Faggots, retards, and volunteer moderators.

The moderators on these forums are volunteers. Our time is precious to us. We would rather sped our time weeding the garden than moderating a forum.

Once in a while, a poster uses vocabulary that has become embroiled in political controversy or has been captured by social justice warriors. Even if the word might be "properly" used in everyday conversation, it has taken on meanings that attract shills, trolls, and social crusaders. As volunteers, it is easier for us to censor the use of those kinds of words than  it is to deal with the cascading series of moderation turmoil that might result if we didn't ask for a modification to the post.  Today's word that triggered this sort of moderation was "faggot". "Retard" is another that I remember from the past.

There are somewhere around 40 volunteer moderators that keep this site functional. Any one of them can delete a post, or request that it be modified. If a post can get by all 40 volunteers, with all their neurodiversity, dialects, and different ways of looking at the world, then chances are pretty good that it will stand the test of time, and not cause a lot of future labor for ongoing moderation.  

My understanding is that in england, "faggot" can be a stick or a cigarette.

My cousin went to school for a few months in england.   One day she asked the teacher if she could be excused because she discovered she had a bloody nose.  Roars of laughter from the other kids.  The teacher informed her that she had a "bleeding nose."

All sorts of comedy when we explore the differences of cultures around the world.  

Our site traffic is 70% american.  So we tend to mostly be freaky in the american flavor of freaky.   But we find other flavors of freaky to try on once in a while.  

At the same time, all of our staff are volunteers.  And they receive zero training.  So every little thing written here has to pass muster of a few different staff.  Most are american.  Although the two people that run these forums are not:  burra is english and raven is canadian.

So if you say "bloody nose" - english folks will probably get a giggle.  And if you happen to be in the UK and call a stick a faggot, there are probably six people on the staff that will get a worried look on their face.  And you know why they do.   So if one of those six say "hey, could you change that?" - you know why they are asking.

So it's an edge case.  What do we do?  Do we slap the shit out of the volunteer staffer and say "shame on you for shaming a citizen of the british empire for using a word that is not a shameful word over there!"  Do we slap the shit out of the author and say "shame on you for knowingly triggering people that are looking for an excuse to overlook what they know and just want to be psychotically angry about stupid shit!"

I confess:   I love pushing the dumbfuck button on dumbfucks.  They leap up and say "that's a naughty word and I am 27 flavors of offended and now I begin my nine day long rant!" (which, to me, sounds the same as "lookit me!  I'm a dumbfuck!") The words of robin williams would be 30% less funny if there weren't dumbfucks out there overreacting.  

When I was in junior high, throwing the word "faggot" about as a stick or cigarette was great comedy.  Always sure to get a laugh.  But in 2018 ...   things have changed.   A middle school kid would probably get suspended for a week, and if he did it again, he might get expelled.   But if that same kid said "dumbfuck" a hundred times, the most he would get is detention.  



So ...   edge case ....  

If we leave it, what dumbfuckery will that fuel?  Will british middle school kids decide to have a heyday with it?  Will some other site (full of dumbfucks) accuse the permies.com staff of being homophobic?  


I would much rather spend my time talking about permaculture than arguing over the use of the word by a non-american on a dominantly american web site.



"I brought some sticks in for the fire."  Seems to get the job done without any great loss.  


In the end, this is my site.  And as as much as I would like to see all people everywhere let this one go, the bottom line is that it is both legit for folks outside the us to use it and it is legit for people inside the us to freak out about it.  So here is my official position:  if you use the word and nobody cares, then it is fine.  If you use the word and somebody on the staff says "hey, could you just say 'stick'?" Then I support my volunteer staff 100%.   Because me standing behind somebody donating their time along these lines is a hundred times more important than this edge case use of a word I rarely hear uttered.  

Great title. Your apple will have to wait until tomorrow, though, as I have already bequeathed today's.

I suppose that, if one was only steeped in current usage, a statement that included an apology for having been retarded by the need feed another faggot into the woodstove, might be misinterpreted...

Then there's the classic British-to-American misunderstanding about bumming a fag...

-CK

When I clicked on this thread, I was bound and determined to defend your volunteer moderators.

Then I realized that you weren't calling them names.

I think you outta have mentioned old farts as well.  As the party of the 1st part that started this whole hoo-haw,  let me just say it's been many years since my correct and proper use of the language was questioned. I don't mind, but as a registered old fart (you can say old fart, can't you?) of Sixty plus years, the world is becoming a scary place.  You dang near had me triggered, and I got so worked up I  nearly needed to take a nap.

