like yours routinely cause employers crippling lawsuits that get decided against them, because society is now highly intolerant of that crap.
Just ask Don Imus.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Every time I see "its teh internet i dont ned to typ gud" I die just a little bit inside.
I've been of the opinion for several years that the internet will destroy language as we know it. It seems that people have no respect for language, which is probably the single most important thing to happen to human development.
It's kind of silly, since adults who don't want to hear "f*ck" have to do some mental gymnastics NOT to insert it over the bleep. But the purpose where kids are concerned is clear: to avoid teaching them the word. They might not understand the word the first time they hear it, but kids DO figure things out from context. Let them sit through a showing of the movie "The Departed", by the end they'll know exactly what it means. (see this to show how many times the word is used) http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1746444
You still have yet to explain why only a few particular words are considered foul. That has absolutely nothing to do with culture nor sophistication. How is it cultured and sophisticated to parrot learned, irrational behaviour? You keep telling me that I should limit profanities without ever explaining why they're profane. You give me the same tautology that everyone else so far has: They're bad words because they're obscenities because they're crass because they're bad words. Are you truly that unintelligent? I have no problem with artificial limits on behaviour. I just expect them to MAKE SENSE. For example, eating with utensils can reduce the amount of cleanup necessary after a meal. Keeping elbows off the table can prevent spills. Asking for something to be passed rather than reaching for it also prevents spills and things like sleeves in the gravy, etc. These are RATIONAL REASONS for artificial behaviours. Now, please explain to me the RATIONAL reason behind making a few words 'bad' while euphamisms for those very same words, used only because of the societal stigma attached to the 'bad' words, are perfectly acceptable. Go on, you're cultured and sophisticated. Should be easy for you.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Yes, you can expect this from any online game. Stoping it altogether is 10X harder then stopping piracy, its not going to happen. What we needs is explicit groups like xbox live, and upon report of abusing the family section , just force them to only play in "underground", unless they pettition otherwise. oh and about in game verbal assault; type "/ignore name", now if only it were that simple irl.
Who decided and how what words would have each good/bad meaning? I guess I can only answer that with another question and then a guess- who decided what any word means?
I would suppose that its gradual over time, and different in different communities. Thats how language evolves after all. I would suppose that "ass" would have been pretty offensive 20 years ago to my mother. I doubt it is today. "Gay" would have been a fine way to describe my happy-go-lucky grandfather 50 years ago, but he'd not appreciate it today. Telling a 15 year old on CS that you totally "own" them would be normal. Saying the same thing to someone who's father or grandfather was a slave not be as appropriate.
I wasn't specifically asking about your personal habits when I asked why not say poo vs shit, it was more of a "lets explore why social conventions make this uncommon".
I suppose if I take a step back and look at the larger picture of the thread, profanity, offensiveness and community I come up with this: In MMO games, (or any community) it seems more and more that people are unwilling to communicate with their audience in mind, or with a total disregard for their audience. Players tend to expect the listener to accept their personal values, but show an unwillingness to show that same respect in return. In our conversation, I have no problem saying "shit" repeatedly, because I know(or at least strongly presume) that it doesn't offend you, and in the context of our conversation is unlikely to offend or irritate anyone who passes by. If I were having the same debate in a church group, I would phrase things differently, because I would want to show respect for my listeners.
The argument over swearwords really muddies the topic the article tries to address. It's not just about swearing, its about respect and maturity (I'm not saying swearing is immature, but if I have to hear one more joke about chuck norris or one more 14 year old's fantasies about Jessica Alba...) Programmers can add filters for swear words, because those are easy, but how do you add a filter for "idiotic" or "generally rude" or "can't seem to type v0w3ls". I hate the suggestion (that I see often, not from you) to "Just turn on the filter, or ignore the rude people". It implies that requiring respect is irrational or unrealistic. Players shouldn't have to opt out of rudeness and disprespect, online gaming culture should include courtesy by default.
if poo = shit then we wouldn't have two different words for it. Language is far more complex than that, and there is a great deal of context, implication, and meaning tied to words beyond their dictionary definitions.
What I'm asking is why is it that the word shit, containing one syllable and four letters and meaning 'feces', is bad, while the word crap, containing one syllable and four letters and meaning 'feces', isn't. I'm not arguing that there should be no connotations. What I'm asking is: why the certain words which are 'bad' and not others which are roughly equivalent? Why isn't there a 'bad word' for snot? It's a bodily product. What about saliva? Why only two of the body's many excretions? Why is there a 'bad word' for sex but not fighting? Isn't fighting worse than sex? Where's the sense in it? That's what I'm asking.
http://xkcd.com/386/
It's kind of silly, since adults who don't want to hear "f*ck" have to do some mental gymnastics NOT to insert it over the bleep. But the purpose where kids are concerned is clear: to avoid teaching them the word.
