Acceptable Language

[mudder]

First off let me quote from the TMC description of SlothIII under the list of attributes:

"Newbie friendly"
"Generally Adult-Oriented"
"We are one of the most newbie-friendly MUDs around, with many experienced players willing to assist you in learning and enjoying our game."

And a quote from this website:

"The immortals will only deal with the problems that mortals cannot deal
with themselves, or players that disrupt the harmony of the mud."

I'll add to that by saying that I can find nothing either in help files for Sloth or on website regarding acceptable use of language or acceptable behaviour other than the above, it may be there but I missed it, at least I looked.

Also I'd like to say up front I'm not a prude and no language you can use, no flame you reply with, no trolling you can come up with will cause me any offence, also I don't seek to preach here only to ask some questions. When I make statements this is my opinion and please take them as a question 'I think .... do you agree?'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now what I have noticed is there is increasing tendancy to 'accept' language in SlothIII that would be unacceptable in everyday life even entirely adult situations such as a workplace or on many of the other forums I visit.

To give the most common example of this: STFU.

This is commonly used to convey a number of meanings and in a number of ways:

[list:2pu7qb5o]STFU: Please be quiet
STFU: Your question is beneath my contempt
STFU: Hello nice to see you again
STFU: You're a newbie arn't you
STFU: Please stop spamming
etc. etc. etc.[/list:u:2pu7qb5o]

Lets not be coy about it though, STFU means as I'm sure you all know Shut The **** Up

Why is it that this has become acceptable here when turning round to your neighbour, collegue, doctor, tennis partner or stranger in the street and telling them to shut the **** up is likely to cause offence?

Why is it that when someone is offended by this their offence is ignored, derided, belittled and then often repeated?

Why is it that STFU is tolerated in SlothIII and on this forum when many other forum moderaters would censor it?

The word '****' is used in many myriad ways but these all generally fall into 4 categories:

1. ****! or ******* Hell!
As an exclaimation
As the mud is (see above) adult orientated I can't see there is an grounds for complaint ... yet use it in gossip etc. and I understand something bad happens to you ...

2. I **** your mother last night.
As an verb, the action of sexual intercourse.
I've never seen it used this way in SlothIII so I'll leave comment on this.

3. I'm ******* tired of cycling this mob or thats a ******* big mob in the castle
As an adjective to add emphasis to an expression.
Again as the mud is (see above) adult orientated I can't see there is an grounds for complaint ... yet use it in gossip etc. and I understand something bad happens to you ...

4. **** off, shut the **** up (STFU), you ****, you ******* tosser.
These are I think different both here and in real life, mainly for the fact that although the same word is being used, it is directed at an individual. In my experience there are situations when the word is not acceptable, when the word is fully acceptable and this middle ground that covers a lot of life where the word is acceptable unless directed at a person present / known to those present.

It is this last use of **** that I see as being the potential cause of difficulty in Sloth, the intention behind the use may be innocent, but the way it can be taken however can quite genuinely taken can cause understandable offence.

[list:2pu7qb5o]Is this all the fault of the person offended?
Should they shut the **** up and ignor it / grow a thicker skin / script a word replacement?
Is there any value is pointing out to the person who caused the offence what they've done or is this more likely to lead to accusations of crybaby and flaming?
Should (or could) such phrases as STFU be banned?
Is this potential for causing offence understood by the people using STFU?
Is this perhaps why they use use it?
Should I have kept this posting clean in the language I used?
Should we even be discussing this? or is it a non-issue to everyone in SlothIII?
Do the Imms here have a view?
Is there a different etiquette / rule for use of language in different channels?
Do minors play SlothIII? and if they do does this make a difference? (I think my language was at its worst when I was 13)
Should there be a rule / policy to cover this area?
Has anyone actually read this far?
If someone replys with STFU does that mean they haven't read this far or just a lack of imagination?
[/list:u:2pu7qb5o]

[mudder]

darn it the website censored me and put a load of ****ing *****'s in ...

[Avatar]

I'm not connected to the game at the moment, so I can't direct you to a specific place to find documented info. I can say for certain that cursing is not allowed on public channels. Most imms will give a warning and then apply a no-shout to person abusing the channel.

The problems that you'll encounter as you bring up the issue is that:

A) We all know that the imms volunteer their time. Noone is being paid to be a 24/7 monitor of the public channels.

Even if you see an imm visibly online, they may be away from the screen or they may have the gossip channel turned off, so they may not be seeing the same activity that you see.

B) People often disagree regarding the definition of cursing. Something that sounds simple and offensive to one person may not be offensive to another person.

[Alberich]

sheesh, time for another one of these thread again? Please refer to the other times we've gone over this:


[url:bn8qaat0]http://www.slothmud.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=1697&postdays=0&postorder=dec&highlight=language&start=75[/url:bn8qaat0]
[url:bn8qaat0]http://www.slothmud.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=675&postdays=0&postorder=dec&highlight=language&start=15[/url:bn8qaat0]


oh, and stfu

[Guinex]

*Yawn* Please take a moment to STFU!

