How much do you censor?

[Dixie McCall]

How much do you censor your members? I almost never censor and have very lax rules in terms of foul language. How about you? The only thing I'm tough on are members who are perpetually offended and report even the slightest of common foul language or dissent. They are the ones I would likely ban-you know the perpetually whiny ones... The, "everyone gets a trophy." crowd. lol

 

[Bain]

I censor bad language and also don't allow any attacks on current or past members.
Pretty much the rules that I have for my radio show (FCC guidelines) are the same that are attached to my community.

 

[Mendalla]

I use the censor function to *** some foul language. And we kicked someone for insisting on dropping COVID conspiracy and anti-vax nonsense all over the forum after repeated requests to keep it the thread we gave for that purpose. Explicit sexual and violent images and language are a no-go (I used to write erotica but wouldn't promote that writing on my site out of respect for that rule).

But the moderation on WC2 is generally pretty lax and there's been a few times I've pushed the mods to suspend someone and ended up seeing them just get a verbal warning (i.e. not even any points). At this point, I've kind of given up. To get the kind of moderation I am used to on some other sites, I would have to do it myself and then I'd become the bad guy, even in the eyes of some of the pleasant, sane people.

Footnote: I was part of the founding "Trinity" of the site (I think I was the Holy Spirit ) and one of the others kind of laid it out that we admins would leave moderation to the mods outside of dealing with spam and obvious troll accounts. I have broken that unwritten rule a few times, esp. while they were gone for a while, but I am being a good ape these days.

 

[briansol]

words, very little
content / racism / etc heavily

 

[motowebmaster]

There are roughly 20 words that are automatically censored in XF settings, and an Acceptable Use Policy that the Moderators are guided by.

No discrimination, politics, retaliatory, & etc - we're boring

 

[Forsaken]

I mostly do not censor, but I do step in for racism, harassment/sexual harassment and misinformation (outside of discussions anyways).

I only step in for misinformation if it's actually problematic, or if it becomes an actual argument.

 

[imno007]

My only hard rule as far as behavior goes is one line: "Please be polite at all times, even when being critical or disagreeing." That's it. Nothing actually about "bad" language at all. However, I think members often largely take their cue from admins and moderators, because even though I don't have an official rule for it, everyone on my forum is almost frighteningly well-mannered, lol. Hardly anyone ever "curses," and that's been the case for years. Very occasionally there will be some discussion of politics or religion, and I'll politely steer people away from it before it goes on too long. Of course, if politics and religion were actually what the site was focused on, everyone might not be so polite and there might be a little more cursing.

 

[wedgar]

We don't really have any issues with members needing to be censored. Our members are pretty civil for the most part.

 

[Max Taxable]

Sports board, nothing is censored. Totally freewheeling. Never any problems. Lots of foul language though. But, it's a "locker room" type environment.

 

[Mouth]

There was a blog post around that I saw some years back, from a google employee, that said Google algorithms dropped the value of your site in search results if expletives were outside the normal range. No definition of normal range given, but from that I ensure my censor words block out expletives and swearing.

content / racism / etc heavily

 

[Suzanne O]

I probably should look at this more often but people think it's childish to have words in the swear filter. when it happens on their forum the complain about it. They're lax and won't put one in

 

[motowebmaster]

There's only nine actual profanity-type words I censor, both proper and mis-spelled versions. Plus a few discriminatory and politcal words.

I recommend not censoring words, unless an issue arises and you need to do it. For example, I did censor the "f" word from day one, but added the alternative-spelled versions over the years.