Well, then it is completely and utterly useless. If that is really the purpose for it, then we're spending every minute and dollar needed to 'bleep' things in vain. Is there anyone over the age of 5 who's never heard a 'bad' word?
http://xkcd.com/386/
Literally, fuck means rape. So saying 'fuck you' to a person implies you want to, or want someone to sexually violate them against their will. Even removed from it's traditional, literal definition, the word portrays extreme disrespect and hostility. 'I want you to leave' is very different from 'fuck off' because of this. It is those connotations that make the word 'bad' because they are understood to be intentionally disrespectful. It's the verbal equivalent to spitting in someone's face when directed at someone.
I personally could care less if there were curse words during prime time, but when I have kids, I'll probably be glad there aren't. The last think I want is my kid running around screaming "F*CK! F*CK! F*CK!"
And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of kids, even in this day and age, over the age of 5 who have not yet been exposed to all these words. By 10, yeah, but not 5.
Ha! I don't even have to look, I know the exact strip. I was trying to remember the equation when I was typing: Normal Person + Internet = Total Asshat...Or something like that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
There are two issues in TFA. One of them is language, and I think referring to WoW is really disingenuous because it comes with a built in profanity filter which is surprisingly effective and its turned on by default.
/ignore you, or just manually ignore you, but there are some actions you can take which I cannot do anything about. Be it tagging the named mob I need for a quest on a PVE server or ganking me on a PvP server either way you can put a serious crimp in my ability to enjoy the game. Were you to do the equivalent on the oft-mentioned basketball court you'd be doing something like knifing my basketball. Try that one in any urban environment and see how well it goes over.
/gkick those people.
Griefing, on the other hand, is a genuine problem. I can
I do think TFA is a bit whiny and overblown, particularly in the complaints about foul language. However people need to start asking themselves why we tolerate behavior online that we wouldn't tolerate in real life. Even more importantly, if we WOULD tolerate calling each other these names in a spiteful way in real life, WHY would we tolerate it? I think this is even more applicable with ganking on PvP servers, we need to stop perpetuating the belief that this is "cool" or "leet" or "uber" in any way. Guild leaders and officers should start caring about the rep of their guild and
We should also encourage each other to use any of the interoperable player rating addons to let the "wisdom of crowds" start to filter the wheat from the chaff. If you behavior begins to ostracize you, the way it does in real life, then the behavior will change.
Because this was a family service, we had to try to police conduct in the general channel, and because we didn't have the staff to monitor it live 24/7, it fell to me to try to automate some of this. That actually worked fairly well. We had a very large dictionary of naughty words and phrases. When you said something, my filters basically looked for any of those things, and '*'ed them out. The filter ignored whitespace, and it also considered certain characters to be equivalent, so if you wrote 5h17, that would match 'shit', since it knew a 5 could take the place of an s, and so on. However, before filtering, it did a spell check on your text, and marked all the words that were spelled right and were not on the bad word list as safe. For example, if you said "wash it", it would not see the "sh it" as something bad.
This worked surprisingly well. It caught it when people tried tricks like inserting spaces to break up the bad words, but usually did not get false positives, because of the spell check protector stuff. Well, unless you were a lousy speller, but if a lousy speller got kicked off incorrectly for profanity, it still improved things. :-)
One other little trick it did. When it filtered out something in your message, it only did that on the message sent to other people. The copy that echoed back to your system was uncensored.
When you got caught, it would send you a message warning you to watch your language. If you ignored the warning, an admin bot would ban you for a period of time. Repeared bans would be for longer times.
One thing that disappointed me: no one ever tried to use Klingon profanity to get around the filters. I had that covered in the filters, and was hoping to see the reaction when the users discovered that.
If "1.1 = 1.0 for our purposes" then:
1.0 = 1.1 = 1.2 = 1.3 = 1.4 = 1.5 = 1.6 = 1.7 = 1.8 = 1.9 = 2.0
Not if we're rounding to the nearest whole number. Then 1.4 = 1 and 1.5 = 2.
Societal norms in the 'associative baggage'.
That isn't rational. I have no problem with certain phrases being considered crass. However, crassness does not equal unsuitability for T.V. What makes one crass synonym for a thing acceptable for T.V. while another is unacceptable? Don't cop out with 'societal norms'. I obviously know that they are societal norms, otherwise I wouldn't be able to question WHY they are societal norms.
