I don't know that it would be bannable unless you were rude and/or insisted upon using it or insulted people with it all the time.

I do believe it is mentioned at the beginning of the messageboard to try to keep the profanity out of the posts. They get in sometimes, though. It may be not be the same to have to use other words, I am rather fond of profanity myself, but if we have junior members it is decent of us to try to keep things clean.

I try to think of things in a PG-13 type manner for posting. I got this from another site and it works well. Maybe if you use it you could put a warning. I know that is WAY lame and will only encourage people to look anyways. Just a thought.

I don't have a problem with it, but some people might.

Perhaps if we put up a warning first?

I'm very much of two minds about this myself.  Certainly in my daily life, I consider myself a proud and adept user of profanity in all its life-enhancing modalities.  But I try not to swear in front of my kids.

(Means Deb and I say "<swallow>'king hell!" a lot...)

But on the board, I wanted to create an environment where our readers from more polite backgrounds are not swatted in the face all the time.

The old GEnie community model of creative asterisking might work.  I don't really want to get into censoring things, and I certainly say "damn" and "hell" in my own posts without even considering leaving them out, so I might well be shocking somebody...

What do others think?

This is a tough one, but on balance I'd say that the profanity ought to be discouraged, if not banned, on the principle that one can never know the sensitivies of everyone in the conversation and it's usually best to err on the side of caution.

On the other hand, it's a short step to casting a gimlet eye on bawdy content, which I would resist.

The key, I suppose, is whether the use of profanity is artistic or merely gauche. That, unfortunately, is a judgment call.

I think the old Genie asterisk method, coupled with mild moderator oversight, ought to do.

Mi dos centavos.

*sniff* Does this mean I can never quote Joyce again? *snuffle*

i don't think we should ban profanity, btw. i think most ppl would refrain fr. using it 'cept for justified occasions anyway--i mean, i don't think we're gonna have ppl running around swearing every other word.

i think message boards, lists, & the like tend to be self-policing about this, & i don't mean ppl getting jumped on by other ppl for swearing either.

To be honest, by the time myself and most of my classmates were ten or eleven we knew what was underneath all those asterixes and had even started to invent a few of our own.

It's not the children we're 'protecting' It's the parents of the children.

I don't see a reason for a ban. There is a note about it and it looks as the we all follow it anyway. If it comes up once in a while, it shouldn't be a big problem.

I don't think 's something that's going t' be a major problem here...
I used t' go t' a room where swearing was totally out of th' question.  Asteriks it, apostrophy it, just don't say it.  And this went for words like damn, crap and arse *could have a raging debate about th' spelling of that one, but won't*...which always seemed just stupid.  People knew what was meant, everyone did, so just blurring it didn't make a difference.
But, it was th' sort 'f room where people felt they were being opressed, and so would out right swear, and get banned for saying damn or something, and then come back and do it again.

This place isn't like that...people are...more grown up I think, and haven't been swearing much, 'n I don't think a ban is needed at all...unless someone keeps doing it 'n doesn't listen to 'no'...heh.

*hopes damn 'n bloody hell stay in th' okay zone though...wouldn't know how to talk without them*

most ppl in the us don't know what it means, 'cept perhaps as a mild sort of generic swear word. i would prob. use it myself fr. time to time if i remembered it existed. :)

Creative swearing story.

I was once invited to a fancy little get together by a friend who could not get a date and did not want to go alone.  I am not at all the 'fancy little get together' type, but I went.  Late in the evening as I was leaving, I stumbled across a conversation where a man was berating a woman for expressing her opinion, one that was contrary to his and therefore not worth hearing.  He berated her, and women in general, in rather high brow terms.  After he was done, the woman he was addressing looked very close to tears.  Another woman and a couple of men in the same conversation cluster looked shocked.

Being an outsider and a complete unknown and therefore immune from any consequences, I walked up to the man and told him that his tirade had amazed me.

"This has been an experience for me.  I have never before been witness to bovine excrement spewing from an equine posterior."

I bade them all a very good evening as I walked off and out of the party.

Mwahahaha!  (un)Creative asterisking for me!   And the really funny part is the fact that in RL, I do not swear as a general rule.  'What the heck' and 'this frikkin' sucks' are about the strongest phrases I use on a daily basis.  But you know, there is an upside to this.  When I do swear, it has an effect.  People tend to stop what they're doing and stare at me with their mouths wide open.  I'm highly amused by that.  Then again, I'm highly amused by almost everything except washing dishes, sweeping floors, and other people's injuries.  And coffee.  I'm most definitely not amused by coffee.