I'll just close by saying a big encompassing HOWDY to y'all and take my bow.  

I remain your Superannuated Flatulence ever,

'Dorf.

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:Having said that I have to assume 40 volunteer moderators is a bit of an exaggeration, since that would probably outnumber the "common-folk" regular daily posters.

Lucrecia,

I think you will find that this site is far larger than you think.

In the last 7 days, there have been 288 new accounts created, 494 new threads and 3846 new posts.

The 40 staff members are all volunteers.  Some put in hours every day, and some put in just a few minutes each week.  They are not 40 full time people.

you can say old fart, can't you?

I feel confident that nobody on the staff will object.

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:

Having said that I have to assume 40 volunteer moderators is a bit of an exaggeration, since that would probably outnumber the "common-folk" regular daily posters.

I thought maybe 30.  So I counted.

35 moderators have used the moderator tools in the last 4 days.  That doesn't count the members who asked not to be on the list.  It also doesn't count the developers who do an awesome job helping us perfect and adapt the moderation tools.  It doesn't include the moderators who have to participate in moderating discussions but didn't use the tools themselves.

I know there are at least a dozen moderators who only come online once a week/month.

And a few of our usual active moderators are away from the internet this week.

It also doesn't include the pollinators who are a huge part of helping the site run smoothly by giving out apples, leading by example, and creating quality content.

It also doesn't include the users who take the time to report posts for moderator attention.  The report button is great for reporting not nice posts and for reporting great posts that deserve an apple.

Some times it is straight ignorance that what we say could possibly be considered offensive elsewhere. We have a word here in NZ used exclusively for female genitals, South African immigrants use it in a totally different way and wonder why NZers are shocked!  When I first started using the internet I looked for an email username and settled on the local name for one of our most common native trees, Alectryon excelsa, common name titoki. Now 'titoki' is a totally polynesian word, no issues there. The fact that American readers thought I was advocating a love of pornography was totally lost on me, until someone pointed out what an obnoxious individual I was! This kind of cross-cultural stuff is important to remember. We are writing in English and communicating, but if speaking face to face our respective accents might make communication much more difficult, but also help us make allowances for different linguistic idioms. The internet is tricky like that. I think the moderation policy Paul is speaking about is spot on.  

BTW:  I'm not sure you youngsters understand the term "faggot."

( OH DRAT! HERE HE GOES AGAIN!)

Please bear with me a brief moment.  The term is specifically a bundle of small sticks tied with string used as firewood.  My grandfather was a stingy old Welshman.  He'd go around the yard and pick up sticks, tie them with scraps of string and then store them out in the garage.  He used them for starting fires in the fireplace, but he also used to burn them in volume as a way of providing instant heat to the house to knock of the chill.

The whole idea of my thread that caused all the hoohaw was an extrapolation of this concept.  Burning these (I won't use it again) would be a great way for an aging couple (KYHillChick and Myself) to stay warm.  The trick if finding an efficient way to do it, and that's why I started the thread.

I watched a show recently that was apparently filmed in new zealand.  A message is a "meesige".  "Did you get my meesige?"

My friend andrew is from australia.  Sometimes I have to ask him to translate what he just said and he tries to say it with an american accent.  

Maybe in a hundred years all of our cultural diversity will be 99% diluted.

My understanding is a faggot is a specific measurement of a bundle of sticks three foot long and two feet across.

paul wheaton wrote:

you can say old fart, can't you?

I feel confident that nobody on the staff will object.

Of course, if it's a particularly loud, noisy fart we'd call it a trump...

William Allendorf wrote:BTW:  I'm not sure you youngsters understand the term "faggot."

I don't think it is an age thing.  I have more than a few gray hairs myself.   I think it is a cultural thing.   For a while there were some extremely horrendus acts done and the same word was yelled as the reason for this monstrous behavior.  Many of us are thoroughly disgusted by these acts.   And it is the lack of disgust, in the past, that allowed the acts to ever happen.  Clearly, to keep from having such things happen again, we need to perpetually be disgusted.  So when the word pops up, we put on our cringey worried faces and prepare to set things right.  

I think getting upset about use of this word is rational and wholesome.  

And people getting upset over the word "fuck" are just dumbfucks.   It's funny to watch them squirm.  Fuck, fuck, fuck ....