Of course, its more complex than that; 'society' isn't a homogeneous blob
That's why I get so pissed off over the concept of 'bad words'.
"Fuck off" is offensive precisely because its normal use in society at large is precisely to incite offense.
This is (as I have been getting all day) a tautology. Bad because it's bad is NOT RATIONAL. If there's no rational reason, just come right out and admit it. But you won't, because then you'd feel silly for following the convention.
A lack of sensitivity to this itself speaks volumes.
If I had no sensitivity to it, how could I question the rationality of it?
To spew profanity...
Why is profanity profane? Still waiting for an answer on this one. Never going to get one that isn't a tautology.
Some words are offensive because large groups within society attach offensive semantics to them.
No shit, Sherlock. Why were the particular words chosen? Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words? Why is only one synonym bad, and why that particular one? These are the questions that you didn't even try to address.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Assuming you're correct (although I have read MANY variations on where 'fuck' came from and what it supposedly originally meant), that's one down. 6 to go.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Site referenced in TFA appears to be slashdotted.
Look, you're either intentionally thick or you're incapable of understanding this. You've already demonstrated the ability to use a dictionary, you can look up terms like profane and obscene on your own. I'm not going to waste time explaining in small words the sort of things that you ought to have figured out by now.
You want a rational reason not to use those words? Isn't avoiding unnecessary offense rational enough? Or do you need to have the whole history of the language laid out for you to accept that some words are inappropriate for general use for reasons related to protocol that you, apparently, have never bothered to learn?
Look, I'm a software engineer. I was being exaggeratedly careful in the previous post to make a point. You've already exhausted my patience. The rational reason, the simplest one, is that using those words causes some people offense and portrays oneself as an uneducated, uncouth bore. Your obsession with a deeper rationalisation mostly betrays a lack of imagination, and I really don't have time or inclination to speculate on the reasons that some behaviors are considered polite and some are not. Life is short, and God knows I've better things to do. Good day.
Canthros
Exactly. And Penny Arcade was quite accurate on the subject. The anonymity of the internet, especially in virtual worlds where your character can be completely recreated as an entirely new identity, removes responsibility. It doesn't matter if I'm disrespectful, I can always change my handle/create a new avatar. With no persistent identity, people can absolve themselves of personal responsibility. Lack of persistent identity, and the accountability that comes with, is a primary issue.
If I say the word 'sandwich' is offensive to me, it's not an offensive word. Why? Because noone agrees with me. However, if 50 million english speakers all decided 'sandwich' was offensive, you'd see a lot of menus change.
Besides, context is everything. Looking at the word on it's own just isn't looking at the whole picture.
Yes, Just words. That is all. They carry no ability you don't give them. Or if they are backed in another manner such as contracts.
A word can not hurt you if you don't let it, and they can't bring you joy if you don't let them.
KNowing the difference is maturity.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh, you meant actual physical contact. They'd enable that feature, but they're too scared it'll turn X-rated within seconds.
"The people who wish the internet was a sweet world of marshmallow fluff ..."
That's not what it's about.
It's like a private clucb. You pay your dues every month to go whenever you want.
Some other member start verbally harrassing you, you tell the owner you don't like it.
The owner can ask the person to be quite, ask the person to leave, tell the complainer to too bad.
This person is asking the owner to do something about the people down in fromt.
Just like you would if a bunch of people started yelling about Chuck Norris while you were trying to watch a movie in a cinema...unless it was Spiderman 3, in which case you would thank them.
Cryderman, Cry dear man,
everyone cries just like a baby can.
WATCHOUT it's cryderman,
hey cry dear man!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To rely on swearing to convey your disrespect seems to me like a much more narrow dynamic of expression. Its like a last resort when you can't put into words what you're really trying to say.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
go to the managemen and say:
"I don't like that behaviour, can you stop it please?"
Then if they don't, leave.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
when i played asheron's call i discovered that people who play MMO's and don't know me in real life are either jerks, wankers, or mentally retarded. even my guild was more than 50% asshats.
now i play lord of the rings online and city of heroes now, and while i have to turn of all chat channels but my kinship/supergroup, fellowship/team, friends and tells, i have to say that the level of asshattery has reduced significantly.
instanced event areas are a great invention. in AC if you entered a dungeon there was a good chance (especially in a choice hunting spot) that someone would already be there. they would invite you to a fellowship with a bunch of people who where obviously PLing squeakers and when you declined to join them they would get angry that you were hogging the lewtz. having a quest/mission where i can enter a "dungeon" that belongs soley to me and my friends is a real boon the the MMO experience.
the global ignore was also a good invention, where you can ignore the human and all of it's iterations, rather than his current instance on a specific server. COH has such an ignore.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Don't even bother reporting the spammers with spamsentry. Blizzard has already stated that they are overwhelmed by reports from that mod and their logging (apparently) isn't good enough to track the culprits - who usually fire off a barrage of spam and then delete the account.
