User blog:WaglingtonŒ/Rediscovering Lost Values

''“Attention all citizens! To assure the fairness of elections by preventing the disproportionate expression of the views of any single powerful group, the government has decided that the following associations of persons shall be prohibited from speaking or writing in support of any candidate.” ''

President of the wiki, Parax, voice of the community, Nults McKagan, renowned and charmismatic speaker Lord Andew Mallace, and even the endless and nameless bestowers of "kudos," - everyone, every proud user of this fine and elder wiki, I speak to you all regardless of your stance on the matter at hand as an equal partner in your endeavours as well as my own. Though, to my genuine and sincere surprise, despite our equal partnerships and friendships, we still continue to treat so many new notions polarizing beyond belief. Considering this, it is my burden this fine nigh-summer day to voice my own opinion on a matter that has plagued our community time and time again.

"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster." If I may, I will take the words of Tzu to heart and subsequently apply them. President Parax, I direct my onslaught first and foremost to your words. You ask why we need to curse so badly - you ask why we cannot simply have a "nice, civil conversation." I'm curious: do you really believe that profanity, applied in any way or any situation, instantly invalidates any statement that might happen to follow?

If I just so happened to make an intelligent statement, would using so called "crude," language instantly degrade it to the level of incoherent slobber produced by a second grader? You claim that chat is a place for us to converse with each other - by all means, it certaintly is. So why limit our communication so heavily? You inquire as to why we need profanity at all - are you kidding? Of course we don't. In fact, having it here would change so little that there may as well not have been a discussion of any sort to pass or, so to say, shoot to down. So why, exactly, must we fuss over it?

You mention that in virtually every environment where this community happens to migrate to, bar this very site, profanity essentially comes as second nature. When we play on any Minecraft server, we quite literally curse like sailors. I inquire once again: does this degrade our experience at all? No, on the contrary it allows us to express our thoughts more to our liking. No, of course we don't need profanity in chat. We don't even need chat. What I'm attempting to express is that we also don't need to censor ourselves so heavily that we're essentially speaking in a 3rd grade classroom without the teacher looking. You cannot contest this - you've seen it yourself, you've seen it everyday, and you will continue to see it demonstrated profusely in our chat room until the day you leave.

G-man claims that profanity is used in story content to "extend our vocabulary for the purpose of story writing." Permit a demonstration. Profanity in works of art is typically used by characters to more thoroughly express their personalities and convey messages to whomever they may be speaking to. We like to call this dialogue. What, if may I ask, is the primary purpose of having a chat in the first place? Are we not characters in our own story, so to say, conversing and otherwise congregating with other colorful characters using the diverse art of dialogue to communicate? What is so different from the characters we write about and our own friends and comrades, especially when the characters we bring to life are mere extensions of our own selves, albeit different shades of our immense spectrum of colors, our in this situation, personalities? Emotions? Thoughts? Feelings?

"Same thing above, not to mention that I really don't think we can handle it. When we started allowing all forms of language on mainspace pages (stories, biographies, etc.), words otherwise meant for emphasis were being used every other line (hate to point fingers Ned, but you're a prominent example o_o. I'd also like to direct you to our adventures on other chats, Minecraft, Cards Against Humanity, etc., where literally every sentence contained the f-bomb or other form of profanity). Yes, users who abuse it in chat can simply be punished, but why have it in the first place (Mall pointed out how this suddenly came up after G kicked Nults; this can be counted as an argument against the vote as I've noticed that whenever a user gets punished for breaking the rules, a great ton of drama or rule request pops up immediately after)? Why do you need to curse?"

Yes, it is very true profanity is used profusely on other outlets, as I've said time and time again. However, allow me to counter this claim of "words being used for emphasis being used for every line," with another synonymous claim. Potato, a word originally used for comedic effect, is indeed used literally every other line in chat and has virtually become one of our most used words. Line breaking, originally used to emphasize important points in an argument or claim, is now used for nearly every statement made on chat no matter the quality, not to mention its other use...

My point is that these words that are so taboo to use in chat environments are, as the name implies, simply words. Nothing less and nothing more. They are words, and yes, they have gathered a negative connotation, but the fact that most of these words lack a set definition or even a concrete appropriate usage should be evidence enough that they are mere words used for common and simple communication, much like, in chat, the usage of the word potato or the line breaking technique.

The fact that we use these simple words so profusely in every other environment is proof enough that we can handle them. There is nothing to be said that can dispute this. None of us here are eight years old, and there is no mother we can run and cry to because we saw a bad word on the internet. Again, if an underage user is here, not only are they here at their own peril but are also breaking the wiki code of conduct.

Have you been to middle school at all in your life? Whether you were in 8th grade recently or many years in the past, you should be aware that 13 year olds tend to swear even more than their elders. Nay, much more than their elders. Yes, this is likely due to their exposure to persons or people much older than them, but this is outside of our control and even further outside our realm of responsibility. Everyone on wikia, regardless of their age, is here at their own risk.

''"New users may be turned away if they're constantly seeing profanity in every discussion; they came to socialize, not watch us—as part of me perceives it, and if I'm wrong, I apologize for the misinterpretation—try to act "cool" with our new curse words (and before anyone says "that's their fault", that would be awfully dismissive, considering how badly most of us want to expand our community. If we were bigger, I'd probably be more fine with it, but not now when our circle is this small). Users who don't wish to be exposed to it will misinterpret and get upset, and subsequently the conversation will find itself going off-topic and—true to our nature—become heated. Drama drama dramaaaaaa. In this case, it doesn't matter that it wasn't the intended effect because of how easy it would be to avoid it." ''

Truth be told, even though we are always searching for new users to join us, we also would likely rather not have one that screams and runs away the second they see a, God forbid, censored cuss word that holds zero actual weight at all as anyone who has read this blog should know by now. If you persist in this flawed point of view, why would having more users make a difference? Whether we were a massive community or a tiny one, a new user would be enticed or deterred basically at the same rate.

Swears do not make things more heated, by any means. Perhaps in other, more conservative communities, the use of "strong," words may spur on debates. But considering how, once again, we profusely use these words everywhere else (and I mean everywhere) and the communication is almost exactly the same, can you really say we get in arguments more there than we do here?

I cannot say that this argument will change anything, other than perhaps one or two peoples' minds, especially considering the very hard-headed stance some moderators take on this issue and the, dare I say, copious amounts of sycophancy being demonstrated by other users of less influence. However, every great cause has had its moments of doubtful victory; and while allowing the usage of profanity in chat is hardly a great cause of note, I refer you to the musings of a wrinkling old fool:

"Everything deserves a song to be written about it, it's just that some things don't have any willing composers."

Even if this changes nothing, I am glad that at least someone may have read it and found it worthy of reading. In the end, we're all great friends, we just don't know it sometimes.

Peace, Love, and Empathy.