UP According to the Cuss-o-meter

[ironchapman]

I recently found a website called the "Cuss-o-meter". What this website does is measure how many times people cuss on blogs and other websites that you submit to it.

So, I ran UrbanPlanet through it using the URL for the homepage.

The results were indeed very positive. The Cuss-o-meter told me that only around 0.5% of our pages contain cussing, and that's less than 94% of the rest of the websites that took the test.

SSC, for comparison, got 1.9% of its pages, less than 79% of other pages that took the test.

SSP, also for comparison, got 2.9% of its pages, less than 68% of other pages that took the test.

I think this says a lot for the level of conversation here at UP. We try to act like adults in our conversations here. I also think it reflects well on the education level of the average UP user, and I think it also says something about how well moderated the forums are, especially when you compare these things to other websites.

Congratulations on a job well done everyone!

[Raintree21]

And the fact that the moderators are very strict in what they allow and don't let loose lips sink this ship.

[dgreco]

I cant believe that many websites has less than .5% cussing. Does this effect when people cuss and the word gets changed?

[Neo]

We have several filters in place where a cuss word gets converted into a clean word (sometimes humerous). We do our best however, to keep things very clean in the forums. I personally don't think that cussing is required to get a point across. With that said, it does add some flair from time to time when one of the 'accepted' cuss words come across when speaking about a particular subject. It is great that we have such a low percentage on our site, I'm amazed that it is as high as 0.5% actually.

[Miesian Corners]

I might be the only one who thinks this, but expletives definitely have a place in communication--both positive and negative. There are just certain words that although known as profanity, do a far better job of getting a specific point across. In a very brief moment, they can show anger, joy, awe, and ennui. In short, there is an art to "cussing". Some have it and some don't.

Just as a point of reference, I will type the common English word for a female dog below.

beotch.

Don't you just love a filter?

[monsoon]

You do have to admit that people who might post on this board that need to use that word are not going to be talking about female dogs. Even in England these days it's not commonly used that way except by petty old people.

This was a preemptive move by a two administrators that have seen about every bad behavior possible over the past 4+ years. Some of it is so bad that we don't even keep it in the deleted files. We figure that one way to keep a lid on it would be just to require everyone to write in a manner that would be suitable for work or school, or barring that, how one might speak to their grandmother. The bad word filter seemed like a good idea.

If you really feel the need to have access to the word "beotch" in its proper form, I will gladly remove that one from the list.

[Lowerdeck]

I have a cussing problem, but I'm smart enough to not do it here. I see a vibe this site is different than many the other places I go online, so I stay clean here. I assume a few others here are the same.

[Captain Worley]

Interesting point there, Lowerdeck. I cuss a pretty good amount speaking, but not when writing. This may be because I associate writing with more professional thing, like business or school, don't know.

Even on the less strict boards, I don't go beyond the equivalents of dang and heck...matter of fact, I probably use the less offensive words more often than not.

[Miesian Corners]

You do have to admit that people who might post on this board that need to use that word are not going to be talking about female dogs. Even in England these days it's not commonly used that way except by petty old people.

This was a preemptive move by a two administrators that have seen about every bad behavior possible over the past 4+ years. Some of it is so bad that we don't even keep it in the deleted files. We figure that one way to keep a lid on it would be just to require everyone to write in a manner that would be suitable for work or school, or barring that, how one might speak to their grandmother. The bad word filter seemed like a good idea.

If you really feel the need to have access to the word "beotch" in its proper form, I will gladly remove that one from the list.

[Neo]

A good many words filtered on here are said routinely on prime-time television networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX in their uncensored form.

I can assure you (I am looking at our relatively short list of filtered words right now) that none of the words we filter are thrown around on prime-time television networks. If they were I can guarantee the network would be fined for letting it out over the air.