/spamsentry options ignorebylevel 2
Better use of spamsentry is this:
That'll ignore tells from all players below level 2. I have yet to see a spambot bother to level up a character. They may start doing that at some point, but by then, Blizzard's patch with the in-house spam controls will be available.
A better question would be why that person believes that everyone else should conform to his or her view of reality and social norms? If I want to express myself in a certain way, what gives that person the right punish me? Or more importantly, why does that person's view of what's right and wrong hold more sway than mine?
If that person doesn't like it, there are tools in place to make their experience more enjoyable via ignore and leaving channels altogether.
If you're literally filling every sentence with profanity, then I agree with you. However, an unwillingness to use it at all is like driving a ferrari and being unwilling to put it in top gear. Don't begrudge others their willingness to use all the words in our language.
Ok... so lets see... you grok that some words offend some people. right?
And that some words offend a lot more people than others, right?
And that some words, if spoken to the general public, are likely offend a fair number of people, right?
So, in light of all that, are we in agreement that you should avoid using those words and phrases if you don't intend to offend people? That's all that's being suggested. Suggesting that poo and shit are really the same thing if you round to the nearest whole number so people should just get over themselves for being irrational is ridiculous.
Setting aside for a moment the "WHY", lets just deal with the FACT that poo and shit are different.
That is all that's really at issue here.
Why were the particular words chosen? Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words? Why is only one synonym bad, and why that particular one? These are the questions that you didn't even try to address.
So now we're talking about the "WHY".
Assuming that we already agree 'shit' is differant than 'poo', and we already agree that reason people say 'shit' instead of 'poo' too deliberately invoke that difference.
So why is Shit is more offensive than poo? because society has collectively agreed that this is the case.
And that's a circular argument you say! But no. Not at all. That is the reason shit is more offensive than poo.
The question you are really asking now though is: "So why did society choose shit to be offensive, and not poo". That's a different question entirely, and I agree "that's what society agreed on" is not an answer to that at all.
So why "shit" and not "poo"? Is there a reason? In a word: yes. Is it rational? Depends on what you mean by rational? If by rational you mean that there should be some way of predicting in advance using logic which words will become offensive and which won't, of course not. There is nothing about the letter's 's' 'h' 'i' 't' that are magically offensive, and no way of 'predicting' that combining them will be.
If by rational you mean that there is a reasonable explanation for it, then yes there is. Words have history. Throughout history few words are conceived of as offensive, they gain that status through their use. "Nigger" is a great example, because we can see the history... The word comes from 'negro' which itself was spanish for 'black', which itself comes from latin 'niger' for black. The word 'nigger' itself is merely 'negro' as pronounced by the American South applied to 'black people'. And even then it held no offense.
Only much later did someone, god only knows who, deliberately invoke that American South pronunciation of negro to conjure the idea of a black person in a pejorative sense by using that pronunciation to connect it with slavery, uneducated, etc. And society grokked the connection, and understood what he was trying to say. And 'nigger' started picking up that negative imagery as that pejorative use was reinforced through additional use. Notably it was offensive in the North long before it was offensive in the South. Eventually it became an 'ultimate insult' because the people using it WANTED it to be a deadly insult, and the people who heard them say it - KNEW that was what the speaker wanted.
Is that a rational explanation? I think so.
Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words?
Theres no shortage of terms for 'vagina'.
In cases where there is just one... evidently no ones managed or bothered to introduce another one that society really picked up on. Slang terms are invented and discarded continually... few of them ever reach full cultural awareness.
Perhaps one of the reasons the 'established' ultimate words in a category are just that..."established"...once established any attempt to dethrone them by using a different word fails because despite what the speaker intends we hear it as 'falling short' of going all the way. Sort of l
World of Warcraft's forums have always been as vicious as the fairly high level of censorship will allow, but they have been getting worse recently.
There are five main areas where a chronic degree of player elitism, and other player attitude problems are (at least sociologically speaking) slowly destroying World of Warcraft.
1) If you don't have at least one, and preferably multiple level 70 characters, you're not acknowledged as a player of the game at all, culturally speaking. You're not considered credible in the area of forming a guild, even if you only intend it to be informal or for low level members, or have someone else to mentor you.
