I will begin with a disclaimer: I have only ever played on the survival plots server, though I've visited a couple others. I am not in the habits of hate speech nor "explicit conversation" though I strangely do run across blacklisted words regarding the latter. First, on words themselves: The nature of language - any language - changes over time. Otherwise, there are a lot of now-obsolete words such as "swive" that would be on our blacklist. (That one in particular is a synonym of ye olde F-bomb, so go ahead and blacklist it if you want. What? You're not going to? Swive you! [jk]) Next, on the nature of people and words. The Victorians were an openly elitist lot, and we have a good few things from this attitude among even today's allegedly top people. Neckties and high heels come to mind, the fashion statements of discomfort that for some reason continue to persist. The saying "safe as houses" originates among them, though the only way I can see the simile being literally true would be among real estate agents. I gave one of our staff a "nice" mention of yet another Victorian verbiage anecdote, one which was intended to make a point about human nature regarding words: Victorian gentlemen "must" not be heard to be saying "leg" or "breast," even in the context of roast fowl - so they would instead say "dark meat" or "light meat." These euphemisms might continue to this day among some circles if people weren't likely to mistake "dark" for racist speech. Yes, euphemisms. Ban the name of the German leader during WW2? The mod I asked why this was, replied that he was a horrible person who tried to kill 8 million people. I am not disputing either the opinion nor the fact, though if I recall my history lessons on this, the staff member may have low-key implied that Herr Unnameable was 3/4 successful. I am not trying to circumvent the blacklisting, but I am trying to make a point: it is possible, and even easy if you're some flavour of word (or, on this topic, history) nerd, to draw attention to and even discuss a time in our world's history that MCC obviously doesn't want to see glorified. Nor do I! However, he was not the only perpetrator of that set of war crimes. I didn't bother to look up all the names of those in power under Herr Unnameable, but I did check one to see if it was also blacklisted. It wasn't. Is this an oversight, or are we all ignoring that they were also guilty? Actually, wait. Never mind. I don't need the answer; it's getting off my topic here - but I will leave it. MCC staff may want to have the answer on hand for if and when that ever is the topic at hand. The aforementioned F-bomb is not blacklisted. Nor is a common synonym of excrement (also not blacklisted) but I cannot name mammalian orifices involved in the verb forms of these two words. I can, however, say "cloaca," which is a bird/lizard/amphibian orifice whose function is similar. I have described the blacklist as schizophrenic. I also use that word to describe the nature of sidewalks that may or may not be properly functional in the winter due to each year's unique little war between those who shovel and the nature of water to freeze. I cannot use a common three-letter word that is on literally every job application I have ever filled out because apparently when this word has been on MCC, it's because people are trying to "have" it. As much as one can via a medium where no actual physical contact can occur. Considering that minecraft in general is not about this, and an appropriate minecraft enaction of it would involve three people, one to right-click a food item on the other two, and the other two to, having been thusly fed, stand in the same space as well as they can, then drop a child villager mob and an exp orb for the first person to collect. [Don't bother trying to add this. It would be funny for a day, then promptly eyerolled at.] There is a MUD I consider my main game, and there is no blacklist there. As the nature of a MUD is that it is entirely in words, and there are no images, they see no reason to. The MUD's company is headquartered in the USA, and I don't recall which of them said it in their forums, but they pointed out that 1) they require one to be age 13 to play there (which I don't believe is the case at MCC) and 2) In the USA, it is perfectly legal for a 6-year-old to enter a bookstore and purchase a copy of a book such as "50 Shades of Grey" so long as there are no explicit images on nor in that particular copy. This is because while there are many, MANY laws in the USA regarding the appropriateness of certain images, there are very few regarding the appropriateness of words and children. No age-restriction on any words, including the blacklisted ones. Speaking of the USA, a note on censorship and the First Amendment: no, it is not relevant to MCC's choice to blacklist. By all means, use whatever words you wish. They don't want those words on their site, thank you very much. I don't represent them; I am just saying what I understand to be the case. This and, parental types whose vocabulary may include the word "lawsuit" are people that MCC would probably (wisely) prefer to avoid, especially if they are actively using this word in a "How dare you allow my child to..." context. (MCC would be in the right regarding any and all words; they have enough work policing player skins. Inappropriate ones can get MCC in real trouble! No au naturel versions of Herr Unnameable, people!) So, to recap: 1) There are blacklisted words. 2) I'm not sure it makes sense to blacklist some words, yet not others. I can't tell a joke about answering a specific one-word question on a job application with "No," but I can say "turgid erection." I'm pretty sure those two words ought to get blacklisted. A mod has agreed in ingame chat about the second word - but I did get to tell an anecdote about using that word as a synonym of building: Something something turn left at the new erection on Main Street. 3) It is very possible to bypass blacklisting without trying, if you are checking the words you actually intend to use, and the blacklisted versions don't even occur to you. Some of us aren't attracted to swears. Not because we're prudes, but because the shock value has worn off for us. #notaboomeryet Oh yeah! 3) If there are any blacklisted words in this post, I apologise. I am not ingame as I type this, and if there's any sort of site version of the /blacklistcheck command, I have yet to discover it. I have found the blacklisting annoying at worst, but MCC feels that it does some good with most of us, the playerbase. This is their right. They also have the right to do interesting stuff with muting that they do not do, such as substitute banned words - or any words, really - with other words. Neopets was, possibly still is, notorious for this, replacing "thong" with "longjohns" as an example in my personal experience. This confused me when I described an appearance there as "wearing a pendant on a longjohns around her neck." Wait, what?
