Why does Pokemon DB take such a harsh stance on swearing?

Question

I may be slightly biased as I come from Australia, where the ratio of f-bombs per total number of words ranges from around 1 in 50 for posh suburbs, to 1 in 3 for more derelict neighbourhoods. I fail to see the necessity for covering up "bad words" in an attempt to be polite, especially after actually researching the history behind some of these words. Do the higher-ups here feel the need to make this place child-friendly? (That would be making the assumption that kids these days aren't already using such language, which is doubtful considering how widespread exposure to the internet and garbage pop music has become.) Honestly the idea of censoring "bad" language seems completely alien to me. Is there a concensus of why we are persisting with censorship?

Comments

Hahah living on the outskirts of Melbourne this resonates in a really funny way.
Ultimately the only person making these decisions is Pokemaster so I can’t really answer this. But I’d say it would have a lot to do with the fact you shouldn’t really need to use expletives to communicate your point on a platform like this. Our content is super dry so their use is somewhat lost here — that and the argument about children still has validity when we’re talking about a game with such a heavy focus on that demographic.

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It's much less controlled on the Showdown! server, possibly because kids are much rarer there.

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The reason is more or less obvious. The site owner, PM, intended this site for the beginners, who are mostly very young kids. In fact, a fraction of our (newer) users are 10-13 years of age. While it is acceptable in most (Western) cultures to swear, some of the more conservative cultures don't approve of swearing. Besides, Pokemon was meant for kids to begin with, so there's no reason to bring in "adult" language.

That kids these days swear tons doesn't dethrone the fact that most of the content is extremely child-friendly, and it would make no sense to bring in bad words. May be, a way to look at it might be ad revenue. The more family friendly the site, the more advertisers want to use the space. This makes sense because parents sometimes tend to monitor online activity, and prevent children from accessing certain sites, reducing income generated. So from a business point of view, it makes sense to censor anything that might affect how "safe" a website is.

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I didn't actually think PokemonDB was that harsh on swearing? Idk I feel like people just choose not to swear on here - there's just an air of formality that discourages it. You can find a few swear words here and there nobody really minds. Maybe I'm just completely oblivious to how often people swear off-site woohoo.

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There’s a censor for posts in the main site that blocks a bunch of slurs. By internet standards, any sort of policy against swearing is a harsh policy, really.

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Fizz youre a mod dont say treacherous stuff like that :0

Answer 1

I wouldn't say we're harsh. We only block the worst swear words. The nickname feature of Pokemon games themselves is way more harsh with what you can put in!

Although the site is not specifically targeted toward kids, clearly Pokemon is popular with children so I'm sure many kids visit. There is no real reason for people to swear while answering questions, so we don't allow it. Funny enough I was just listening to an old episode of the podcast Hello Internet yesterday ("The Naughty Episode") and the YouTuber CGP Grey said much the same thing about why he doesn't swear in his videos.

It's also not about the words themselves, most of the swearing that happened was people being offensive towards others (e.g. saying "f*** you"). So I wanted to try and avoid that kind of aggression on the site and keep it a pleasant place for all.

Comments

You listen to HI as well? That’s awesome haha

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i <3 that dude, his voice is great :D

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SAme here - he's epic

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@Fizz yeah I discovered it about a year ago, and have been slowly catching up on the back episodes. Didn’t think anyone here would also be a Tim :)