2) For those who don't know, every character class in the game has three talent or sub-discipline trees, where as players progress they can add points to specific talents within each sub-discipline tree, in order to gain bonuses or new abilities within that sub-discipline. There is an endemic attitude among end-game players that, at least in the case of some classes, only one (or at most two) of these three talent trees is in any way valid or legitimate. Players (such as myself) who create characters that specialise in the politically incorrect talent tree/s are vilified as ignorant, and told that they will not be accepted to participate in the supposedly all-important activity of end-game raiding. Peer pressure is used as a means of enforcing these biases.
3) There is a mentality among level 70 players that end-game raiding is the only thing in the game that is worth doing; if you're not raiding yourself, you are not considered to be engaging in any other legitimate form of activity.
4) There is an overwhelming tendency among players who are ignorant of the mechanics of their given character class, and who are performing poorly in the game, to enter the forums and attempt to complain to Blizzard employees that the character class in question is "broken" and needs to be "fixed" in the ways that they specify, rather than said players engaging in the requisite research/other effort necessary to learn how to be genuinely effective with their character class within the game environment. This is predictably more true in the case of hybrid classes such as the Hunter and Shaman than others, because in the case of these classes, their purpose within a multidisciplinary player group is not as immediately apparent as is the case of more single-purpose classes, such as the Warrior or Mage.
5) As far as the playerbase is concerned, The Burning Crusade expansion has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the expansion's release, player emphasis has been almost purely on competition and rivalry, rather than earlier forms of camaraderie and positive interaction. People in the game are less likely to help each other now to a large degree; it's become a lot more about how far ahead of the other person you can get. Blizzard themselves are responsible for other extremely detrimental changes that occurred just prior to the release of the expansion, namely the almost complete destruction of the in-game UI customisation and scripting system, and the abolition of the earlier pvp ranking system, which had also created a scenario where players had a concrete incentive for wanting to win games within the pvp battlegrounds.
a little humor break from off the mark
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
There are two issues in TFA. One of them is language, and I think referring to WoW is really disingenuous because it comes with a built in profanity filter which is surprisingly effective and its turned on by default.
As I've already written, WoW's single main problem is terminal elitism. Profanity isn't something that I anyway have ever considered a problem.
I flat out refuse to pay $30/mo to babysit. That is all you have suggested I do. It has turned from a "pay to play" to a "pay to babysit" scenario. I refuse. As much as I would like to play WoW - forget it. /ignore = babysit this little brat. /ban = babysit that little brat. /report = babysitting
What is so hard to understand about that? I don't pay to babysit... I should get paid to do it.
I spent 2 1/2 hours taking screen shots and writing up reports that took a week to be reviewed and in the end that player was sent a polite little letter asking them not to behave like that again.
I played for about 5 hours a week - max - on a slow week.
forget it. it's not worth it.
Blizzard et al. will continue to cater to these foul mouthed brats because they pay. The rest of us don't/won't waste our time.
If Blizzard did somehow clean up their servers for the rest of us they would have to kick those brats off and then where would they be? Trying to convince us to come back? I don't think so. It's stupid incarnate in there and far worse than a daycare...
children babysitting children... because they refuse to pay for daycare staff.
Why would Blizzard et al. even bother to try to clean it up when it's exactly those same idiots that they're making the money off of? Why should Blizzard pay staff to kick paying customers off of the servers? So they can loose money to loose more money? Once word got out that there were 'secret WoW police" wandering about handing out suspensions things might improve... but I doubt it.
I would encourage everyone to vote with their feet and quit playing all together.
I don't know about widespread or anything, but I know on the Sony Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG (which I don't play anymore), I stopped taking advantage of the player bounties because, as a female player and character, I was harranged with some pretty foul and offensive language by my targets (we're not talking the b**** word, but the c*** word, which was hardly necessary). I'm not easily offended, but it's hardly Star Wars RP to use any of the insults, and hardly in the spirit of play to do so.
In general, maybe people forget there's real humans on the other side, and do things they wouldn't dream of doing to people face to face. Not just in name calling and whatnot, but in general, the "that toon is controlled by a person and not the game" doesn't occur to a lot of people. *shrug*
I have to give you serious credit. This is a very good response. The only thing I might say to you is that for any societal convention the violation of which causes individuals to be fined or incarcerated there should be a rational explanation. I don't think that's too much to ask. Can we agree on this?
As an aside, this thread is the first time I've ever actually hit the posting cap. Too bad 90% of it was responding to people without an iota of your insight.
http://xkcd.com/386/
or Universe for that matter. You know, the big "console mmorpg" that came out like 5 years ago and is still running strong?