Had a coworker who had spent time in England.  Apparently when he introduced himself over there to a large group and said "Hi, I'm from America and I'm Randy" it generated much humor.  From then on he was advised to go by Randall...

I remember my grandfather cutting and bundling sticks from the neighborhood in that fashion. Funny thing was, they didn't have a wood-burning appliance.

It's actually less funny when you realise it was a wartime fixation that he held onto past utility and all reason. His family had been in eastern Poland, what at the time was actually Russia before the end of the war, and that was one of his ingrained survival skills.

Anyways, I think that while it's nice to be able to discuss our opinions on such things as word choice, the good staff on this site have too much to do, and not enough time to do it and their own permie projects. If it makes moderators uncomfortable, perhaps a different word could be chosen.

-CK

raven ranson wrote:My understanding is a faggot is a specific measurement of a bundle of sticks three foot long and two feet across.

Interesting.  I had not heard that.  I guess standardizing would be good if you were trying to buy or sell them.  I guess Grandpa was into freelance non-standard faggotry-- learned something new every day!

Grandpa's were usually about 18 inches log and about 6-8 inches in diameter.  He had a little wooden contraption that let him make a pile in between 4 uprights made 2X2 scraps and then tie it off with string.  The string came from all the bakery goods grandma brought home.  I'd substitute twisted plastic grocery bags.

They burned like hellfire. (I'm not offending any satanists, am I? I'll retract it.)

I wouldn't use plastic unless it was going in the hottest of hot Rocket Mass Heaters, and even then, I'd want to test the exhaust before I did much of it.

One of the perennial wild plants in our part of the world here is wild grape. I would just use wild grape vine, or any other dried up old vine. Or a natural fibre. Or scraps of natural clothing.

Burning plastic is a needlessly complicated and potentially dangerous thing to do on a homestead level, and I don't think it should be done casually, or without a purpose-built incinerator that will incinerate without creating byproducts like dioxins.

-CK

William - I understand your confusion, really I do.  But faggot is such a trigger word for so many people, and we don't want to drive them away over something so trivial.

Anyway, in honour of your Welshness, I'm going to share a favourite meal...



Enjoy! ;)

Burra Maluca wrote:

a favourite meal...

My (Welsh!) husband has fond memories of eating them at boarding school.  I don't dare ask what's in them :)

Burra, right! That's the faggots I'm familiar with. Ate them at the local pub on a regular basis when I was living in the U.K. Yum.

By the way, I was a tad shocked when I saw who the OP was when I read the title. Huh? It surely got my attention, so I started reading. Ah-ha, good title. An attention getter, and it worked.

Galadriel Freden wrote:
My (Welsh!) husband has fond memories of eating them at boarding school.  I don't dare ask what's in them :)

Never ask, just smother them with gravy and pile on the mushy peas.

Mostly unwanted bits of pig I think though.  Especially liver.

paul wheaton wrote:

William Allendorf wrote:BTW:  I'm not sure you youngsters understand the term "faggot."

I don't think it is an age thing.  I have more than a few gray hairs myself.   I think it is a cultural thing.   For a while there were some extremely horrendus acts done and the same word was yelled as the reason for this monstrous behavior.  Many of us are thoroughly disgusted by these acts.   And it is the lack of disgust, in the past, that allowed the acts to ever happen.  Clearly, to keep from having such things happen again, we need to perpetually be disgusted.  So when the word pops up, we put on our cringey worried faces and prepare to set things right.  

I think getting upset about use of this word is rational and wholesome.  

And people getting upset over the word "fuck" are just dumbfucks.   It's funny to watch them squirm.  Fuck, fuck, fuck ....

I think there's some new treatments for that-- Resperdal comes to mind.  Possibly Fluoxetine. You'd best check with a doctor.  

My son had that syndrome for a while, but thankfully he grew out of it.  

Interesting change of use in words.  A fag was a younger boy who did menial tasks for older boys in boarding schools and old faggot referred to older women who collected small bundles of sticks for their rocket stoves in ye olde England.  And if you asked a butcher if they had any faggots here, they would produce balls of mince made from offcuts and offal.

Minor point of clarification to an early point: to a Brit a cigarette is also known as a fag 'having a fag' / 'popped out for a fag', but never to my knowledge a faggot.

I've also met an American who introduced himself to a large group of with 'Hi, I'm Randy!'

Could a script be written to replace the 'offending' word with a picture of sticks that way it will never be a problem again. I don't think people will be discussing the offal based food much. Je suis retard por le idee?

