Regarding Bull's post in the "Unofficial Unwired" thread at 4:48 PM on August 20th, 2006:

Bull, the idea that we can all avoid arguments on a public forum with dozens of posters posting on dozens of topics is ludicrous.

This is something I feel I need to address about internet culture. Expressing a different opinion is not unacceptable rudeness. Neither is debating an issue. But the practical definition of "flamewar" and "thread crapping" creeps ever closer to just that. We get closer and closer to forbidding disagreement.

That being said, there's no reason we can't behave like civilized people. But civilized people must be free to disagree.

Politeness is merely the ability to tell someone their mother is a whore who's only customers are inbred chihuahuas without managing to sound offensive about it. Often, politeness gets away with far more in the way of insulting people than bluntness does.

So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of it.

Politeness isn't avoiding the word fuck or witholding your viewpoint. In the context of the forums, it's just about not making personal attacks.

Without Politeness:
Poster A: Point.
Poster B: Counter-Point
Poster A: Cock-sucking whore with herpes.

With Politeness:
Poster A: Point.
Poster B: Counter-Point
Poster A: Analysis of Counter-Point and Further Explanation of View Point

Too often, insults stand in for valid arguments. Politeness is kind of like a barrier of entry and so long as a discussion remains polite, participants are constrained to rely on reason. Once someone resorts to insults, I tend to take it as a sign that they're losing.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for calling someone a Fucktard. Just that it should always be accompanied by a suitably overwhelming piece of logic that demolishes their point of view at the same time.

Except, you're forgetting that it can end up like this:

Without Politeness:
Poster A: Point.
Poster B: Counter-Point
Poster A: Cock-sucking whore with herpes. Analysis of Counter-Point and Further Explanation of View Point

With Politeness:
Poster A: Point.
Poster B: Counter-Point
Poster A: Polite way of saying "Cock-sucking whore with herpes."

There's a difference between ettiquete in an argument and politeness.

Lilith you may be confusing politeness with passive agressive behavior.

True politeness does not include passive aggression. What you are describing is not being polite, it's using polite mannerisms in order to mask a more sinister intent.

Sadly, I don't see the difference and have yet to see any evidence there is one. I've found politeness is just passive-aggressiveness personified and made into an art form. Instead of, "Sorry your mother got hit by that drunk driver," there's "I'm sorry for the untimely demise in your family." They both say the same thing in the end, but one is comming out and stating it and the other is trying to state something hurtful in a manner that prevents the speaker from feeling any guilt over causing a person to cry.

Where are you from? Just curiosity. I'm British and I don't think "foul language" is particularly impolite. I don't think there's any point in getting hung up on it and I certainly don't see why anyone has the right to tell me that I can't talk in the same way my parents taught me.

To illustrate:
"I fucked her." This sounds kind of unpleasant and certainly aggressive.

"I fucking love her." This sounds romantic to me. Yeah, don't look at me like that - it is.

The word fuck itself is just a word. It's the meaning that matters and as I pointed out, if an insult isn't apparent as such, then it's not effective as an insult. Now by the same token, certain language doesn't become insulting if it clearly isn't intended as such.

Begin Tangent:

Where does all this "offensive language" come from? Well many of the so-called swear words are good old Anglo-Saxon and were common usage words once upon a time. They became "vulgar" (and I'll come back to that word in a minute), when the Normans invaded England and Old French became the language of the court. The use of the native language was considered disloyal and / or crass and uneducated. The word vulgar itself means "common". Essentially it's a class thing. The upper classes frowned upon the language of the commoners. Aspiring commoners tried to emulate their 'betters' and only the common man (working class) continued to use them cause they knew their lot in life wasn't going to change and quite frankly couldn't give a fuck about changing the way they spoke for some murderous cunts that had just put the taxes up again.