In all that time, I've seen *1* GM. During a valentines photo shoot contest, on Universe, on X360. Let me tell you, everything she said was ignored, everyone was cussing in front of her, she couldn't even block people from spamming the other 200 users in the lobbys screens.
Games without GM's exist. I was addicted to this one for a long time. The game has had what, 10 bans, all of them being the one serious hacker or his friends he told too much too? (Broomop)
Just to throw in, being a previous Ragnarok Online hacker, and knowing one of the GM's personally... they have about 5 that cover all of their servers. Other games take a much bigger role in this department, but you can't say there aren't games without any supervision. And the ones here usually play, and don't respond to calls!
We're not talking about logic here. We're talking about emotional responses to language. It's not logical, and don't expect it to be.
But people are fined and incarcerated for emotional responses! That is disgusting. Laws SHOULD be based on reason. And don't give me that 'the FCC is a regulatory body, not a law enforcement body' because that's just semantics. FCC regulations carry the force of law.
Besides, context is everything. Looking at the word on it's own just isn't looking at the whole picture.
See above.
http://xkcd.com/386/
But to argue the other side of things (and please do NOT read this the wrong way, this is merely an example) there is definitely precedent for the allowance of such behavior. For example, being a member of the KKK is not illegal. It is not illegal to hate people for any reason; that falls within the realms of freedom of speech as people are perfectly allowed to think whatever they want. It is their *actions* that can potentially fall under the legal umbrella, as hating someone is not illegal whereas performing a criminal act for those reasons is.
With that out of the way, World of Warcraft's designers (to use an example) have implemented ways that every user can block out that sort of speech. Starting from the simplest to the more drastic measures, first there is the chat filter. This turns any "curse word" into a series of symbols such as $%^&*!! in order to censor certain terminology. Secondly, there is the /ignore feature, allowing you to simply filter out everything that is said by that person so it doesn't even appear. Lastly, and unfortunately this feature is hardly ever used enough, there is a way for you to report someone to the GMs for excessively vulgar language or verbal abuse/harassment.
OP, I know you wish to have things in place beforehand to ensure a more civilized conversational experience, but I believe Blizzard (and possibly other game developers) has made the best choice, and that is to leave it up to the individual user. This ensures that Blizzard isn't stepping on anyone's constitutional rights, while giving us the power to custom-tailor our own gaming experience.
Wow. You sure get overly affected by ridiculous things. My 'obsession' is idle curiosity. I have spare cycles and I think and type really fast. I am not ignorant of societal rules. Have I been cussing you out? Yet people are fined hundreds of thousands of dollars per year because of these things. Don't we have a responsibility to at least consider what we're doing before we go around taking people's money? Oh, I'm sorry. You win. You said "Good Day Sir" first. I should have thought of that.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I really wish I could give you a moderation that is +1 to all posts you make for a year.
Well done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
ummm, no.
First off, you are using a mathmatics to draw out a logical conclusion in language.
poo does not equal shit.
Both get different response, therefore they're not the same.
Of course, you probably think calling someone a 'Puss' is calling them a part of female anatomy, which is also wrong.
There are no bad words, I agree. There are words which are inapropriete, mean, impolite, ill-suit, bad form, unbecoming, undue, malapropos, and tasteless, but no bad words.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
well, i seriously doubt that a child under 10 could properly use and understand any of the proscribed words, so I don't see that it's any different from them saying things like 'war' or 'amputee' or 'there's no god' or 'jesus christ' or anything else that could be socially awkward. We just spend so much damn money and fine people so much money over this that I don't think it's too much to ask that we at least examine the why.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I was making an overly broad generalization in the forlorn hope, vain as it has proved, that people would understand that it wasn't intended as an exact mathematical proof. It was SUPPOSED to be somthing to get people THINKING in a general fashion. Obviously, I failed in that. I should have realized that even in a thread about the vagaries of language, slashdotters wouldn't give any ground at all. Let me try to explain this: they are synonymous. Synonymous means 'about the same' just like 1.1 is about the same as 1.2 without actually being 1.2. Are you with me so far? I understand that there are situations where you wouldn't use a word even though it is a synonym of another word because of connotation. HOWEVER, generally speaking, synonyms are roughly equivalent because that is what synonym means.
http://xkcd.com/386/
and grow up. How are you going to defend against trolls by crying to the gms? You arent. There will always be trolls. Dont give them attention and they disapear everytime. I hate that everyones such a fucking sissy on the internet these days. The bloggers, the wow players... If this is what it means to have the masses on the information superhighway, I say kick them off!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
So it's ok to kill, pillage etc, but naughty words make you cry? It's not game makers fault that Americans have raised a hateful breed of vitriol spewing spawn, so stop demanding censorship from on high, there's got to be a better way.
