Surely the beauty of voting rather than having all-powerful editors is that neither I nor anyone else has the power not to "allow others the same courtesy". But I do have the power to contribute my £/50 to building up a consensus on what we want to see here.
After all, we reap nodes that are stupid. That's part of the consensus on what kind of site this is. I'd like us to have some taste and decency boundaries too. If I'm alone in this, we won't get them. That's democracy for ya - I think it could scarcely be thought of as "censorship".
I read the node because I often take a gander at the new poetry, and also to see exactly what "adult" meant in this context. In fact, I discover, "adult" here meant "juvenile". And it was that which made me think we'd be better off without it.
Petruchio put it best in the CB - a post needs to be really clever to justify that level of obscenity. And I don't think it was.
§ George Sherston | [reply] |
Fair enough, using the word 'censorship' was too strong (unless the node gets deleted!). Sorry about that.
Everyone has their own individual standards of what language or behaviour is acceptable. What annoys me is when people appoint themselves as 'moral guardians' and try to inflict their standards on others (for example the recent controversy regarding 'Brass Eye' on Channel 4).
If you post something which is likely to offend, the decent thing to do (as chipmunk did) is to precede it with a warning. I don't understand how anyone can complain about the content if they've already been told that it may offend them. I'd complain if I wasn't offended :-)
You have the right to dislike the poem just as I have the right to enjoy it, but applying "taste and decency boundaries" to PM would deny my right while preserving yours.
A better idea would be if you wrote a web proxy to remove swearing (replace it with c***, f***, etc), then we can all make an individual choice.
Regards,
JJ
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I actually ++ed both the original post and George_Shertson's explanation of why he --ed it. I like the limerick, and I like the code representing it here,
but I'm glad to read an intelligent and reasonable response like GS's whether or not I agree with it. That vote is GS's right here, and I'm glad he's comfortable exercising that right and taking credit for it.
The limerick is cool, but I'd like to point out that it should probably come with an attribution since I've heard it elsewhere before. The source I think it comes from originally, and where I heard it, is from George Carlin. I believe it was part of his "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" act. If there is a more correct attribution than this, I'd be glad to know.
MrM
2001.09.11 - a day never to be forgotten
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i can understand why some people would be offended by this, and i can also understand why others (like myself) loved to see this posted, as it is a classic (admittedly thats straining the definition of the word 'classic' (: ). and if anything else, it was a shocker.
some people love dirty and/or lewd jokes, coders included. proof is only as far as your nearest fortune binary*. and i ++'d chipmunk because he, like those who included the -o option in fortune, made it non-mandatory to read the slop - by making the reader select the possibly offensive text after giving a fair warning. and it was fair warning, as lewd means
(according to Word Net):
'suggestive of or tending to moral looseness; "lewd whisperings of a d
+irty old man"; "an indecent gesture"; "obscene telephone calls"; "sal
+acious limericks" [syn: {obscene}, {salacious}]
and like mr_mischief, i found myself ++'ing George_Shertson for expressing the fact that he had been offended in an adult and intelligent manner, despite the fact that i disagree with his point. i'd kind of figured that this node would be considered 'flamebait' when i read the poetry; i'm glad people here are a little more thoughtful than that.
* Note: for those few who don't know what i'm refering to, log into your favorite UNIX/Linux terminal, and try fortune -o, but only if you want to read obscene jokes.
strfry()
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IMHO, calling this juvenile shows a lack of education in the fine art of the limerick. In particular, the bucket/nantucket limerick format, which is well over 75 years old. According to Nantucket.net, papers like the "Princeton Tiger", "Chicago Tribune", "New York Exchange" and "Pawtucket Times" started it off, and it ran from there.
The cruder version seen in this thread, too, apparently dates from the book Immortalia, published in Philadelphia in 1927!
Perhaps it is juvenile. But in that case, so are most of our other great literary bawds, shakespeare not the least of them (check out the first few lines of R&J, for example).
Stuff changes from being porn to being an "important historical document" if you give it enough years.
-- This isn't my real sig. I tried to do that, but I just got biro marks on the screen.
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