Cunts is another interesting one. As recent as the early eighteen-hundreds, this wasn't considered an offensive word. There were many streets in England with the name Gropecunt, which usually indicated a historical connection with prostitution. Why in the World a rather appealing part anatomy should be considered insulting or obscene is another debate entirely, but suffice it to say that the word has changed in value in a very recent time without any actual change in meaning. How is that logical?

You can even see it happening at any given moment. When I was very little, I remember the word spastic being used as an insult. It had been a medical term which became a term of abuse. The same has happened to retarded and cretin. Valid terms for medical conditions with no intention of condeming someone as having less worth. Yet now both have or are becoming unsuable for their original meaning. The problem is a strange fixation on the word itself rather than the intent of its use.*

And that is exactly my point in my last post. It is nothing, absolutely nothing at all, to do with the selection of words, but the meaning that they convey. A poor selection of words may accidentally convey an insult that wasn't intended, but this can be cleared up. The point is that intent determines politeness for me.

It's taken me a while to type this. I expect it'll follow another post telling me I'm wrong, but hey ho.

==============================================

*There's a bit at the start of Three Kings which kind of illustrates the absurdity of adding value judgements to words rather than meanings. Several US soldiers are shooting at Iraqis and one of them uses the term "sand-niggers" which incenses the black soldier. They instead agree to use the insult "towel-heads and they happily resume. It's somewhat less amusing if you happen to be arabic, but it's pretty insightful all the same.

I see a lot of people saying what they can and can't do while being polite, so I figured if we're going to discuss the idea of politeness, we might as well know what it means. And, since I like the dictionary for telling me what my words are, here we go:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polite
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/polite
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp...61266&dict=CALD
http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/polite
http://www.bartleby.com/61/34/P0413400.html
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/polite?view=uk
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dic...efid=1861738206

One common thread running through all of those definitions is courtesy and consideration. The other important part is correct social usage.

Moving this to the Dumpshock Discussion forum.

Wow. Just... Wow.

Point One: Be polite. If you don't know what the word means, go ask your mother, or your grandfather, or your pastor, or whatever, because somewhere along the way, you failed to figure it out. This should not even be a discussion (or argument, as it's spinning into).

Point One A: No matter how you phrase it, called one's mother a whore is never polite.

Point Two: There's a difference between an arguement and a discussion. Discussions are fine, and encouraged. arguements are counter-productive, and often lead to other things, and thus, I discourage them.

Point Three: I'm the bad cop here on Dumpshock. Stop pissing me off by arguing the little bullshit details. Quit trying to skirt the boundaries. The simple rule of thumb is this: If you're not sure if what you're gonna say or do is gonna break the TOS or go against one of my "play nice" posts... DO NOT FUCKING POST. Err on the side of caution, civility, and consideration.

You guys have been generally good lately. I'm trying to use Red posts to denote my Admin posts to help keep things organized and clear when I'm doing my Admin thing. And the red posts I've done lately have been strictly "You guys are approaching the edge of an argument, keep it as a discussion" level. I'm trying to be a tad more proactive and head things off before anything happens and I have to lay down warnings, time permitting. I don't like doing that. Ask around, I'm usually a friendly, happy-go-lucky sort of ork.

But seriously, this thread? Wow. Should be stupidly unnecessary.

Talk. Discuss. Ask questions. Answer questions. Ponder ally spirit sex slaves and dikoted flechettes. But beware of arguments, and no personal attacks, or any sort. I don;t care how polite you think you're being.

Bull

Bigger words (and more of them) neither increases politeness nor lowers offensiveness. If you can phrase your criticism in a way that's constructive, then you're being polite. But even then, sometimes even the most constructive criticism is impolite. To do otherwise is to be guilty of misguided pseudo-charity at best, or pretentious and snobbish intellectual masturbation at worst.

I'm going to steal a quote from Penny Arcade. Aside from all the technical hairsplitting, I think it all boils down to one abstract idea.

"Don't be a dick."

After Bull's post, I decided to let this one drop. I could go into a long discussion over it. I won't.