Increase of children means we will need alanguage filter

Go through the first 10 pages of that thread, and there's more than just swearing on there.

 

The real question is what triggered Assembler to post the first post. We don't know what the actual problem is besides language which sounds surprising to me as well as others in this thread.

 

I'm also interested in what trigered that for Assembler. There always have been swearing on this board, but it was always more like "this is a pain in the *** to fix my dear!" than "You're f***ING stupid you f***ing f***", as long as people are respectful towards each others I don't see the point of censoring profanities. Anyway people will find ways to make it so you understand the word they wanted to use and anybody with half a brain will understand the cussing anyhow.

 

I don't really see what you're talking about. All I see is a Yu-Gi-Oh picture of "pink eyes gay dragon", a couple times the word "gay" was briefly mentioned, and a bunch of pictures from somethingawful back when they were somewhat relevant. Besides, even if there was gay bashing, the posts are from 2004 and 2005.

Looking at the first 10 pages of that thread...

1. Picture of half naked Link, guy from Dragon Ball Z, and some anime guy with a bulging crotch.
2. Naked Santa advertisement.
3. Santa in bondage gear whipping a reindeer.
4. Knight holding a shield with a bare naked woman on it to distract his enemy.
5. GIF of Flanders getting a BJ from Marge behind a fence.
6. A currently non-existant image involving a bottle of sperm and some screwdrivers
6. Brief discussion on bukkake.
7. David Hasslehoff soap dispenser (guess where the soap comes from...)
8. A link to an image of some chubby guy wearing sexy lingerie with possibly a visible penis. (I can't tell, and I can't say I really want to)

This site has always had a primarily adult user base. Why should the adults have to change because a bunch of kids found the site and decided they wanted to be part of the community as well?

If I had to take a wild guess I would say that a user on here decided to let their kid(s) join the site, but didn't like what they perceived to be excessive swearing or "mature" content so they complained to ASSEMbler. Maybe a parent caught their kid(s) on here and didn't like what they saw, so they complained to ASSEMbler. It does seem awfully random to mention this now when the site has been like this since 2004.

It's not like kids on the internet haven't already been exposed to profanity. They're the ones that typically use excessive and unnecessary profanity online in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuVZ6Fx5z8Q

And this kid sounds like he's 8 or 9, maybe 10.

 

My point being, swearing isn't really the only issue (if we were to censor the site).

 

Sorry, I thought you were referring to the gay part.

Not that I'm advocating for more people to call each other fags or anything. I think using the word is disrespectful and insensitive even outside of a gay context, I'm just not horribly offended by it nor do I think the person who said is is automatically a homophobe (again, assuming it is not used in the context of a person's sexuality).

But yeah, language is definitely not the only issue.

 

Guys, I joined in September 2006 when I was 13 years old. I'm 21 now and I doubt I've suffered any brain damage from reading your posts, unless becoming familiar with NEC obscure hardware counts. As most of the other guys said, this forum is a pretty normal place, most users are very polite and except some specific threads (for example the completely offtopic thread or the I'm drunkne thread) I've never seen anything like ASSEMbler said in the first post.

 

In forums there are always sailors, most of them start random fanboys rants or fanboys fights and I haven't seen a lot of that here. But like others mention is not my site so, is not my decision. But I don't know what a child find of interest here unless it has the maturity a lot don't have to understand what the discussions are.

 

Like others have said this isn't a kids site so we shouldn't have to cater to them.

 

Prefer no filter, whatever though is their is one.

 

x

 

A voluntary swear filter would solve a lot of those problems, so that those browsing with kids ect in the room could activate it to filter swear words.

Overall I'm also against the filter idea (I know this isn't a vote though!). Being retro games centred it's an adult site primarily no?

 

x

 

+1 for an IRC channel. It works way better, and you can actually moderate it more carefully.

 

I don't see the problem. This is not a site intended to focus on children or expected to have children participate/contribute. Yes, there will be a few, but those are and should be the exception. Putting a language filter in or removing the chat feature (note that I don't even use it myself) does a disservice to the entire community here. Are you going to implement an internet-wide filter for lazy parents? No? Then what good is a filter or removing the chat going to do? There are MUCH worse things on the internet that children can easily stumble upon than a couple of bad words.

 

One way you could do it is have a splash page that all users (even existing ones) see when they visit the forums (for the first time after implementing it) that makes the user agree to a statement saying they are 18 years of age or older, and that they are entering the site with full knowledge that it's limited to 18 years or older. If they agree, then they'll be admitted to the site. If they don't, they won't be able to use the site any longer. Of course they could lie, but then you would not be liable for that. That's just one way to do it. I'm still not sure that that's necessarily the best way to go, but that's one route you could take.

You could be right about getting rid of the chatbox, though. As much as I enjoy it, it seems like it's caused a lot of arguments and bickering. I'm somewhat torn about that. I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.

I'm also curious, as are others here, as to what prompted this in the first place.

Aren't there any programs already available that will do this for the internet at large?

I thought we already had one of those a while back, but nobody was using it.

 

+2

 

IRC would work, but people just have to use it in order for it be worth while. Would be cool though

 

Sure, filtering out the occasional "fuck" and "shit" will fix all the problems we have. And I agree, a website for development ad obscure hardcore collectibles is definitely a buzzing hub for the audience below 15 years of age.

If you don't mind me making a suggestion by myself: I think you should ask PewDiePie to promote the forums to reach our target audience even better. And while we're at it, why don't we offer sex education courses. With the increasing amount of underage girls here at our hardcore gaming and development community, I believe that menstrual education needs to become an essential pillar of our value proposition.