My disclaimer was meant to mean that if this is not the right place for this conversation, I apologise to the forum the forum mod and request it be moved to the right place, please and thank you.
Hi there, Siva! I did read your entire post, but forgive me if I don’t respond to every part. Basically, my response is that the filter is not perfect, but it does a good job eliminating conversation which is undesirable on MCC. Could there be a discussion of “why is this word blacklisted, but this word is not?” Sure. But the point of it is not to block every possible bad word, it’s mostly there to eliminate explicit or overtly offensive conversation. And in my estimation it does a pretty good job of doing that. I’m not sure from this post whether you think the filter is too lenient (allowing certain curse words) or too strict (comparing it to other games and the 50 shades/free speech example. If you think it’s too lenient, I would respond by saying that those kinds of words are commonly used to express frustration or other emotions which are not necessarily offensive or explicit. If you think it’s too strict and we should not have a chat filter at all, I would respond by saying that some words (specifically thinking of slurs) do not belong on MCC and can only offend people, it’s really necessary that these words cannot be said to maintain a good play experience. In my estimation (and this is my actual opinion, I’m not blindly defending MCC as a staff member) the filter strikes a good balance between too strict and limiting okay speech. Is it going to miss some stuff? Sure, that’s what /chatreport is for. Is it going to block certain words even if you don’t intend them to hurt anyone? Sure, but you can point to a good reason as to why you shouldn’t be allowed to say them. As long as you respect the rules and generally try not to hurt others, you can talk freely on MCC without even worrying about the blacklist. I’m on my phone, sorry if parts of this don’t make sense, and have a good night
hey there, this is a whole essay and im not gonna lie I don't understand half the staff you rambled on about. main points im bringing up are 'hitler' is blacklisted because many people used to use it in horrible context, saying "I will kill you like hitler killed the jews" and such, and there was never anyone using it in a positive context, as quite frankly there's nothing positive about trying to wipe out an entire race of people who don't deserve it. It's got nothing to do with glorifying him, or anything. We don't want people using this word to bring others down, threaten users or anything of that kind. Secondly, the reason why random words that have similar meanings to words of private parts are not blacklisted are simply because they aren't common words. It's not everyday that a player will have even the slightest idea that the word "cloaca" even means, therefore its usage on the server is next to 0. This means there's no reason to go through the long process of blacklisting it, especially since no one ever uses it. The blacklisted words are quite free, there are a lot of words you can say, like as you mentioned the f word is not blacklisted. This is because it is so frequently used and is never really an overly toxic word unless said in a very disrespectful way (which would be a punishment for disrespect). I don't quite understand your essay because first you say that there are so many words that should be blacklisted then you say the whole blacklist words thing is stupid? I don't understand what you are getting at with this, but these are the things that stuck out to me the most. -Nik
Hey Siva! I can kind of understand where your coming from with the word "Hitler" being a blacklisted word and me wondering why words like "Stalin" or "Mao Zedong" aren't blacklisted since Stalin killed about 20million innocent people and estimates of Mao being anywhere from 30 million to 45 million people killed during China's cultural revolution. The reason the other two dictators aren't blacklisted might be because their authorities are less well known and hence offensive to fewer people since I think most people can agree on Hitler being much more well known than Stalin or Mao Zedong. And as said by other staff the filter is a balance to get rid of offensive terms without being too censored. No matter how strict a filter is there will always be synonyms for users to use instead of the blacklisted word. -stampyrhodes
If you think the f word (fu-) should be blacklisted you’re a snowflake I think the discord filter is way worse than the in game filter knowing that I can’t say the name of a condition (autism) but yea I agree with most stuff you said - the filter is trash and needs to be fixed but most suggestions you made wouldn’t be great in my eyes.
