I have just been in the new chat room and found that certain words and expressions are being censored. I am not a fan of swearing or bad language but I do believe that in a chat room it is a person’s right to be able to express themselves freely. People in chat are as able to be trusted to make judgements about what they say and the tone in which they say it as they are in general conversation outside the room. Yes sometime s people upset or offend each other and yes sometimes misjudgements happen but that happens in normal conversation and what else is a chat room if not normal conversation, which is uncensored? It’s not just a word or expression that is or is not offensive but the tone and appropriateness of its usage and in chat, where people often need to share very angry or negative emotions, sometimes it is most definitely appropriate.
We are all adults in chat and while I would never promote offensive or abusive usage of this room I think the majority of the use of the language that is being censored is not the same issue. Everyone can dodge the censor by respelling a word so it goes through anyway but the point is that censoring is discouraging people from having a ‘rant’ or a ‘scream’ that is sometimes the reason some people want to use the room.
I am not saying ‘come on all of you and start to have a good swear!’ and as said I don’t’ particularly like to read it but please comment your agreement if you think that censoring detracts from the nature of a chat room and that it should be restored, with any real issues of derogatory or abusive behaviour to be dealt with separately and I will ask admin to read this blog and its comments and reconsider. It’s also worth commenting that innocent words like popular are being censored for no reason and the feature is upsetting a lot of people using chat.
Thank you for reading!