You need more psychedelic art in your life. rhesusmonkey.deviantart.com
Do you happen to have a reference for that? I wouldn't be suprised if their logging is that lackluster. Seems security is often an after-thought (and by then its really difficult to deal with).
Thanks for the tip! Reporting spam was sort of loosing its novelty value anyway.
norris
Dude, just get SpamSentry. You can even have it completely ignore any tells from someone under, say lvl10, if you wish (I don't use this feature of it because I find I don't need it at all). It also does a great job just filtering spam. You can have it notify you when it blocks something, notify you hourly, or not notify you at all (which is what I use, I never even know!).
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
It's Fuckwad, not asshat.
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
"... give permission ..."
heh, that implies that they don't already have the ability to listen in on your tender "cyber" in a secluded room in stormwind
Thats why after 2 years i have turned off both of my accounts and went to a private server.
I've reported plenty if idiots back in the days that I played WC-III, and say them happily floating around being f**ktards without any consequence. Some of these people even managed to get names like ChinxSukBalls without getting banned by Blizzard.
Blizzard does not care about game quality unless it prevents the amount of money they have rolling in. It's been this way since Starcraft.
Perhaps what the games need is a player-rating system. If you have a guy who is rated as a jerk on a RTS, you can choose to exclude him from games. In the MMO's, have an interface to indicate how the guy is being a jerk, and with enough unique bad criteria block his account (or have it submitted for blocking).
Do you happen to have a reference for that?
It was an employee posting on their forums but unfortunately I don't have a link. The post I'm remembering though, mentioned the problem being SpamSentry's queued-spam reporting. SpamSentry - by default, I think, queues up spams received and alerts you to them hourly. If you batch-report them to a GM at that point, the spammer is long-gone. That is: the character used to generate the spam has been deleted, so your report no longer helps Blizzard because apparently their logs don't correlate the character sending the spam-tells to the account name.
If you send a report the instant the spam is received, there's a chance that a GM will see it in time to do something about it. Based on their customer-service response time though, it seems unlikely.
...that having your character die while in the Wailing Caverns is actually a traumatic experience, because you are then abruptly thrust back out into the discordian maelstrom that is Barrens general chat. It's an experience that I've likened to suddenly and rapidly having your head plunged into a bucket of refrigerated vomit.
Interesting. Race condition. Thanks for the tips!
The thing is that these spammers spam from legit accounts. They keylog people and create lvl 1 alts and spam. One of my friends got banned for this because some gold sellers were spamming from his account. I personally am stumped for a solution to the problem. (and the ignore/report thing on the account level could mess up a legit player!)
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
Plus I love the English language. If you have to put profanity in every sentence, you're doing a lousy job of speaking it, and that annoys me.
Fucking spot on, man. I totally agree with your shit here. Peoples needs to get their assholes in order and speak rightly!
I played WoW for about a year. I must agree it is sad if you're getting called names and such 60 times an hour. You have to remember, as has been said several times I see, there are a LOT of early teens playing. Now, I did notice that going from a PVP to a Non-PVP server, the IQ seemed to increase dramatically. Which makes sense to me. Younger kids seem to forget how to act towards people when they're able to pretty much whipe out whole zones of the other faction, then run around trying to dual everyone in their own once the zone is clear of the opposition. The epenis/mighty pixel disease spreads quickly when world pvp gets hot for long periods of time, too.
;)
As far as freedom of speech goes -- I had a guild for many months where I made it clear that we allow profanity in guild. We had rules and guidelines that we adhered to that kept guild chat fun and weeded out people who joined just to cuss nonstop. It turned into a well known starters guild, and a safe harbor for people's alts to guarantee their alt building would be fun rather than OMG PVP/RAIDS ALL DAY ALL DAY ALL DAY. Some GMs knew about it and thought it was a good idea seeing how it was governed and how everyone was kindly informed before they ever got into the guild. (a GM had joined it on an alt I guess, especially after hearing there was profanity allowed just because they were curious to see how it worked without people ever complaining. He had some great dirty jokes.) I'm all for IQ tests for joining guilds
One addition I would like is an auto-ignore feature for non-guildies that blocks people who type u, r, y, etc. -grin-
Actually, I think what i have as a tell interceptor now works quite well. I can just ignore anything from everyone under level 6, which takes care of (for now) all the gold spammers.
I wish Blizz would implement something along those lines, since the interceptor works through the who command, which isn't able to provide constant information.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
The only place I go online that has interaction is World of Warcraft. That's right, no chat rooms, no Instant Messaging, no other games.
