Members's nick and bad words
 

Because after my PMs with all Councils two of them asked to start this topic here (and debate it here) and some of them were "for" prohibit at least some English bad words - I've opened the thread here. The problem is...

I didn't see any rule saying it's prohibited or not permitted to use some nicks, but... Last time one memeber from my country used as a nick some Polish vulgarism word which means after translation into English "dick" (very bad meaning of penis).
Maybe we should prevent somehow to join at BU with any vulgaism nicks or warn members using such nicks?

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Hm... why not? If the purpose of warning/banning people with vulgar and/or insulting language is to keep the board free of such language, then it sounds only logical to me to apply the same measures to people with vulgar or insulting nicks. I mean, if someone calls himself "d*ckhead" (and the asterisk is not meant to represent a "u" here! :D ), I reckon I could live with it... although we certainly don't need that here. But there might also be someone who chooses some racist statement for a nick - imagine we had a "n*ggerk*ller" here... we wouldn't want that, now, would we?

So I'd say we extend the rules to include vulgar, insulting or in any way discriminating nicks here.

Of course, there is no strictly defined line to separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, and in such cases, the Council members might have to vote.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

the problem is that some nicks are 'vulgar' in some languages. It is impossible to translate every word and exclude/remove them from the forum.

For an example, in Holland the name "Dick" is normal. Its just a name, but when you read it here, you probably think of something else... dirty minds! :P

So, what if a normal user, does like me, and enters his frontname? I think users will already look odd at this guy... ;)

Can someone post me some names which are 'vulgar'?

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Vulgar, I disagree, but insulting/racist ones I agree.

I would have no problem with a guy who calls himself BigBalls007, PileOfCrap or HotPussy

Maybe I would rant a bit for nicknames such as 8==D(_o_) though.

But what T Wrecks said, I would certainly say a word or two to a guy having a nickname with racist connotation.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

yes, I think it's simply not possible to have all names which might be vulgar in some language in a list, and as stefan pointed out we'd need different lists for different languages. so that just cannot be done in my opinion, but hey, this is the home of the weird ppl, maybe someone collects them :D

I dont mind the users name as long as he's not posting shit here :)

€: banning ppl with insulting/racist names or at least first let'em suggest to change them is of course a 'to do'

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Yes a difficult grey area issue.
But i think it's a good thing to watch users nicks and the words they write.
To continue on Stephans saying even a lastname "De Cock" would be a normal dutch name. So in theory a user registering as "Dick De Cock" won't realize hes doing nasty stuff.

I also like to mention IRC in this.
It was about yesterday or the day before. One user came on the IRC channel asked a normal question. When nobody answered him within 5 minutes that user went bezerk calling to the channel "HELLO PHEDOPILES" asuming some would reply to his insult. He left tho before i could ask him hwy he displayed such low behaviour.
I wanted to look up his IP address and ban him from future IRC sesions and from the BU forums. (Yes i was that pissed off).
What can we do about that kinda situations. ?
Maybe trace back the IRC logs and ban sucj ppl from all BU services in cluding viewing the BU home page. ?

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I was thinking of changeing my nick to dickmeister just to piss people off, but I think pussymeister is way better ;)

Seriously, insulting/racist names are subjective, and TBH I've had it up to my eyeballs with all the PC BS that's been going around. I tend to be un-PC just to make a point at how silly all the PCness has become.

Here in Canada, "husband and wife" has been politically corrected to "spouse and spouse", the bible has become illegal hate literature, a man got tossed into a prison simply for asking un-PC questions, we're all supposed to welcome foreigners into our lands with a tolerant smile as we get poorer and poorer, and if you raise questions about how democracy is failing you, you become a commie pig red neck right wing nut job. There is no middle road of reason anymore, everything is to be black & white. Oooops, did I say black & white? OMG sorry, I meant everything has become multicolor.

My view is that I don't see a need to ban of nicks that may be offensive to some people. I don't see any insulting/racist nicks in here, and if there are any, there are very few of them or I simply don't understand the language.

Besides, some offensive nicks can be rather funny, and I like a good laugh every now and then.

Well, that's all the spare change I have to toss around, and if I insulted anyone, I'm truely not sorry :D

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

yep, time can be spend elsewhere with more and better results than discussing such stuff :) ... but KWo is known for stuff like this, looks like he likes it :D ( no offense, currently no time over here for long debates over icq :) )

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Asking everyone to fit into a PC box is fine with me, but I just won't ever fit into one, let alone try.

Bots United came about at least partly because some of us fled the scene of an intolerant flag waving webmaster who wanted all of us to fit inside his PC box.

