Town Hall Discussion: Separate adult, almost anything goes, forum
The advisory board twice discussed the pros and cons of a forum of this type. It would be a forum where there would be more freedom in terms of language and joking. It is not possible for vBulletin to selectively censor/filter forums, so the word filter would exist even in this forum.
So the forum might:
- Not allow nudity or sexually graphic images (images of people having sex), but most other images could be allowed.
- Jokes and phrases that would be censored or considered off color in other forums, would be allowed.
- Going around the language filter by intentionally misspelling a word, for instance, might be allowed in this forum.
- While hard core sexually explicit material would still not be allowed (ala stuff in alt.sex… usenet groups), there would be far more leeway in terms of allowing leeway to make sexual references and jokes, but still stop short of allowing porn novellas.
- Where the other forums are currently being held to an “allowed on Primetime Network TV” standard, this forum could be more along the lines of an “R” rated forum (with the exception of no nudity).
- Personal attacks and flame wars would still be moderated, but there would be a less of a ‘hair trigger’ in determining what is an attack vs. what is just ‘messing’ with someone or jokes/smack talk amongst friends.
- People would be required to take some proactive step to ‘join’ this forum/subforum, and in doing so, they would be agreeing they are over 18 and may find some material offensive (this will be determined by what can reasonably be setup in vBulletin and not take any, or much, manual involvement on my part or any others).
- People that abuse the forum (whether by overt complaining about the looser rules, or by taking the ‘you gave me an inch, so I am going to take a mile’ attitude), would be removed from being access that particular forum.
- Everyone would need to have the discipline to ONLY post with the looser standards in this member’s only forum, and understand that saying, “oops, I thought I was in the _____ forum where it was allowed” will not be an excuse for breaking the rules in other forums.
Ok, so that is something that we had been bouncing around. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of this, and if it is going to be done, what the limitations should be on such a forum.