“The past few days have seen a large number of people commenting on this site who have been jerks, who have moaned and groaned over nothing, and who have been, really, just negative nellies about everything.”

… Or was that really Ned Flanders?!

Negative Nellies … What the ..!

She’s climbing the mountain to the nunnery and stubs her toe

“OH EFF!” She yells

Then “Oh Sheet I said F!”
Then “Oh eff I said Sheet!”

Then “Oh stuff it I didn’t really want to be a nun anyway ..” and she walks back down the mountain again.

When it comes to stopping swearing I think its a losing fight … like it cor not.

Joking!

Actually I see both sides here.

Coarse or sailor-like language is so commonly used and so inescapable these days that anyone unaware of it really must have been living in a cave. Plus I really don’t think people have a right NOT to be offended or to have everything so nanny-sanitised it becomes meaningless pap devoid of passion or strength. Wowsers give me .. well the same sort of thing dysentery does!

Quite frankly, those who are over-fussed by & hyper-sensitive to swearing are (often if not always) hypocritical neurotics who can take a long walk off a short jetty as far as I’m concerned!

(Refer to Mary Whitehouse {spelling?} in the UK around the 70′s~80′s? for example & the superb “Goodies” send-up of her.)

Euphemisms (eg. frak, gosh-durn, etc ..) can be handy even creative & kinda fun but yes, they are – as someone else noted here – weasel words hiding what we really think and pulling punches. Lets call our spades spades folks!

On the Other Hand though :

Yes, it _is_ Phil’s blog – he does have the right to set his rules for it& be respected. What Phil says & wants for his own blog goes & I’ve no argument with that. By and large he does an excellent job with this site.

Moreover excessive rudeness and obscenity is neither pretty nor clever nor good at all. Respect and consideration for people is not just making everything more pleasant for everyone but it also makes your point much more effective into the bargain. Name calling and invective can entertain sometimes if done well – it very rarely if ever persuades or convinces.

Plus we’ve got the whole classroom use point.

Its balancing act & a tricky one which I reckon the BA generally gets pretty much right.

I try to abide by the BA’s rules here.
I try to be respectful and polite.
I may not always succeed ..
… But I *do* try.

I even make sure I use ‘unaided eye’ rather than naked eye for telescope /binoc_less astronomy!

NB. One of the many perils of a net-nanny system is that for using ‘that one word that refers to an unclothed state + eye’ many astronomy sites apparently get blocked! Truly.

Then, of course, there are problems like those encountered by the town council of Scunthorpe when setting up their website*.

* Please, just work it out for yourselves. If you don’t get it – I congratulate you on remaining innocent in an age when vulgarity has become so commonplace.

Sarcasm would probably fly straight over the head of anyone dumb enough to fall for creationism/ID. It’ll probably be reported later as a low-flying alien spacecraft.

Of course, if anyone is seriously worried about this, he – or she – could always stick to gentle irony.
–

Maybe you could look into having two or three people you trust help monitor the comments sections. Possibly friends or fellow bloggers you work with that live different scheules than you. You have to sleep sometime, and its easy for someone like me, on third shift, to bury your site in filth while you’re sleeping.

Just a thought.

(And if anyone cares, yes, the above is my real name.)

Unfortunately morons abound. To paraphrase: “If you make something moron-proof, God(?) will simply make a better moron.”

Regards,
Warren

So I’ve been thinking…

Phil Plait is a well-known shill for NASA. Spreading disinformation through his website and all that.

Since he’s acting as a government agent, he shouldn’t be able to moderate or delete posts AT ALL!

Think about it! (But not too much)

Secondly, I could go and post snarky comments on religious sites – tell them how wrong they are and what the truth really is, but I don’t because it would be a waste of my precious time. They already have their own version of the truth and they ain’t going to change it on account of something I say. {g} Suggest any fundamentalist creationists here do likewise.

Finally, if you’re visiting someone else’s ‘home’ and they ask you not to use bad language where young people might see, then to go right ahead and cuss and swear, is just rank bad manners – like running into their garden (yard) and trampling all over their flowers.

As a rule of thumb, mess up your own ‘home’ if you must, but don’t mess up other people’s.
–

Superstring:

I have no problems following the rules laid out on any website. It’s not my house and being respectful isn’t really that difficult.

Is there any way you could set up a “bad comments bin” or something that you could move inappropriate comments to, instead of deleting them outright? That would serve three purposes: first, it would let you clear out any negative comments without actually censoring them. Second, it would serve as a nice, illustrative example of the sort of thing you won’t tolerate (so people who accuse you of being a tyrant can see just what you’re being tyrannical about). Third, it would, over time, become an entertaining repository of vitriol for everyone to peruse!