I don't believe there is any necessity for any technical measures to be taken. I think the policy on words-to-use can be simply stated as the words you would use when in polite company, and people will tell you either through /msg or by voting if they disapprove of your choice of words to express a situation.
As can easily seen with your above examples any technical measure would be prone to weird errors, for example somebody named Richard (whose nickname happens to be Dick) could be quite offended by the misspelling, and if I call something (or, although I haven't felt the need for that, somebody) a bastard (child), I wouldn't want to see those words changed behind my back.
The janitors have no place in changing the wording of questions except maybe if expressly requested by the original poster.
perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ; # The
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' # web
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[d/l] |
I downvoted this. Here's why:
First of all, the "many Perl Monks take offence quite
easily" argument is bogus. I've seen no supporting
evidence for this idea, and the spirited, reasoned
discussion surrounding this node makes a
nice counterexample. By and large, we're a mature enough
community to handle a light sprinkling of obscenity.
Second, we already have a perfectly good content
control system: Nodes to consider. The two
points that make consideration so much more effective than
"magic behind the scenes" are:
- Consideration brings in the community. Take the
recent OJ poem, for example: it gets
considered, the community debates, and enough people are
interested in keeping it around that it stays. "Magic
behind the scenes" incorporates the judgement and opinion
of whoever wrote the magic, no more.
- Consideration is adaptable. Some nodes are blatant
trolls. They get deleted. Some nodes seem trollish in
isolation, but are relevant to the discussion at hand.
They stay. "Magic behind the scenes" cannot adapt to
context or exercise the judgement of a diverse group of
community-minded monks.
Finally, I find this kind of automated, knee-jerk
censorship grotesquely distasteful. It's exactly the kind
of bureaucratic idiocy that you despise in your last
paragraph.
--
:wq
| [reply] |
It may be censorship and PM is not exactly a childerens sites but I have noticed many people on PM that take offence quite easily.
Heaven help us from living in a world where "people take offense" is a criteria for automated censorship. That road leads to stupidity.
If there's a problem, it is better solved by concensus and peer pressure.
| [reply] |
This reminds me of a story I heard about one of the earliest ISP content filters. For some strange reason, a particular website broke when viewed at home (with a "kids-safe" account), even though this same page worked fine at work. It turned out the javascript code was being filtered and 'TrashItem = 10' was being transformed into 'Tracrapem = 10'. ;-)
I heard that story a long time back, but I still don't like the idea of automatic filters....
-Blake
| [reply] |
To paraphrase a wise man, "Those who are willing to sacrifice a little liberty in exchange for a little order deserve neither and will lose both."
If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me. | [reply] |
| [reply] |