[Leaf]

Well the only difference I see is that back like 2yrs ago. If you even used
STFU on gossip it's an automatic noshout even the word "Damn" was
noshouted. Now a days on Sloth, no1 cares.

Ppl has gossip Dipshit and was not noshouted. So like was said before, why
not code words to be blocked from Sloth on gos automatically?

And if any1 says to "STFU" to me, all i can say is GEAD (Go eat a dick!)

[Medios]

Can we just remove gossip instead?

Then maybe everyone will finally stfu.

Mike

[12345]

Wait a sec... All this because Elsie might have been offended? Did she become a newbie suddenly? Last I looked, these were her levels:

[40w 40m 40c 31b] Elsie has calmed down ... a little

I'm thinking she's been around gossip long enough to get a feel for how people act on it.

Generally, if someone (like a newbie) asks an honest question, they get a mostly polite, if sometimes curt, reply. 3x40's are generally supposed to know what's going on.. even if some of them don't seem to know what Limbo is

[Akasha]

I assure you I speak not on behalf of the rest of the immorts. This is my own personal thoughts on the subject.

stfu - my opinion is, it depends. I don't agree with censorship any at all. I am free-speech no matter what. If someone offends me with their language, I ignore them in the future. I'm sure I've offended some ppl with my language in the past as well.

If, and that's a very big IF, I'm not in another window scripting or otherwise building/modding or working on the mud in other ways, I will 1/2-way monitor what is on public channels. BUT, the way I see terms like stfu are jovial most of the time. So often in life friends, co-workers, and other socialites say things to each other that outside ppl deem offense or derogatory. I know I work with a guy who I tell to stfu at least once every time we work... and no offense is taken by either of us.

I see Sloth as a huge community, not everyone likes each other, and no one person like everyone else. But they are all on here and working together to a common goal and often agree to assist each other even though they might not like each other. I don't see many aged veterans of this game (meaning play time > 1 year, often the case is more than 5 years on here) complaining about being told to stfu.

This is because you should treat this game as though you are one big family. You may not like Alberich or Autolycos or Medios, but if they can tell you to stfu one minute and then come get your dead carcass from some obscure area, smile about it and not ask for payment in return, what complaint do you have? If you don't have siblings (which btw I don't), you have never had your sibling tell you to f**k off, and mean it in both a derogatory and jovial sense.

I view language on Sloth like this:
Unless the language is directly focused at someone who is being offended, degraded, or the like, I only ask for the participants in the conversation to not take it too far, which usually works with no further involment on my behalf. Now those few times that the language is directed at a player who is offended by it, IF I'm watching I do ask that it stop immediately, but as I said before, of every 5 hours I'm logged in, I'm probably spending about 4 hours in another window working on something. So I'm probably going to miss most of gossip stuff.

As far as minors go, my 16 year old cousin can and will curse you out so bad that even some of the hard-cores would blush. Where I work at, I've heard a 10 year old tell his brother to go f**k himself. Minors dont learn profane language from Sloth, I'd be surprised if a minor comes to play here that not only knows how to tell someone a f**k phrase, but also knows how to do it as well.

That's my take on it. So, if I ever ask you to chill, please just do it, don't make me have to silence you... I don't want to censor, but if I'm forced to do so... <blank>

Akasha

[alias]

A day I don't tell a co-worker, friend or my boss to f-off or stfu or get the f out of here is an extreme rarity. I try not to swear in front of children or at a restraunt but sloth isnt like either of those, its a place of recreceation. How many times have you been to a ball game and not heard someone cursing at the ref cause their 7yr got a foul called on him? That I think is way more damaging than to see stfu in type across a screen but maybe thats just me.
I consider sloth a place of friends and family, I think sometimes everyone just gets a little sensative, and should just relax a bit. And personally if you can say it on network tv I think it should be fine for open channels. shit ass damn pretty much as long as you dont say **** it flies on tv. and so you know the difference between stfu and shut the **** up is the same as sheesh and shit.

random thoughts from disturbed mudder.

Alias

[Weasel]

..I wonder if I'll get noshouted again for gossing "WTF?"

[Autolycos]

you should get noshouted for twitching your nose, you little vermin!!!

oh, and by the way, STFU's for everyone!




wonderful, a drive by stfu'ing

[osric]

You know the roman alphabet can be used to type some really mean stuff sometimes, maybe we should just get rid of it!

[Nascosto]

if it really bothers you - you could write a #sub to replace those bad bad words... 'stfu' could become, i don't know, 'i love unicorns and rainbows!', wtf could be err.. 'my cat's name is mittens'. whatever floats your boat.

[osric]

Now thats hilarious!