What makes a bad word bad?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-02-2012 @ 10:54AM

warriorpanda said...

I have this as a rule of thumb: if the disagreeable word is used in a purely descriptive or exclamatory way, it's fine; if it's used with the intent to demean or insult, then it's not.

(Obviously the realities are more complicated, and depend a great deal upon other sociolinguistic factors, such as the currency of the word, its target, its audience, and the relationship of the speaker to the listener(s). But these are minutiae for guild officers to resolve on a case-by-case basis.)

We can't program computers to recognize such subtleties, so things like word filters are always going to be ham-fisted.

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