"will not" is too much of an absolute.

Any movment on this? Anything else I can do to get it going?

Have a cold beer Texrat

Hot coffee first.

I like the "may not be seen ..." language.

I call the question!

I STRONGLY disagree with the word censorship clause. I see absolutely no reason for it in a forum of mature adults.

Simply using a certain kind of language automatically doesn't mean that your opinion is somehow abusive, insulting, or otherwise outside the spirit of the community.

Discounting someone's reply only on the grounds of their choice of words is ignorant discrimination.

In the words of Penn and Teller, trying to stop people from swearing is ********!

I agree with you philosophically (except for the ignorant discrimination part-- too broad). In practice though, for this forum, I'm not too concerned with the language filters here. I think a few are quaint, but I actually enjoy throwing out a $#@^&%! now and then more than the actual verbiage.

Besides, as is driven home more and more lately, not everyone here is mature or adult.

I have often wondered what would happen if people simply translated "dirty words" into supposedly acceptable language and used that instead. It would remain just as offensive to me, but ok as far as greater society goes? For example, "eat s..t" is horrible, but "eat excr..." is fine? To me, they are both quite bad, but only the first is unacceptable? Weird.

Civilized behavior isn't the opposite of adult - au contraire, IMO. Generally, the fouler the language, the younger the emitter (or the less ... em, refined). Not to say there's anything wrong with the occasional expletive, but the filter should be in place to protect from the abuse, not the words themselves.

If I see a post with 23 bad words out of 40, I'd much rather have asterisks than replacements, because, frankly, if anyone suggests my mother is involved in questionable behavior it's not the wording that annoys me, it's the idea, the intent of the emitter. And replacing the words with equivalents allows the idea across.

The point of asterisks is to look at a post and, in the first 500 ms, see that it's peppered with ****s and *****s and ****. This allows me to conveniently jump over it if I don't feel like brushing against these kinds of people that day.

Also, replacing with equivalents also distorts the original meaning, for example, sh*t means all kinds of ... stuff, like excrement, but also stuff, as in someone's stuff, it's also an expression, interjection, the act of, a sum of ideas, etc. Ironically, replacing sh*t with excrement blocks most meanings except the bad one.

Oh, and, how does anyone tell that the replacement wasn't as the original poster intended? This could lead to confusion.

So, I vote for asterisks. Or even better, special asterisks to let the reader know it was a replacement, or an intentional self-censorship. I sometimes posts asterisks.

***** *** ******* *** ******* *** ** * ******.