Really no swearing?

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Eh, personally I'd like to see the swear-filter go for the non-children's boards, but I understand contextual rules, and the way this one is enforced is less "no swearing" than "no abusive or excessive swearing", which is vaguer than I'd like but still reasonable. What cracks me up though is the swear filter itself, censoring f**k, s**t, and even p****, but letting through certain variations like BS and f**ktard, though I fully understand the limitations of the program vis–à–vis endless word combinations. I really wish it would let me say a**hole without jumping through hoops or pluralizing it to a**holes, that word is just too perfect for too many situations to block out.

Swear words have a time and a place, they exist in the English language for a reason. However, they are not always appropriate in all contexts. Anyway, there isn't blanket ban on them never being used at all and the site does have a swear filter if they are used occasionally. The rule is enforced when they are used inappropriately, which it needs to be on a family friendly site, but not always, it may not be enforced when they used in some occasional contexts. It's up to the discretion of the mods.

Son of a biscuit-eating bulldog! I would gladly pineapple-slap the unholy snot out of the next greasy dipstick who suggests that profanity is a necessary part of any forking conversation!

Of all the superating puss-bucket topics to fight over ...

Do you have any evidence - psychological research, etc., to support your assertion that swearing is harmful to children?

Unfortunately, I'm quite familiar with irrational prudes (typically some sort of authority figure) trying to force their arbitrary rules on others. Because of that, I've told teachers that I will not allow my children to be punished if one of them were to fall on the playground and yell f*ck.

When I worked at Nortel during the tech boom, I had a colorful manager. On more than one occasion when our project was running behind, he'd pound his hand on the table and yell at the software developers, "If you don't get this done, I'm going to cut your f*cking balls off!" It never bothered me, or any of my co-workers as far as I knew. It reduced my respect for his abilities as a manager, but I would never suggest people should be forced to behave in a manner that earns respect.

Getting back to the specifics of my OP, it seems clear the rule against swearing isn't enforced, and that if someone points out a mistake I make in a post, I'm free to post back, "Oops, I f*cked up."

Given that, I suggest the rule be removed. The prohibition on abusive language can remain, so if someone calls another person a f'ing idiot, or even just a useless idiot, moderators can intervene.

And the correct solution in a free society is to exercise your choice not to engage in discourse with that person.

I think most people can recognize that if a greenpeace forum were to ban the word "Republican", it would be arbitrary and irrational. I'm sure there's people that are offended by the word Republican, just like there are people that are offended by the word f*ck. Neither word is objectively harmful though.

Profanity is the final refuge of inarticulate people possessing small vocabularies.

Any communication that is not direct and explicit and relies on a person "just knowing/naturally understanding" is nuerotypical by nature. The fact that some people on the spectrum can learn these contexts and neurotypicals will misunderstand the contexts intended at times does not change this. Asking people who are literal by nature to figure out when the "ban" on swear words will be enforced and when it will not be enforced is just going to cause a lot of people to use swear words at the "wrong" time and not use them at the "right" time whatever that is.

In other threads there are debates about whether Wrong Planet is too harsh or wimpy. A lot of this could alleviated with explicit rules, instead of people being expected to understand Love and Dating is moderated very differently then The Heaven. I have been a member since August 2013 and I had no clue until fairly recently that threads were moderated differently.

Yes I agree too.

I was dumbfounded a couple of years ago on this site when someone asked if they could recruit participants for research, and they were told to get permission from Alex first, as this is "the official procedure". I asked if I could please have a link to where it is stated that this is the official procedure, because I couldn't find it anywhere. I was then told "it isn't stated in there anywhere, but for the safety of members it is the action that moderators take."

I'm not sure how we are expected to follow official procedures and rules if they are stated vaguely or not stated at all. To me, "swearing is unacceptable" means it is not allowed, period, and that there is no "sensible" use of swear words.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer by mistake while knocking in a nail, what would you yell other than a profanity that adequately expresses yourself?

Usually a loud inarticulate scream or two, followed by "GOD! BLESS! AMERICA!", some growling and a few barks.

If you have to resort to using profanity to get your point across, then you're not really getting your point across, because people will be more likely to remember the coarse words you've used instead of the ideas you were trying to express. So when you have something to say, use profound language instead of profane words.

After all, documents like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence contain no profanity.

Like most things, profanity is all about how you use it.

For instance, this famous (and very NSFW) scene from The Wire demonstrates exactly how much expression can be packed into one word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdfwFDZGnUk

Not quite as expressive.

It still gets the point across without using profanity.

Does it? I'd think that "God bless America" would be the last thing I'd thinking of when I had a sore, bleeding and possible broken thumb.

Exactly. There's also a word which rhymes with "banker" which is offensive in most of the English speaking world, except for the USA.