This needs to be discussed & Clarified

Serious & valid posts only.
No flaming,baiting,insults etc.

The posters on these forums are a variety of nationalites & with each of those nationalities having their own sense of conduct as to which is acceptable & which is not, can( & more often than not) cause some dissention.

Rather than see this continue, it would be nice to see a defined list on the rules page or in the 2 stickies regarding forum moderation. As they stand, I cannot see, with the obvious exceptions, as to what constitutes swearing.

With such a defined list, I feel that it would benefit both the moderators & posters in that we, the posters know exactly where the limits lie & if crossed, cannot fault moderators for their subsequent actions.

Moderators, at the 1st sign of any dissent, please lock & hide the thread.

I hope that everyone posts a sensible comment.
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Moderators, at the 1st sign of any dissent, please lock & hide the thread.

Just a few of the headlines, in no particular order:

No swearing
No incitement to commit criminal acts
No flaming, or incitement to flame
No commercial posts
Try to keep to the topic

There are a few more, but that should get you guys started.


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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I think those are pretty much standard, so to speak.

What I would like to know is why is d**n swearing while b***h is not?
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I.D. The topic of this thread is the definition of swearing. please post your comments on that. Thank you.

This really does need clarifying & I don't want to see this thread locked un-necessary.
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Sorry Mark, can't see that working, as without a doubt, any antagnosim will eventually creep into the main forum.
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I have suggested before that this politics forum only be accessed by a password. It appears that is not what the admins here want, so fair enough.

I hope that I can clear up some of the confusion in regards to swearing or cussing on the forums.

Since SETI@Home is hosted on servers located in Berkeley, California, U.S.A., we tend to lean toward American English uses of cussing or swearing. Generally, we allow for PG-13 rated posts, which means words such as shit, damn, hell and ass are allowable. Anything harsher will require moderating.

We do ask that you keep the cussing appropriate, to a minimum, and non-derogatory. For example, while shit and ass are allowed, we cannot have people saying, "You are a stupid piece of shit!" or "You're an ass!"

Also, since most of our Moderators speak English with a few exceptions, if there is swearing in another language that we are not aware of, I'd ask that a native speaker use the Red X to bring it to the Mod's attention so we can at least verify using a machine translator and react accordingly.

For reasons that should be obvious, SETI@Home does not have the resources to setup, manage through secure access and proper age verification, nor the interest in setting up a private sub-forum for the explicit purpose of being able to use adult language unfettered. If you simply cannot control the use of your own words, I recommend you visit any of the other various forums that do allow such language on the internet.

Of course, we reserve the right to review any post individually to decide if the intent merits moderation. This isn't to give the appearance of an autocracy, but to give us enough leeway to maneuver through sticky posts of questionable nature that may warrant hiding despite not being explicitly against any hard rule.

The bottom line here is that we're all adults. Let's use our best judgment when posting, and try to show our complexity through mastery of our native language. I think you'll find that if you do that, you won't have a need to use cussing or swearing to get your point across.

-Fred
SETI Forums Admin
setiforums at ssl.berkeley.edu

Many thanks for the clarification. Your post has answered the questions raised. Please lock the thread(& hopefully, not hide it, as it can serve as a reminder).

Again, thank you.

Regards

SB

Edit: - or even better...add your post to the politics moderation sticky.
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Thanks Fred, I think that sums it up pretty neatly.