Also never mention fanny pack in the U.K, it doesn't sound...good.

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:The title is hilarious and very click-worthy.

Having said that I have to assume 40 volunteer moderators is a bit of an exaggeration, since that would probably outnumber the "common-folk" regular daily posters. Unless of course the point is to heavily moderate a few rogue outliers that lurk among the happy herd (and if that is the purpose it would be good to know).

I sure would be nice to be able to heavily watch and moderate the "few rogue outliers," but even with all of us on staff, there isn't time! Half the time, I'll spend hours doing moderating things (banning spammers, writing and sending the dailyish, writing tutorials, reading forums that got reported, welcoming new posters, adding threads to forums, etc) that I don't even have time to post about my own stuff!

Yesterday, I came on during my kids' nap. I was here for almost 2 hours, and I thought I'd be able to merrily read some threads and upgrade some new pollinators. Instead, I spent those two hours trying to test some forum features. Thankfully, while I was busy with that, there were at least 5 other staff online dealing with other stuff. Did you know we discuss things to try to make the right decision about issues like this and so many others? That takes time, too.

Our site is up and running 24/7. And there's moderators around the world, so while Joseph is sleeping, Satamax is awake, and Burra might be waking up and I might be crawling into bed.

Some of us are here for hours a day (we're generally the "Master" gardeners or stewards), some for multiple hours a week. Some post in forums you might never visit. Some do so much behind the scene that they don't have time to post (true fact: I always wondered who this Burra lady was and why everyone praised her, because I never saw her posting. She was just so busy behind the scenes doing AMAZING things that I never saw her!). I didn't even know who some moderators were because they posted in areas I don't visit often! Some are busy for some months and then come back and do a ton when their life isn't so crazy. Some spend most of their time putting out AMAZING content that makes pemies wonderful (looking at you, Joseph and Bryant!)

But, we're all here, and we all work together to make this site awesome.

Take a gander at this Staff Bios page. There's 44 staff listed there, and I still haven't added the newest staff to it. Eeep! Another moderator thing to do. It's truly amazing how much there is to do!

At first glance I thought oh no here we go again. Then I saw Joseph's name & knew this was worth reading.

Don't really have much to add to the excellent points already mentioned except to reiterate that context IS important.

I confess:   I love pushing the dumbfuck button on dumbfucks.

Unless Paul requests otherwise I'm stealing that quote. It's just perfect for some occasions. Not all, that's the key.

Hi, I'm new here. Good to know you are tolerant of faggots and retards.

I just wish some dumbfucks hadn't ruined the word faggot by making it a bullying, hateful term so that its original meaning was lost here in America.  And since it was, I appreciate everyone's understanding in not using it here other than in this thread.

William Allendorf wrote:

I guess Grandpa was into freelance non-standard faggotry

Best laugh of the day!

For those of you with Netflix, Noah Trevor has a new special that touches on the way words are used to express hate/racism and how it varies by country and the different meaning of the "n word."  Most of those types of specials really aren't my thing but this one was quite funny and also dealt with some more serious topics (like this one) in a thought-provoking, insightful way.

I once took several Japanese businessmen to a Mexican restaurant named Chi Chi's. When we first arrived they started giggling & laughing like young school children. I asked what was so funny. They wouldn't tell me. Then the following weekend they rented a car & went to Mardi Gras. I asked if they had fun. All they could do was laugh & reach out with their hands like they were squeezing something. Then they started repeating chi chi chi chi. That's when I learned that chi chi in Japanese means female breasts. They had fun in New Orleans.

Mike Barkley wrote:I once took several Japanese businessmen to a Mexican restaurant named Chi Chi's. When we first arrived they started giggling & laughing like young school children.

I'd giggle too, and refuse to drink anything there.  It means 'piss' in Portuguese.

Mike Barkley wrote:I once took several Japanese businessmen to a Mexican restaurant named Chi Chi's. When we first arrived they started giggling & laughing like young school children. I asked what was so funny. They wouldn't tell me. Then the following weekend they rented a car & went to Mardi Gras. I asked if they had fun. All they could do was laugh & reach out with their hands like they were squeezing something. Then they started repeating chi chi chi chi. That's when I learned that chi chi in Japanese means female breasts. They had fun in New Orleans.

This totally gives new meaning to the show Dragon Ball Z and the character Chi-Chi...

Here she is as an adult


But as a child she looked like



And I always wondered why. Now I know.