Just to put it into perspective, I took a break for about a year and when I came back few days ago, the chat is such a mess I was quite taken aback. Year ago, people were getting muted, kicked and banned for the kind of shit that happens in the ingame chat today. I'm not a puritan, I don't mind offensive language, but when every single line in a chat is someone calling someone else gay/my old friend/retard/dickhead/asshole/whatever else, better yet in caps lock, it gets a bit tiring. The amount of hate in the chat is staggering.
But from Tenne's post, I guess that the admins prefer to go with the flow rather than do something that would make them unpopular with the community, it was bound to happen.
Sorry to post in this after it has been locked but I would like to clarify for Nemeth's sake that what he stated in the final paragraph is simply not true. My original statements said that there is no reason to censor swearing, as suggested in the opening post as it would add unnecessary work & create tension between people expressing themselves and the admins.
On top of that, generalising what I have said over the wider admin population is silly, I am one admin with my own views, we have guideline rules to follow but I for one believe that a rapport between an admin and the community helps everyone see eye to eye and garners a transparency in actions, "where the line is" and that we can be approached if you have a problem, that is beneficial to everyone. Enforcing something so damning across the community would just lead to that rapport being quashed amid resentment for rules we're merely enforcing.
What is already in place stops any of the highly offensive material from going unpunished and from that it is merely a case of people being a little too rowdy at times, about when they need to be told "hang about, you're going too far with that" in which case, it'll be classed as chat spam. Minor, but controllable albeit the level at which that becomes chat spam varies between admins.
If I was being completely honest, I don't like heavy handed swearing and if I was in full control, you'd be muted for calling someone "fuck-face" (with intent to insult) but that just doesn't help anything. The internet is a public place, and the way I see it, if someone swore while I was walking down the high-street, I wouldn't punch them in the face, so why should I mute people for swearing here?