.. look to your therapist, fool.
WoW has always had Ignore, and I use it extensively. Someone's a jerk? One warning, and then that's the end of THAT conversation! (Or at least the jerk's side of it.) And that works for all channels, all situations, all circumstances. Oh, he's actually a poor misguided youth who simply needs help and guidance? Dot's nice, mon
And now that I've found two Most Excellent add-ons (Spam Guard Plus and Spam Sentry), that takes care of the gold selling pukes (ptui, may they rot in hell) spamming on most channels and via whisper.
I still, of course, report each and every single one of them, by name, to Blizzard. Because it's fundamentally Blizzard's fault that they exist and that they proliferate. There are easy fixes, and Blizzard (in search of the almighty dollar and an ever-growing customer base) refuses to take them. So I'll continue to bug them until hopefully (some day) they do something about it.
But the spammers (and the morons) are no longer an issue to me. This is a non-problem. And certainly not the End Of Interactive Online Civilization As We Know It.
It's more akin to random people who are not playing constantly hurling abuse at players, getting in the way, stealing the ball, etc.
So to be clear:
You do not dispute that different words are appropriate for different situations. But you do dispute that some words are inappropriate in some situations.
But I realized they are all foul mouthed youngsters (what a shock) so I built this box and now I live in it.... Seriously people, what the hell do you expect? This is the internet.
They send greifers to the Cornfield
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
i like it
welcome to http://www.funingame.com
You still have yet to explain why only a few particular words are considered foul.
Because that is their agreed-upon meaning in the language. After a language has been in use for centuries or millenia asking why certain words have the meaning they do is useless; they just do.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Thank you, I didn't want to have to find that strip myself.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I can see how you all feel about behaviors of anonymous people on the net, I can admit that it does get out of hand at times. The issue I have with this type of complaint is that most of the poster's here have acted just like the people they're shaking fingers at. If you say you've never done it, 1. your either the pope or 2. your a bold faced liar. If your part of the problem you have no right to voice your opinions on a solution. They came up with a word for these types of people. Hypocrite.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
Not exactly. I appreciate that different words are appropriate for different situations. I dispute that some words are 'so bad' that they should be removed from the lexicon entirely. I also disapprove of banning/sanctioning people based specifically on word choice. Banning for being a jerk is fine, as long as there are guidelines. But if one person says 'you're crap' and doesn't get banned, but another person says 'you're shit' and does get banned, I have a problem with that.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I am not disputing the meaning. I'm disputing the idea that word choice can make a concept verboten. For example: You can say, "You're full of crap" on TV all day long with no repercussions. However, if you say, "You're full of shit" on TV, you will be fined. The meaning, in this context, is exactly the same. However, based upon the use of one synonym over another, you can be fined/sanctioned. That bothers me greatly. I don't expect to change society, but I also won't blindly support illogical societal conventions.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I'm not a fan of trolling, but I certainly don't like the self-righteous community police either - and at least when both groups are around they keep eachother busy rather than going after me.
Well that's a bad analogy. Since virtually every only game can mute people who annoy you. Some person starts harassing you you block them and never hear from them again.
We live in a world in which people are beheaded, imprisoned, demoted, and censured simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.
--Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
The chief problem is finding trustworthy people to do the moderation. My solution? Make it a hierarchy. Have the most trustworthy people in the company running the game each watch over a small group of people, spot check them every once in a while (to keep them from abusing power), and assign each moderator a specific location to watch. If the world is big enough, then those people might also watch subordinates instead of doing the patrolling themselves, and this could even get down to player moderation. As long as each person is fairly trustworthy, and as long as the untrustworthy people are weeded out quickly, this system should work. Theoretically.
This article sums up why I quit WOW and havnt played another online game since. Its not necessarily the developers responsibility but it is a real issue.
As a guild leader I could write an essay on the dramas that went on and unfortuneately it was not all from kids.
I saw people belittle others it the most horricfic ways, people be in the guild for months acting as a different person to get revenge on another member. Even a con artist that had ripped off many players in real life (pretended to have a child, the child got sick and he needed to get money for the operation). Luckily we found out about that one before he finished his con but others werent as lucky.
My point is that it is this lack of morality in online games that will the biggest barrier to its growth. Until there is some form of accountability in these games i will not be playing another hour.
wow, for all it's drama and idiots will never ever compete with CS in it's day when you had nothing but loud-mouthed pre-pubescent morons screaming racists insults once every 5 seconds only to be joined by their entire clan of loud-mouthed pre-pubescent morons.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.