The language filter was brutal.
On a thread in their relationship forum someone started a poll about which video game they should play/rent for a first date. The options were all more recent games, i.e. Grand Theft Auto, WoW, etc.
Instead of picking from their choices, I suggested Asteroids and *******.
Anyone care to guess the name of the second game?
saucywench, notwithstanding all the above, you do need to read the rules here, and there are some limitations on what you can write. Curse words, per se are permitted. It’s how you use them that matters, and you could get mod warnings.
This site is basically oriented towards mature adult conversations – meaning intelligent (well, hopefully) conversation without any need for kiddie filters. Excessive or gratuitous potty talk is permitted but typically rather frowned upon. You can use any language you want, pretty much, if it actually furthers some point your are making.
What you very strictly CANNOT do, is insult other posters (except in the Pit, and even there, there are some restrictions.) You can’t call another user any bad names – even if they aren’t dirty-word names, you can’t. We had one poster criticize another a while back, and the first got kinda butthurt and called the other a “demon” – and got a mod note for that. I myself posted a brief parody of a paragraph from Alice’s Restaurant, changing some words. It included the sentence “They may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either one of them.” (That sentence was in the original, as sung by Arlo Guthrie.) – And I got a mod note for using the word faggot.
There is no explicit word list of forbidden words. The mods play it by ear, but they are strict about the no-insults rule. There was a lengthy thread here in ATMB not long ago, about whether it’s okay to call someone a cunt. (Conclusion: It’s not okay. Apparently, not even in the Pit?) There are rules that if you don’t like what another poster has posted, you must criticize what was posted, not the person who posted. No name-calling. All the rules are aimed towards keeping the discussions on a mature adult level – meaning, as in “civilized”, not as in “dirty”.
We are stardust
We are golden
We are billion year old carbon…
Yes, we are all full of stars…and ****.
Unfortunately, at that internet hell the mods and posters were composed of more of the latter.
- Where the fuck is that cunt Carmen Sandiego?*
Bangin’ Waldo.
Oh, saucywench,I think you will fit right in here.
(By the way I am jealous of your user name.)
aka Where’s Waldo, Because The Test Came back Positive
Yeah, we threw her off the Giraffe Boards for like cussin’ and shit. We don’t hold with that sort of thing, y’know. 
It’s a high class kind of place.
We got a troll!
LOL!
I dig the username too.
a/s/l?
Can you provide links to those mod notes?
We don’t allow accusations of trolling outside the Pit. Take it there, please.
twickster, for the SDMB
We have recently discovered that you can chant “BULLSHIT” on prime time broadcast TV.
I’m sure I could, if you give me a bit of time to dredge them up. They’re out there.
Well, if the “demon” insult was outside the pit that’s just everyday modding. I was really curious about parodying Alice’s Restaurant and quoting the line with “faggot” in it. It seems absurd that would draw a mod note.
ETA: I did a search of your username and the term “faggot” and only found this thread.
Here they are:
The “demon” reference:
mister nyx wrote this, flaming at Yakuza (both since banned). Yakuza wrote this, calling mister nyx a demon. Idle Thoughts warned mister nyx here, and in the next several posts after that, he issued a mod note against Yakuza for calling him a demon, and engaged in some discussion of that with other who questioned what’s wrong with “demon”.
The “faggots” reference:
I posted a paragraph in parody of Alice’s Restaurant here, where “faggots” was a word (in fact, that whole phrase) was in Guthrie’s original, and got mod noted by Colibri here.
This was brought up and discussed again, rather tangentially, in a recent ATMB thread here and here.
ETA: In a more recent unrelated thread, someone else quoted (or parodied) that very same Alice’s Restaurant paragraph, and I don’t recall seeing any mod note on that one… I’ll see if I can dredge that up next.
I issued the Mod Note. Senegoid did not give any indication in the thread that the post was intended as a parody of Alice’s Restaurant, and although I recognized it, it can’t be assumed that everyone will instantly call to mind a line from a song that was popular 40 years ago. “Faggot” is a derogatory term and should not be tossed around lightly. (This was in a thread about why Mexican men often walk around with their t-shirts pulled up in hot weather; the post had no real connection to the subject at all.)
The restrictions on language are not because we’re prudes, but because using excessive profanity or offensive words in the wrong context is likely to derail threads when other posters take exception to them or remark on them.
Colibri, your mod note and the subsequent discussion in ATMB (which I linked just above) simply told me not to use the word “faggot(s)” like that, even though it was a quote from a literary source (well, a parody thereof), and you cited a board rule to that effect.
But was the real problem simply that I didn’t acknowledge the source? If I had appended a line like “-- Parodied from Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie” would that have made it okay? See, this was the kind of thing (as well as that “demon” mod note) that led me to suggest a few days ago that the mods are a bit, uh, – capricious was the word I used – and that makes me a feel little paranoid on this board.
Anyway, saucywench (are you still reading this thread?), maybe you can see the point here. No, there’s no automated black-listed word filter on this board, and nobody stops you from writing whatever you want – the first time, anyway. But there are standards of conduct, and those standards do require you to be careful with the words you choose. But generally, you can use cuss words or whatever you like if it’s appropriate for whatever point you are making in your thread.
Be warned: The mods have the final say here, and although you are allowed to argue with them (within limits), they hardly ever change their minds.
@Blank Slate: Here are two additional cases where someone quoted or parodied that same section of Alice’s Restaurant, including the “faggots” word, without any mod attention that I was aware of. One of them was in the Pit.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15143107#post15143107
Discussion of going “underground” to avoid the draft, with additional discussion of how it would play, back in those days, if one simply openly told your draft board: I’m gay. A few posts after that, someone else questioned the use of “faggots” there.
There was an earlier instance here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12089385#post12089385
(from a few years ago) in which the board flamed an admitted pedophile (or possibly a troll) in the Pit. I don’t think there were any warnings for that, since it was in the Pit.
BTW, Blank Slate, how are you doing those searches? Are you using the SDMB search feature? That’s kind of a PITA.
I get much better search results with Google. Just start your search terms with site:boards.straightdope.com to limit the search to this board. I always get good results with that. And no 5-minute wait before doing your next search either. That’s how I found all the links I cited above.