Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
"Suitable for small children" might be a good standard for the My Little Pony forums, but it probably isn't such a good standard for a forum meant for adults. And this forum is meant for adults, or else discussions of zombies, calibre's innards, and the reality of that dude with the red suit would all be censored.
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I could not agree more. To insist that a forum be dumbed down to the level of "suitable for toddlers" is insulting to every adult that reads this site. There is nothing wrong with assuming that a site about technical issues about consumer electronics and discussion of books will be read almost exclusively by people old enough to care about/understand consumer electronics and books to have heard a couple of "naughty" words before. As much as I love this forum, that stance is the most disappointing and embarrassing aspect of it. Almost every site I visit treats adults like they are adults.
A while back, I had a thread in the politics forum where the most popular, mainstream term for non-supporters of the US Tea Party was used. Later on, someone made a comment about "never being too old to learn about new sex terms", having never heard that tea-related term before (which even now I'm having to be careful not to say) and I made a joke about that being not nearly as bad as the new X and Y political movements, with X and Y being the slang terms for two commonly joked about on internet forums apocryphal sex acts. For that, the title of the thread was changed and every post that had the horrible, horrible tea-related word deleted. The thread was locked soon after that. And that was in the "walled garden", opt-in area for discussing politics and religion-- even
that area is supposed to be kept toddler-friendly!
Maybe there should be another secret opt-in area where adults are able to discuss adult (not pornographic!) topics and be treated like adults.