Let's not forget our origins.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Call me stupid, but I just figured this out 8==D(_o_)

PMB you have a colorful imagination, which is what I like the most about you :D

LMFAO!

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

@Aspirin - it was You one of the people wanting open this topic at Agora - I did so. :P
I guess, if some member will appear at BU with nick as "dick" in English or (the same after translation in Deutsch language) - You will be the same pissed off like me - after seeing the nick of this Polish guy.

[EDIT]
It's probably doable to make the list with collected all bad words in at least most used languges. It's sufficient if every moderator or every frequently visitor-member of BU will create the list of bad words in his own language and send it to admin of BU. And this list could be as the bad words of BU. After joining the member with some nick we dodn't like we can ask him what the country is he from and then - we will be able to recognize if he used the bad word of our list because he really wanted use it to piss off the people - with 100% knowledge of the bad word meaning - or he did so without any bad intention (like someone said - the same word in other country may not be as a bad word - other meaning).
It's probably doable - but maybe we don't need make so - since I've noticed only one member here with a pissing off nick.
[/EDIT]

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I'm against that. It's censorship. Only blatantly racist nicknames should be forbidden, and *maybe* very pr0nographic ones (let's not forget the age average).

@botmeister: anyone can be politically incorrect all the time, as long as he respects the others.

Luckily the BU community so far is the most respectful and mature community I've seen in ages... actually, the longer I see this "no politics" rule, the more I think that it shouldn't be here.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

yep, I don't see a hard problem there at the moment, but if KWo see's that differently ...

@pmb : that 'no politics' policy ... well, it's anyway not taken too seriously, is it ?

@KWo : Since we want to be a little bit democratic here and for sure a open forum, I think such stuff should belong here, the pm feature is for private stuff, not for such discussions, imo

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I have the same feelings. If I remember correctly, we wanted to avoid heated conflicts as were seen over at Nukebox. However the problem over there was a lack of respecting other peoples views by a webmaster, and not really due to what was being discussed.

I've become a believer in following fudamental individual rights, as opposed to following collective rights, or majority rights. However, in life compromises have to be made, so long as they are sensible and do not overly infringe on individual rights.

Censorship is a form of collective rights, where a group or majority may be offended by something, and wish to not see it. The individual who is censored has had his fundamental rights of freedom to express viloated. In my view, the right of individual must take precedence, however if someone is pushing their brand of offensive material onto another group that does not want to see it, then the individuals in that group are having their rights to view what they choose violated. The compromise is to ensure that those who don't want to be offended will only see the offending material if they seek it out, while those who enjoy the offending materials ensure that they do not push it onto other unless requested.

Having thought about this issue some more, I think the sensible thing to do is to have nicks (and sigs) fall under the same rules as the regular postings do. I think we do have rules in there already to deal with racist remarks and so on, and there really is no reason why Nicks and sigs should be exempt for these rules, or should fall under a new set of rules.

Now as for the politics rule, I think it is worth reconsidering so long as we have a designated forum for political discussions, then only those who wish to debate need to participate, everyone else can simply choose to stay out and not read the posts should they be offended by what is said.

@Everyone:

Does what I say seem like a reasonable solution?

BTW: Thanks to Kwo for bringing this up for debate.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I am yet to see a post by you that does not sound reasonable... ;)

Sounds like a good solution to me.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

sounds good to me too botmeister. Also , i think politics would be nice to have... we can always close a 'politics' forum if things get out of hand..

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I would say that you should really only ban certain racial slurs. I mean, how would you talk about Dick Cheyney if you banned bad words? Then there is the argument about the vernacular. I mean, I use curse words frequently. Most people around when I say them don't care. I don't use them in a vulgar way, usually. It tends to be either a metaphor or when I get frustrated/injure myself (like when I stub a toe).

However, not too many people use slurs everyday. I rarely ever hear anyone say the N word.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Thanks for that one, you made me LOL! :D

According to the existing rules, bad words are permitted, but are discouraged. In other words, you can say fuck, piss, shit and so on, but be tactful about it, and try to keep the use to a minimum.

When you're pissed off, let the words fly, I find it's good therapy.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

well, as the rules already say, they are permitted but discouraged. So whats the big deal here? ;) Some name like "Dick Cheyney" would still be allowed...

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Damn I spelled Cheney wrong.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I agree.

Now about the politics stuff, I suppose this needs another thread.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

Nice topic :)

unfortunately i tend to agree with most people in here... so all I can do is to write something that has already been said... so i wish to generally agree with remarks stating that this forum is too mature for censorship and that the rules demanding good behaviour will cover both nicks and signatures.

no time to lose.

Re: Members's nick and bad words
 

I would also just like to agree with most of you:) No need for rules beyond the current ones.