The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #81128   Message #1484231
Posted By: Jeri
13-May-05 - 12:15 PM
Thread Name: Bawdy Song:-----has a Micro Pen*s (thread titles?)
Subject: RE: Bawdy Song:-----has a Micro Pen*s (thread titl
They're words, and that's all they are. This is above the line in the music section, where people will search for songs based on their titles. They will not look for asterisks and unconventional spellings of words.

I score English essay responses for a living, and you don't know how sad it is to see a poor child who can't spell out 'fuck this test' properly. Some spell 'fuck' as 'f*ck', some 'fu*k', some 'feck' (the Irish ones, I'd guess), some 'fock' (Catspaw's relatives), some don't understand the whole concept of vowels and spell it 'fck'. Tell any children you know that an essay is more than one phrase or sentence, and if they plan on using profanity, they should learn how to spell it. But I digress...

There are many songs with titles that aren't rude even if the songs are. Say a child is looking for a song with an historical theme, and searches for, say, 'pioneers'. Go ahead - pretend you're a kid, and type the word into the grey box up top and hit 'search'. Click on the second title, 'PIONEERS'. Good thing it had a nice, polite title, isn't it. Otherwise, you might have known right off the bat that it wasn't the sort of song you were looking for.

I think the PG13 version of Mudcat (with filters) would be the best way to go. I think accessibility is the issue, and if one dirty word in one song title prevents someone from being able to access the rest of Mudcat, something should be done about it. If it's just a matter of a "HMPFF! Well, I NEVER!!!" sort of rectal entomology, I'd ignore it. That's just me, though. I don't think words hurt people; people hurt people. I think rudeness involves how one throws their personality around, not what words they use when doing it. I'd rather see multiple 'profane' thread titles than one title meant to personally attack someone.

On another note, "____ has a Micro Penis" has possibilities, but maybe 'dick' would work better, since there are more rhymes.