Politically Correct

[Archaic]

In a current thread boykjo listed a chemical used for layout work by its trade name, only to have that name censored. To wit:

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****M steel blue spray can and a scribe. This is what is used in most machine shops.

Heres a link to the ****m blue steel spray can.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/2C928

Layout Fluids
STEEL BLUE(R) and STEEL RED (TM)
Fluids help users scribe sharp, clear, precise lines on a workpiece.
Fluids dry quickly, allowing minimal preparation time before scribing. For use by tool and die makers, maintenance mechanics, machinists, and pattern makers on a variety of materials including metals, aluminum, and glass.
Thin film applied to workpiece remains flexible without cracking or chipping
Noncorrosive
Toluene-free

wow....... I got flagged on the manufacturer... Thats a first

hope this helps

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Apparently the Thread Gods of this forum have decided that left to our own base desires we will be profane, or, shudder, politically incorrect. To prevent this political incorrectness a thread sniffer has been set upon us to detect and eliminate from view any politically incorrect word. We must be a vile bunch, because now the sniffer even looks within words for a string of characters that could be considered by someone, somewhere as offensive. Having ferreted out the offensive letters they are replaced with asterisks. The world is now a better place and this forum safe for malleable and impressionable minds.

The offensive and politically incorrect trade name for the blue layout fluid is D_Y_K_E_M. One need only drop the M to disern the offending word. In yet another thread, Hotfoot, in describing the construction of one of his artistic pieces ran afoul of the sniffer when trying to use the term bowling *****. It would seem that *****, whether in bearings, bowling, or as a slang term for a portion of the male anatomy are not to be spoken of.

Am I the only one that finds this completely ludicrous? Is this not taking the Nanny State to the bleeding edge? Must I now run out to my shop and place the can of layout fluid in a plain brown paper wrapper to prevent protestors from appearing in my shop lot?

It has occurred to me that I may well be bounced or banned from further membership in this forum for actually having subverted the sniffer and causing the trade name of the previously censored blue layout fluid to appear. Before I am given the bum's rush let me respectfully submit to Hobart and the Webmaster - Lighten Up! It seems absurd to me to have a forum so politically correct that as a user I would have to resort to pig latin - owlingbay allsbay to describe a simple object.

Maybe it is just me, but I would think that we can be trusted to have civil discourse without a thread sniffer parsing every single word of a message to keep me on the straight and narrow. Perhaps I cannot see the forrest for the trees. I would be interested in hearing from those that think this function makes this forum more functional, useable, or better. If you don't hear from me again, get those cans of layout fluid hidden.

Adios-----

[whateg0]

Seriously, the mods on this board do a pretty good job of not interfering with the content, and I believe it is them who sets the filters. I have been on other boards where the mods feel they must babysit to the point of deleting threads that are not strictly 'on-topic'. And not just on-topic with reference to the original posting, but to the site 'purpose'. So, be happy it's not like that.

I think most have figured out which words will be censored. In fact, when I posted a message a few days ago, I referred to something being crooked, or 'rooster'eyed. I knew before I posted it that it may be censored, but I don't think anybody had any problem figuring out what was meant.

I do agree that there are some words that are a censored that don't seem important, but another purpose of the filters, as I understand it is to limit the amount of spam? I could be completely wrong there. I'm not sure. It does help keep the site more family friendly, though, too. Anyway, it could sure be worse. I for one am pretty happy with the state of things here at Weld Talk.


Just my 2.4¢.

Dave

[Zrexxer]

It's a canned, automated, list in the vBulletin software and while its annoying sometimes it never bothered me to the point that I'd write 40 lines of text complaining about it :rolleyes:

[fjk]

Hi
I don't know much about welding & metal fab, but my day job is
doing computer science and software development, so I figure
I can add a bit of semi-technical detail here (if not interested,
move on...)

There are two problems here.

The first is "what is offensive?". Danish cartoons that lampoon
a particular religious person get a couple-hundred-million
people on the planet really upset, but provide a good belly
laugh to a different couple-hundred-million (who also get
offended that the cartoons are censored). A single computer
server, censoring/whatevering a set of posts can make only
one decision -- that a particular piece of content is/is-not
offensive, and act accordingly. So with those Danish cartoons,
regardless of the decision made, a couple-hundred-million
people would be made unhappy.

