Yeah, it always make me sad when a troll comes round Steam and I can't tell them to piss off.

Quoting: HadBabitsYeah, it always make me sad when a troll comes round Steam and I can't tell them to piss off.

Of course by some people's definition telling people to piss off is trolling. As is swearing.



It all depends on your perspective.

Quoting: HamishIt all depends on your perspective.

Either way it's censorship; and that makes me sad.

I'm actually working on such a system that will put up a warning when you go to comment with a detected swear-word.

I am trying to make GOL a friendlier place that's all, none of this "omg gols being censored" arguments please :P

If you want to test this system of warning with me, hop onto #gamingonlinux IRC on freenode.

Quoting: liamdaweI am trying to make GOL a friendlier place that's all, none of this "omg gols being censored" arguments please :P

No worries, I get it. This had just appeared out of nowhere (as far as I could see), and I wanted to make sure that you know some people aren't as keen on the idea. Gentle notices and information (as well as perhaps clearer policy and more defined "site changes" ) to suggest the type of community you are looking to grow would be better in the long run.

But the actual concept is greater than just GOL; just as I'm sure most of us are advocates of free / libre / open software, it would be slightly hypocritical to say that free speech is bad.

Got to take the rough with the smooth.

Do you have a mailing list? I prefer that over IRC these days.

I don't use mailing lists, all editor discussion about site stuff is usually on IRC or the editor discussion post in the feedback forum (keep an eye there if you want to see changes).

I did have a look through the Editors discussion, but I couldn't see any reference to enabling this (since March at least) -- I said f**king in my reply to your "likes" post, so it was after that.

Perhaps a more formal place to make announcements like this that isn't in the main news feed? Like a Site News subcategory in the forums? Obviously the discussion thread and IRC are great places to talk about if something should be implemented or not, but coming from a position of not reading those and then seeing the censoring in place, it makes it difficult to see what happened or why.

Perhaps you could have a javascript filter that does the censoring instead, so people have a "filter swear words" option in their control panel and they can switch between on / off?

Quoting: edgleyBut the actual concept is greater than just GOL; just as I'm sure most of us are advocates of free / libre / open software, it would be slightly hypocritical to say that free speech is bad.

Censoring swearwords does not limit free speech in any meaningful way. It can be called censorship only if the aim is to suppress dissenting opinion or prevent free exchange of information as opposed to simply filtering rude language. Forums need efficient and judicious moderation as evidenced by disasters like the Phoronix forums.

Quoting: tuubiCensoring swearwords does not limit free speech in any meaningful way. It can be called censorship only if the aim is to suppress dissenting opinion or prevent free exchange of information as opposed to simply filtering rude language.

"Meaningful" being the key word -- what is meaningful to you is different to me, and both are different to any other person.

Censorship is controlling the freedom of expression. Saying you can't swear is censorship. I agree that it's not remotely as drastic as the type of censorship in politics (like gag orders), but it's not *not* censorship just because you don't think it's important.

It's also less "just one of those things" when it's not always been in place and not obviously disclosed when it is activated.

Quoting: tuubiForums need efficient and judicious moderation as evidenced by disasters like the Phoronix forums.

This is not the Phoronix forum. Also, see by above suggestion which meets roughly in the middle.