Hi All,

Perhaps it would be good if Mudcat were to try to foster a habit of using some circumlocution—for thread titles in particular—to avert the problem kat mentioned, especially to preserve good/responsible appearance on first impression.   Such as the following possibilities:

N—
N—r
N***
N***r

or something of the kind. I'm not happy with circumlocutions, and would personally prefer not to use them, but it is time we consider the feelings of everyone, and these are ways to do it.

I also think the dash is preferable because it somehow seems less brutal than the asterisks.

As to enforcing this, I suggest:

1. Use it only for titles in the forum message list, where it's most obvious and allows those offended to avoid the message if desired.

2. The body of messages could continue to use the word (sparingly if possible!) for scholarly accuracy and also because message contents would be too much to have to police.

3. How to do it: when the N word appears in a message title, the moderator changes it ASAP to the chosen circumlocution.

That would mean such message titles might appear for a brief time. However, they would presumably be caught and changed within a few hours to a day at most.

Does this seem doable? Does it answer the objections to the term?