[PMC] Language rules

[MasterCommaThe]

Generally foul language (curse words and other explicit remarks) is socially unacceptable in public around children. As such when our players use it, younger players find themselves excluded from our community because it can't be avoided in global chat currently. I would like to propose that we add "Please keep language in global chat PG."

I think this will be accommodating to the varied audiences we have on our server, while unrestricted (assuming it is not abusive) speech can still be carried out in clanchat and PM.

Admins, please consider the above rule proposal.

[Guest Former Staff]

I think this is a very interesting idea, would you happen to have a suggestion for how we could implement this without drastically increasing the moderation of chat? Whether it be handling situations as they are happening or increasing the number of admin requests looking through logs, my concern is that this would greatly increase our workload.

 

 

Generally foul language (curse words and other explicit remarks) is socially unacceptable in public around children. As such when our players use it, younger players find themselves excluded from our community because it can't be avoided in global chat currently.

 

Here we come to a very important point. Who are we trying to draw into our community? Previously Reddit was a significant draw to our community and with it came people who are a bit more liberal with their use of language. We could change our generally friendly environment into one which is more restrictive in chat, which I am sure would make the community more friendly for young children to play on. I'm not too sure if that is the direction we should take though, we need to first go back to answering the question of who our community is aimed towards.

[Trooprm32]

Not interested in this at all. Young people hardly ever stay long, unless they are specifically playing with people they know in real life. Most of the time they grief, hack, ect and get banned quickly anyways. I do not think we should cater to this market.

 

I do not believe in censorship.

[SkrapssparkS]

We cater towards older people, we went by the general rule of curse words being allowed on our servers so long as they were not abusive. I think we could find middle ground though. A warning to new players that log in that says this server allows the use of bad language, just to warn new people of our mind set towards the use of bad language. I don't think we could go too far wrong with this.

[SkrapssparkS]

Long shot, would it be possible to write something that could sensor bad language at the prompt of a command e.g. /PGlanguage ect?

[Judge Dread]

We've tried language filters in the past, all it lead to was people trying every combination to get around the filter. I don't think it's our job to protect kids from bad language if a parent is worried they can turn off the chat client side.

[Silversunset01]

I suspect censoring people will have exactly the opposite effect of what we are trying to accomplish. I usually just keep half an eye on chat and if it starts to get *too* out of hand i pipe in, but our role isn't to play word police and i don't think it will go over well with the community as a whole if we try to play that game.

 

generally as long as chat isn't being abusive i feel that people should be able to express themselves with whatever language they feel is appropriate. 

[buzzie71]

If this is planned for implementation, I project that P players at least would collectively be up in arms over it.  There's going to be a backlash against the tightening of chat rules that is (for me) difficult to justify - we would be imposing restrictions on everyone in order to cater to a subset of the playerbase, and as much as I don't like it, their conception of this subset of the playerbase would probably be more in line with Troop's description (or in other words, "why should I give up my legality to cuss for people who probably aren't here to play nice").  Don't get me wrong, I find the intention behind this proposal to be noble, but I don't think this is the best way to carry it out.

 

I would agree that using a client mod to filter explicit language or disable chat is a more optimal solution.  That being said, perhaps a notice somewhere that the chat is M-rated (? I'm going by ESRB ratings :P) would be a good idea - though this is probably more useful for the parents.

[SkrapssparkS]

I don't think players would be against a command that would sensor chat only for the player that issued the command. If people do complain that people don't want to listen to them swear then I think that's just unreasonable.

[c45y]

I think allowing opt in censoring is the only way we could possibly get the community to accept this.

That being said, such a filter would be better served as a client mod than a server mod.

[redwall_hp]

I think it's fucking stupid, and would never support such a change. It's unnecessary censorship and moral policing that I, and many, many others want no part of. I absolutely have no problem with swearing, nor would I under any circumstance agree with the assertion that it's a problem.

Besides, we cater to a primarily older audience (which is a rarity that sets us aside from other public servers) and:

1. 10+ year olds swear plenty

2. we really don't want to be babysitting more then we already do.

[CROCKODUCK]

I have a 14 year old niece who stays with me who frequented P and I set up a simple chat filter to mostly focus on cutting out the fun adult conversations that sometimes come up (the very few times they do).

I'll give a first hand testimony that this is excessive. The answer isn't always censorship. We can't put the NSA out of a job folks.

In all truthfulness, if parents can't take the extra efforts to protect their kids from seeing bad words, then we shouldn't be held accountable. Trooprm also makes a good point that very young kids have the attention span of squirrels and rarely last beyond a week for frequent visits.

Do I agree people shouldn't be targeting the kids such as, kid says "hey I'm 12" and adult player says "hey fuck you" yeah that's not okay, that I would mute for and possibly talk to them about. We have to keep the thin line of peace between censoring and noncensorship but this suggested idea is far too much of it. Also what's our players age demographic for this age range? Like 1%?

We have bigger fish to fry aside from worrying about this honestly.

[Willravel]

Unfortunately, /mute isn't currently working, at least for some of us, so it's not as simple as temporarily muting and then PMing them. 

[Silversunset01]

Players also have the option to /ignore until the next restart if a particular user gets too colorful and they don't like it. I know it may not be ideal but it's there.

[MasterCommaThe]

If it is possible, creating a command for players to opt-in to a language filter would be a fantastic way to implement this. And I think you're right, it would be the only way not to cause an angry (cursing) mob.

Seems like we have a fair consensus about the language rating we're comfortable with (M-rated but non-abusive) as a default. As that is fairly unrestricted I see no reason to add anything to the rules related to our decision.

Thanks for the discussion, and please feel free to add any more opinions. 

[SirTacoface]

If it is possible, creating a command for players to opt-in to a language filter would be a fantastic way to implement this. And I think you're right, it would be the only way not to cause an angry (cursing) mob.

 

 

That would be interesting, I like how most MMO games I've played have an auto filter that replaces FUCK with !@%$ as a standard. The players can turn the filter on/off when they please. Minecraft is mostly geared towards kids, so we *should* expect more children. (who generally can't be around a negative/vulgar setting)

 

Though, I don't think this would be possible with signs, people can type whatever the want on the signs. Hell, sometimes on Creative I put at spawn "Don't be or build a dick." Maybe it would be a good idea to remove it...