The only words that would be banned would be words that I judge to be only used to offend others. And I suspect that the number of banned words would be small--what would probably be larger is the list of words that causes the forum to automatically ask the user, before posting, "Are you sure you want to post this? The forum moderators will automatically be notified of this post if you proceed" and it will highlight the words.

If someone says, "The president is an idiot" in some random discussion in the chat forum, that's a lot less offensive than "You're an idiot" being addressed to someone in the forum. So "idiot" might be a "warning word" that notifies the moderators immediately but the user would be allowed to proceed with the post. The moderators would then have to judge whether it was offensive or not.

I'm not interested in instituting some fascist censoring regime in the message forum. The actual word content of posts is generally not a problem (we don't usually see much use of vulgar swear words). But I do want the system to alert me quickly to posts that might be the beginning of a flame war so I can apply the "Be polite" rule promptly--before it evolves into a full-fledged war.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster