Let's talk about "niggers." For real, though.

Is the spamming of racial slurs or racist speech something we as a board a cool with? I know we've generally erred on the side of free speech in the past, but who wants to invite their friends to a board that's littered with this shit? It makes us look like Stormfront junior. It's embarrassing. Even Lanzman had a rule against the excessive racism during his reign.

Thoughts?

Oh yeah, and since Paladin stepped down, can I be a mod?

Can't we just handle this under the general don't be an asshole rule?

Making it about racist slurs invites rule lawyering and trolling by skirting the rules. "He posted that clip where Larry Wilmore called the President his ..., so why can't I post my six pages full of racist bullshit!!??!!"

It would be great if there was an ignore feature you could check that would just automatically block those threads/posts. It would be handy when browsing at work.

I think that might be best achieved with a browser extension that blocks unwanted content in general, not just on WF -- giving each user exactly the kind of filter they want for their circumstance, and removing the mechanism from the site as far as possible, so as to discourage trolls from trying to find a way around it.

We're clearly not, though.

Can't say I'm a fan of the word, except to use in humour, contempt or to draw out a scumbag, but making it warnable? Outside the RR, sure, but inside? No.

And it'd be easy to get around, Storm and his "nagger" troll at TBBS having been a rather amusing example, or sticking pictures up of black and white minstrels to get around it.

Basically, the word itself is less a problem than the intent of those using it.

Just look at the Alt-Right movement. The pussified far-right have to hide behind a frog and words like 'cuck' these days. Make certain words and imagery verboten, and other ones just get co-opted by those of lesser spines, yet equal scumbagginess, of the neo-nazi brigade.

And as @Mrs. Albert suggests, a setting to replace certain words would be good. So that to non-logged-in users and/or those who toggle a setting, it gets replaced with, say, *fuckwit word deleted*

Aren't we? There are a few assholes posting racist shit, and everyone else makes it clear that this is considered assholish behaviour here.

I'll think about it.

By making this public, you are ensuring that you don't get honest answers.

And that's really what this is about, isn't it? More ammo to use against people.

You seem to believe your fellow posters are cowards, afraid to take a position on a controversial issue. The last decade has taught me that's not the case.

You're not even making sense. Packard isn't one to use racial slurs, but he's also opposed to a rule against them either. What "ammo" do I gain from that?

meh-I vote let'em keep shooting their mouths off. I prefer the douchebags to be out in the open.

Besides, counter arguments to them when engaged tend to at least describe how their bigotry is becoming obsolete in the parts of America that actually are the "melting pot"-how casual (white) racism is the achilles heel of the right.

OTOH-I do agree that blatant racism in thread titles could be NSFW territory for many of us. I wouldn't be opposed to amending the rules to keeping the more inflammatory language out of them.

I don't think it should be penalized, but should be left up to admin's discretion to simply edit thread titles. further attempts at blitzing the board would then be a matter of spamming/trolling rules we already (sort of have).

Ask Twitter how that worked out. You just end up with talk of "googles" and "skypes" instead.

Wait, didn't we used to have a no NSFW thread titles rule?

That's an excellent idea.

Which is still stupid, but I'm not quite so worried about my coworkers seeing that on my screen at work, or some rando on the train or a coffee shop happening to glance it over my shoulder.

I don't remember, but there's a lot of things that fall under that category.

so racists have to come up with a whole new set of custom terms?
the latest in anti-SJW trends.. they can call themselves "not-zhes"?

I voted yes, but really this is what I meant. And we do have a rule about spamming without contribution.

Voting yes on this issue is anti-american.

Most forum software I've seen has the ability to use a word filter, if not by default then by adding a mod. SF Debris's short-lived forum had one that you could opt out of in your forum profile, to turn the filter off and see what people had actually posted. While it's on, it was effective in both the original post, and in any quote made by someone. The only downside there was that if you had the filter off, and someone else had it on and quoted someone with a word that was filtered, the filtered word would appear in the quote box. So if someone is really worried because of work or pathetically thin-skinned friends/family, I think that a filter like this would be ideal. To be honest, though, if someone can't handle words, they might not be Wordforge material.

I've seen filters like that elsewhere. I think set up as an option might be worth doing if Xenforo has the ability.

I think that's the software the SF Debris forum was using before hackers fucked it up, but I can't remember for sure.

I recall TrekBBS had one they turned on for April Fools days, years ago. Changed "Bush" to "lollipop" and whanot.

The "censor via technology" option. Works great for China.

Because modifying a handful of words on one tiny little privately owned message board is exactly analogous to censoring the entirety of a nation-specific Internet utilized by 618 million users.

Meanwhile, in the Real World:

With Eye on Trump, Internet Will Be Backed Up in Canada
"Preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions"

The OP and the poll don't seem to distinguish between what are considered racist terms and actual racism. A perfectly valid thread that could spark honest discussion could contain the word nigger in the title. But hate speech and inciting racial violence should never be allowed.

I was sad to see the SF Debris forum go. It had some great good old fashioned nerdy sci-fi discussion going on. It was at that sweet spot in size where thoughtful discussion could still take place without being washed out by drooling retards making low effort posts.

Again, I'd suggest recommending some browser extensions instead. Enabling exactly one filter on WF wouldn't be as useful for at least three reasons: One, threads that quote benign use such as by Wilmore, for instance, or quote actual racism in order to discuss it, such as this one right here, would be affected; two, trolls would be encouraged to game that one filter and its setup specifically; three, you lot would have to decide what is filter-worthy once and for all, and you can just imagine the number of threads some people, in good or bad faith, will start in the Help Desk to ban or unban certain words.

Since the idea is for this filter to be a user-optional, I don't really see why this should be an issue. As long as it's user-optional, anyway. I would never support one that wasn't.