A generic way of deleting expletives

[techieMoe]

Now that I am a fully fledged adult - or a pretend one at least - I've noticed that some places on the Internet (and this is one of them) are quite genteel compared to others. For example, I have an interest in folk music, so off I went to The Mudcat Cafe, which is a huge folksong lyric database. They have a thread based chat zone, so I read some of the posts.

What a bunch of losers they are! It was just one huge flame from one end to the other. So I left and felt disappointed. From the conversations you could tell they were 'adults'. Frankly I've met some very interesting and intelligent 18-25 year olds, and I'd rather talk to one of them than waste my time with ... etc. End of rant.

I think (though I could be wrong) that the idea behind fingal's rant is that we're trying to convey ourselves here at this forum as a friendly and intelligent group of people with a common goal to help those in need of Linux guidance, and flame wars and profanity don't help that image. At least, that's the point I was trying to get across.

[fingal]

I think (though I could be wrong) that the idea behind fingal's rant is that we're trying to convey ourselves here at this forum as a friendly and intelligent group of people with a common goal to help those in need of Linux guidance, and flame wars and profanity don't help that image. At least, that's the point I was trying to get across.

In essence that's it. I think I'd get annoyed if I had to witness endless flames etc. on this site, and we would just become a sink for time wasters. I suppose I'm also saying that I think a lot of the people on here are pretty civilised to start with, which is why I keep coming back again. You can't have a community without that mutual understanding and respect.

As for profanity - I don't like censorship either, but this is a 'public' forum and some of the users are only 12/14 etc. I don't feel comfortable exposing them to extremes of language, even though they know the words already.

[CodeRoot]

Are there a lot of kids here? I sort of imagined this would be populated mostly by adults...

Even if it is a natural tendency for one to assume (in thought) that the only people reading these forums are members - it is erroneous - there are a lot of people out there (including a lot of kids) reading these forums who are not members. Just check the Currently Active Users list sometime... It does not matter what the forums membership population is -- the world population includes many, many, many people of all ages.

The question should be - not "Who is the intended audience?", but "Who will be able to see it?"...

(The same problem exists with television...)

But I don't like swearing in front of kids...

Anyone who "swears" on these forums - does it in front of kids... (continually - for as long as it remains in the archives)

I think (though I could be wrong) that the idea behind fingal's rant is that we're trying to convey ourselves here at this forum as a friendly and intelligent group of people with a common goal to help those in need of Linux guidance, and flame wars and profanity don't help that image.

People who purposefully write [in ways other than proper english] in their posts aren't helping that image, either...

As for profanity - I don't like censorship either, but this is a 'public' forum and some of the users are only 12/14 etc. I don't feel comfortable exposing them to extremes of language, even though they know the words already.

--- as 'public' as it gets (world-wide). Some users could possibly be 5 or 8, too.

In addition to knowledge, there must be conscience, conviction, and practice...

The best way to delete expletives is to not generate them in the first place. The best place to delete expletives is in the mind, before they ever have a chance to leave it...

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

I think (though I could be wrong) that the idea behind fingal's rant is that we're trying to convey ourselves here at this forum as a friendly and intelligent group of people with a common goal to help those in need of Linux guidance, and flame wars and profanity don't help that image. At least, that's the point I was trying to get across.

it's good that this forum is like that. i've been in the official forums for distros and, although they know alot about the distro, alot of them are about as mature as 10 year olds who've just gotten access to the internet. (like i was at 10). ah well, i try to avoid sites like that as much as possible, so i'm glad this site is full of good people. it's also the general decency of the site that keeps people coming back.

all that's needed now is for the censor to catch windoze and M$. it really isn't nice to read that. i'm far from a windows fan, but i don't want windows users coming on the forums interested in linux, and seeing stuff like that. it gives us and linux a bad name.

one last gripe i have is people saying RTFM RTFM RTFM. that gets on my nerves a lot. sometimes the manuals for certain programs are crap and someone who's just got their first linux distro is not going to understand most man pages. i can imagine many people would leave linux if they come across that stuff. that's another kind of site/channel i avoid *cough* ##freebsd *cough*. anyway, rant over.