I'm glad to see so many responses! I am not sure whether the filter is too lenient or too strict, only that I didn't find it as intuitive as I expected. I don't like dropping f-bombs, but you, reading this, are not me. Bombs away if you're into it! But I have never run into a situation where there's a filter that deliberately leaves the f-word alone while denying a word that is sometimes used as a synonym for gender. Thank you for giving me some community lore regarding Herr Unnameable. Thank you for also mentioning Stalin and Chairman Mao. I hadn't thought of them as contrast, only Himmel, Hess, etc., aka Herr Unnameable's homies. Am I half a snowflake for thinking that "fuck" and "sex" should either both be blacklisted or else neither be blacklisted? I have autism. Like the t-shirt says, it's not a system error; it's a different OS. I like that there is so much response to this! Thank all of you who have said something here so far!
It has nothing to do with. how bad the words are. There is just no good way a word like the male sexual organ or mean man who killed jews in WW2 will come up in a Minecraft chat, while a word like the f word or that word we all love to say when we stub our toe that means poopoo, can have a place in a Minecraft chat.
I feel like the filter bypass is pretty decent in mcc where it didn’t fully blocks every bad words but kinda focus more on the toxic side if you know what I mean. Is the filter perfect? Probably not. But as far as I can tell the filter did stoped argument from angry speech to toxic speech like throwing the N word or Claim to slept with other’s relative and I feel like this is what a filter should do. Therefore I don’t really see an need to change the filter bypass. that’s only my personal opinion and it’s 4am for me so sorry if what I wrote doesn’t make sense to you
I never thought it was a matter of how "bad" words are. Words are like foods; people have different tastes regarding them. I admit, I don't like to say any of the George Carlin seven, but I don't care that others do. (I liked his comedy routines!) I simply find it... uneven. If this makes sense. Edit: Thank you for chiming in as well!
I think you bring up some interesting points in regards to the dynamic nature of language and how words are understood is often a matter of perception. I also think notaspleen and Nikki_ did a good job of answering most of the questions/points you raised. I agree with spleen in that I believe the filter finds a decent balance between restricting language that is dominantly used inappropriately on the server, whilst Nikki_ perfectly explains why older euphemisms of current inappropriate words remain un-blacklisted given their lack of usage. I'll try not to repeat everything that they've explained, but what I will do is go through your end recap, and then try to explain why the rules/blacklist are structured that way. There are blacklisted words! Has been explained by Nikki_ and spleen. Different words can be taken different ways, but the blacklist filter aims to deal with the dominant use of the more commonly abused words. If it's dominant use is overwhelmingly inappropriate, we've likely blacklisted it. I'd also try and avoid saying 'turgid erection' in-game if you can (for the sake of avoiding explicit conversation)! I'm inclined to agree with the mod who was for it getting blacklisted, and I'm sure you understand how adding modifiers can drastically change a words meaning. Completely agree, which is where staff discretion and the appeal system comes in. The staff team has a fairly good grasp of players' language, and can tell generally tell when people are unintentionally bypassing certain words. This starts at staff promotions, as we generally try to promote people with a good head on their shoulders and a good grasp of people's behavior. On the flipside, we can generally tell when euphemisms are being used in an inappropriate context to replace blacklisted words. Your Neopets example gave me a good laugh, as I'm Australian and 'thong' means flip flops here! Any misunderstandings (which do happen) are usually dealt with successfully through appeals. We don't want players with good intentions to remain muted, and so we try to be as understanding as we can in most cases. Point 3 above is a pretty good summary of how the blacklist works in tandem with our explicit conversation rules. They're designed to work together, with the staff team bridging the gap in understanding between something that is potentially bypassing the blacklist in an effort to be explicit and something that is unintentionally bypassing it (or is something like a common euphemism used in a different, more appropriate context). I do agree that the blacklist isn't perfect and could perhaps be more intuitive, and the staff team is very open to suggestion on how to improve it, so if you have any solutions then fire away!
I guess it's down to adding a few new words, then. Not the George Carlin seven, but yes, words like "erection." (It's too bad that the erection/election pun steers clear of explicitness only to fall into the 'too political' hole, but eh, puns are plentiful.) Edit: I have thought of something. Is there a list on the MCC website, either in forums or not, that lists any and all banned words for publically-available reference? Ingame, you can /blacklistcheck but not in the forums. I realise that the forums don't have the same autocensorship (if any), but it's still a good "Don't say any of these" warning that one can use while not active ingame.
Hmm. This is off-topic since it's not exactly about the blacklist, but it is about the use of words on this site. This is from the rules for ingame chat: Telling staff members to spectate a hacker is allowed, as this isn’t excessive. I think that "Telling" should be "Asking," because I think such things should be phrased as requests, not directives. I can even use this word change as an example of what I mean. If I say, "Change this!" doesn't it feel a bit rude? But if I ask, "Can you change this?" doesn't that feel less rude? Of course, now I will actually make that request: Will you please change this? Thank you! (Even if you won't, thank you for reading my request.)
