[MUD-Dev] Censorship

[Greg Munt]

> [Ben Greear, on new additions to ScryMud]
>
> Added some censoring code to purge the 4 or 5 words that
> I feel have no contribution to human discourse.  Beats
> freezing or locking their sites I think...

In my experience, a global implementation (applying it to all users)
achieves negligible effects. I may be misremembering, but I'm sure I've seen
something somewhere that someone has written about this. Maybe some
Tiny-related site, or maybe just a needle in the DejaNews haystack.

Anyway. Here's why global censoring doesn't work (IMHO, of course - also
remember that I'm talking generally; some aspects of that written below may
not apply specifically to ScryMud):

  1.  Without getting into the issue of whether it's right, or whether
people should do it, the
      mainstream of English spoken by the current generation is rife with
words that would have
	been considered 'lower class'/'vulgar'/'distasteful' in days gone by. You
may have users 	using censored words, who are not intending to cause offence
or disruption to your game. I'm 	aware of some people who have been led to
challenging the managers of the game, because they 	are insulted by the
removal of their freedom of speech. (Not to mention the fact that people
      get annoyed at censorship of their comments about cats.)

  2.  Of course, you may counter this argument by insisting that those who
don't like it can 	leave - or will be made to. On another mud, run by a
conservative christian, things were so 	bad that the culture was excluding a
lot of people, even the mention of a tampon could 	result in 'social
conflict'. My point here, is that once you start on this road, how far are
you willing to take it? By how much do you wish to restrict the number of
people attracted to 	your game? Note that although the mud in question had
strict rules concerning lingual 	expression, making it appear
(unattractively, to some) 'squeaky-clean', the real situation,
	underneath the surface, as it were, was that people were still insulted,
hurt, all that. 	Clubs will always find a way. You can divert the course of
a river, but you can never stop it 	flowing downhill.

  3.  You can get around ANY censorship code. Clubs can still p1ss people
off. People will always  	find new ways at hurting others.

  4.  When you put yourself in the position of protecting Hearts from Clubs,
it can be a never-	ending and thankless job. It will become infinitely
complex and difficult. Are you an 	unseen and all-seeing god/mud maintainer,
or you a crusader fighting for the weak and 	defenceless? Don't get involved
in social issues with your players unless you (a) intend to 	spend all your
online time dealing with people's problems, (b) don't mind getting into
situations where you will have to make one of the two 'sides' your enemy,
and (c) are adept 	at dealing with such issues. If you don't fulfill these
criteria, you could go the way of 	many muds (I cite 'Island' as an
example), and be brought down by politics. (Do you want 	these problems to
make it so going onto *your* mud isn't any fun anymore?)

The coder of the mud I managed did implement censorship code. The majority
of administrators disagreed with it, principally because it interfered in
freedom of expression. Plus, you don't need to use bad language to cause
disruption. The implementation was not global, but was a flag, which could
be applied to rooms or players. Public rooms were censored (private ones
weren't); disruptive players were also censored (everywhere).

Personally, I think that this kind of censorship interferes with the
perception of the game world's reality. (This may be fine for talkers, which
barely have a world, let alone a reality - but not for anything else.) If
you have to have censorship, have it in the 'safe' public areas of the
world, but never in the areas where you are likely to get mugged, murdered,
raped, or all three. Preferably, have the use of 'bad' words controlled
in-game (eg overuse/complaints get you detained by the authorities) rather
than through the code. This will encourage a culture that doesn't even try
to use these unacceptable words. (Assuming that this is something that you
want to encourage.) You would then have culture clashes between people from
the 'safe' and 'bad' areas, which could lead to NPC conflicts, etc. (I'd say
war, but I may be being influenced by Babylon 5 reruns.)

On my mud (eternally in the planning stages), people will be able to
block/gag characters they just don't want to hear from, removing the need
for censorship. Hmm, but now I think about that, it sounds less than
satisfactory.

I'm rambling now. These are my thoughts, and probably no-one agrees with
them, ah well. No matter. At least I posted :-) A minority opinion is always
better than no opinion at all. Y'all may be interested that I'm no longer in
England, but am further south than the deep south, in the Bahamas, preparing
for marriage. If hell exists, cockroaches live there. (I said "Y'all",
things *must* be getting to me.)

Greg.



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