House of Cards GM Log

Swearing on the List

posted by Ginger at 10:20 PM, September 27, 2004 | Filed under : Netiquette & Play Procedures | Comments and Followups

Some things about the netiquette of swearing and other sensitive topics:

We prefer that people keep it clean on the list language-wise and use asterisks to blank out parts of naughty words. This is in part because some people read at work. I don’t think anyone is reading at a work address right now, but some people have in the past. Naughty words can get caught in corporate net.nanny filters. I would be very unhappy if anyone had to limit their participation or quit because a player got called into the boss’ office for profanity in game-related email.

Note: if you read a personal email account like gmail or yahoo on a work computer, you could get in trouble if the net.nanny monitors your browser, too. Unless you’re sure that you’re not monitored, you should assume you are.

I also hope that nobody is offended by the use of religious expletives such as “Christ!”, which comes from the Zelazny canon. I’m not very religious, as many of you know, but I respect that some of y’all may be, and don’t want to offend or upset anyone.

Please keep it in mind when you consider the list rating of various content that this game spans a lot of communities and your community standards may be broader than some of the other players’ community standards. I’d hate to have people leave because of sexual content, graphic violence, swearing, or other uncomfortable subject matter. The GMs are trying to respect player limits, and we appreciate the players helping us with that too.

• Asterisk out all but the mildest expletives because of the net.nanny issues.
• Limit detailed descriptions of violence, even when it’s very violent. Think Hitchcock in the shower scene in Psycho: say more with less, please.
• Limit detailed descriptions of sex/physical intimacy. Think the beach scene in From Here to Eternity, and fade to black, please. People who have read the latest Martin-Folly log: that was more detail than I would have sent to the list.

If you are posting something back to the list, it counts as going to the list. If you’re offlist and want to write more details than you post, omit or summarize the details you’re not posting.

Follow up: the trackback URL for this entry is: http://www.whiterose.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/4340

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