Absolutely fair point.
Other forums I frequent do not have this issue, it is very much a indication of the type of posters you have if you can have swearing and the majority of posters do not swear.
So I take the point (and agree) that reading posts without a torrent of swearing is good, however it does not mean there will be a torrent of swearing if you allowed swearing (many members here do not strike me as being like that).
Everyone swears, they're part of peoples vocabulary and depending on context convey a variety of meanings.
I personally find the sexual innuendo's and casual sexism on here far worse. Family friendly community translates as 'sort of family friendly forum for males'.
Absolutely, nobody is talking about a radical shift in terms of the rules. I do not think swearing should be allowed, however, if it's not allowed because of the forums status as family friendly there needs to be much more done in terms of cutting down on sexual innuendos and the sexist 'behaviour' of members.
You should want to encourage people to sign up, that includes children and women, they will find themselves alienated (specifically women) on the forum in my opinion (and gauging reactions of females I know that have either read the forum or read it over my shoulder).
You are also in the minority of moderators that is open to mature discussion about many things from my past experiences with the moderating team. The absolute rejection that any moderator is ever wrong is more harmful that good. You're openness and willing to engage in a pleasant manner is why you're pretty much the only moderator on here I hold any modicum of time for.
We get hundreds of sign ups a day! It is quite time consuming authorising all the users!
You say we all swear and it is part of vocab - true. However there is a time and place. I don't swear at work, or when I'm in public areas with kids present, or even all that much in general - generally when I'm cross or if I drop something on my foot for example. It's not an instinctive thing for me, so I accept that I'm probably basing this on my own behaviour.
On that note, with regards to the sexism and innuendo, sure some of that is in bad taste, but again this happens all the time everywhere else just as does swearing - however swearing is easier to control - subtle sexist "jokes" etc... are harder to uncover. We also need to be careful we don't stifle conversation and opinions completely. Not saying that sexism or innuendo is high brow conversation but I don't want to be TOO strict. Take religious threads, a lot of people post their disgust at certain religions, at people who have faith etc... but whilst we try and moderate the language use we don't want to censor people having differing opinions no matter how extreme.
As a result some things will slip through - and as long as people behave in a courteous way, and aren't pushing the boundaries too far we'll allow it. The team follow a set of guidelines, unfortunately at times they will be misinterpreted, or people will be tired, or you know, be human and make a mistake. However, generally I think the consistency is pretty good. Different parts of the forum require different levels of moderation - some forums in OcUK are good at self regulating, others need a lot of molly coddling.
We'll never be able to please everybody, but the fact we seldom permaban people any more, and the number of suspensions have actually decreased over the last few years (I've checked the figures) is a sign that people are posting better, the rules may be a little less strict, and the moderators are being a bit more discretionary.
The issue normally arises when people willfully ignore the rules or purposefully change posts to "have a go" back at the moderation team - needless to say it does wind us up as we want to be regular members and contribute, but we also happen to have an edit button (some of us a few more buttons
) but other than enforcing the rules they are just people that give up their time to help make this place a better place.
In fact I was even going to create a "OcUK Content Committee" sub forum and invite people on a rotational basis to help us improve the content of the forum. However, it's not really achieveable unfortunately.
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