Polaris:I'm sorry, but I think that something is wrong with the idea that NOT swearing in front of some people is somehow patronizing or causes them to feel unwelcome...when people engage in behaviors that are unacceptable or offensive, do others have an obligation to make them feel comfortable doing that? I don't think so. I don't cuss/swear because I don't believe in it, and I'm not about to do something I don't believe in just so someone else can feel comfortable doing it.

God knows what novmik's on about (feels like a certain run-in from not too long ago, damn, polaris, you seem to make people angry ), but I honestly really want to know how swearing is unacceptable or offensive other than aesthetically?

For me, that's like me saying about jewellary that I find it unacceptable and offensive, because I have a pet dislike of it.

As far as I'm concerned, those who want people to swear otherwise they make them feel bad are being rude, and those who try to impose some view of verbal aesthetics on someone else just because they don't like swearing are being rude (of course, if you're going into a very formal function and what a friend to zip his trap for a bit, that's a different matter since that's protection from a much larger force).

Polaris:Using vulgar language is the verbal equivalent to passing gas in a room full of people. It's coarse, immature, and disrespectful. If someone had the attitude that "WELL, I'm just going to pass gas whenever I want to, and you can just DEAL with it", that would be bad enough.

Not really. Farts tend to have a biologically repulsive effect to them, so that's more like playfully punching everyone.. in the lungs.

Now, I do think it's rude to beliggerently assume that everyone's fine with "coarse behaviour", but we can hardly criticise someone for swearing, or farting, when they're in a social setting in which it's allowed, or out of habit because they normally are used to a different social setting.

Swear words are just that - words. They are words that part of the community has for some obscure reason decided (purely psychologically, not biologically) are "bad to say", and then various generaitons growing up under such mentality reinforce it in an attempt to assume social dominance and a sense of achievement over the "inferiors". Now, if you don't want to swear, that's fine, and I agree with criticisms of behaviours that could be considered gratuitous, or intended to offend, but outside of that, I think it's quite rude to assume someone else's realisation of culture is wrong just because you grew up with another culture.

(a further demonstration of this strange human perculiarity is how in Australia, the world "aboriginal" is considered offensive by some. Others embrace it (be they aboriginal or not). The word some want to replace it with? "Indigenous". And then some want to replace "indigenous" with god knows what (like "native" or "original australians"). Thus a controversy is born:

Aboriginal = from the original
Indigenous = native, born in the country

Obviously, there's not really a big difference. Neither are extremely precise, and you can't get more precise than those two unless you invent an ingenous little word. Yet, for different people, either one of these words become offensive because people think that there is some sort of underlying intention to offend in them.)

Anyway, EO's spirit is to accept minor cultural differences like these and get on with life, provided there is no intended offence. Now, this may or may not apply to certain situations in this thread, but as a general rule I think we shouldn't condemn swearing based on how we were raised. Such are familial issues!

Just a note to everyone - please do not feed the trolls.

Esperantists as a culture try extremely hard to be accepting of all cultures, and unfortunately this leads to us getting taken advantage of. We need to keep our spirit of open debate but absolutely we need to say no to trolls.

So please, don't engage with trolls. Don't debate with them, don't try to convince them. Don't try to recognize where they're coming from and make excuses for their behavior. I think everyone in this forum is capable of distinguishing between a troll and a person who holds a different opinion due to cultural reasons.

Trolls feed on reactions, and ignoring them is the best way to get them to go away.

If the troll's messages violate lernu's terms of service (profanity, offensive statements against national/religious/ethnic groups etc), then please report them with the spam reporting link - and then don't engage with the trolls further.

If their messages don't violate lernu's terms of service, the team is certainly not going to block their messages or delete their account, simply because the person is annoying. It isn't a crime to be annoying, but when you engage with people who act annoying, you are encouraging their behavior and prolonging the agony for everyone.

Think before you respond to a troll's message. Take a deep breath, and decide whether your response will really convince the troll of anything (no) and whether your response will encourage the troll to post even more outrageous things (yes).

If there's a doubt in your mind as to whether a person is a sincere user or a troll, then don't respond. The truth will come out soon enough.

erinja:Just a note to everyone - please do not feed the trolls.

Just hoping I'm not coming across like one, because of my somewhat combative and defensive messages. If so I do apologise!

when deleting a message, maybe you should also delete the responses to them. some messages in this thread (my last one for example) are now out of context.

I'm honestly not terribly interested in editing a thread so thoroughly that it seems like nothing bad ever happened there. I only deleted the specific messages that were actually against the site's terms of service.

But if you want to get rid of an old message of yours, just use the edit function to remove whatever content that you no longer want to show.