The "right answer" to this problem would be to have each
person's computer evaluate & censor the content per that
person's desires. But in practice, this does not work:
- it requires that the computer owner keep their censor-rules
up to date -- just like we all keep our anti-virus stuff up to date :-)
- keeping these rules up to date means that you have to know
the offensive content and be able to characterise it enough
so that you can tell your censor about it, or go through a list
of things and say yes to this but no to that...
- it can provide a hidden channel for "the bad guys" to distribute
"bad stuff". For example, if none of us welder-types want to
see posts that mention those anatomical spherical objects,
and configure our personal filters accordingly, the "bad
guys" who want to talk about those spherical objects can
send all kinds of spherical-object-talk, happy in the knowledge
that the welders won't see it (and therefore won't get upset
or cause a ruckus about it), but Hobart (and Hobart's computers,
network connection, etc, etc) will carry it and store it and so on...
(and past experience proves that anatomical-spherical-object-talk
rapidly expands to fill all available bandwidth & diskspace; in the
early days of the Internet, NASA turned up a high-speed link from
California to Australia and within hours of the link coming online, it
was running at 100% -- almost all of it dirty-pictures).

The second problem is a more nitty-gritty kind of thing.
Assuming that you know that AAA is offensive, how do you
find it? Computers have a hard time figuring out the context
of these things. If the censor is simple-minded and just looks
for predefined character strings, then looking for AAA might
find offensive content. It might also find a discussion of how
the American Automobile Association should offer discounts
on MIG welders... Or, w.r.t. spherical-objects, we could
talk about the finials welded to the top of fence posts,
or it could be some kind of inappropriate discussion of
anatomical-spherical-objects, or it could be a completely
appropriate post about how some aspect of welding can
cause cancer of the anatomical-spherical-objects...

More sophisticated systems pretend to look a bit more at
context -- for instance, if there are too many naughty words,
it assumes that the whole post is naughty, and so on. But
there are counter measures for these too -- just add lots
of random non-naughty-filler to the post (often done with
white-text on a white-background, like this)
that throws off the 'score' and makes the posting look "ok".

Or you could put the inappropriate message in a picture and
send the picture around. Computers find it difficult tell what
a picture is of -- and the potential for false-postives is
real bad. Imagine a picture of someone's shop and in the background
is a calendar with one of "those" pictures in it...

These are both areas of active research in the CS community --
and if anyone has a good answer, I know a few professors at
MIT, Cambridge, Cal Tech, and UCLA who'd rush to give you a PhD,
and a venture capitalist or two who'd rush faster to fund your
startup company :-)

Sorry for the lengthy rant
frank

[CRAFTBENDER]

I worked in fabrication for over 40 years. We used that brand of layout dye. Most fab guys mounted a piece of felt about a half inch thick and as wide as would fit in a wide mouth jar and attached to the jar lid. It is possible to spread the dye on a large piece quickly with this method. The offending brand of layout dye comes in red and blue. I mixed it half and half to make a beautiful purple. Ha. Wire cutters can also be referred to with the same offending name. Crazy world huh?

[Archaic]

Interesting responses.

I am well acquainted with Jelsoft and the vBulletin software and do understand that the filtering function is a choice that may, or may not be incorporated by the site administrators. My purpose was not to flame this forum. It was to point out something that I find bizarre and encourage debate as to whether it adds to or detracts from the forum.

WeldingWeb.com and ShopFloorTalk are both powered by the vBulletin software, but both have chosen to not use the filter. As far as I can tell neither site is plagued by **** or spam, but there I can use the word **** for wire cutters and not have the message reader scratch his/her head trying to figure out what I meant by ****s.

Without another forty lines of complaining I suppose the salient question is does the use of the filter make WeldTalk a better forum or is it more of an impediment to the free flow of discussion? Maybe the members and administrators may wish to consider its use when further refining and fine tuning the site.

[Hotfoot]

Oh, *****, it really hasn't been *** of a ***** in the *** I've been sending.:)

[Broccoli1]

Mr Hemingway,

the filter is for the SPAMMERS not to censor our conversations-unfortunately our words get caught in the spam net:)

[Broccoli1]

It kinda sucks but Weldtalk grows each day and will continue to grow:)

[usmcpop]

Automatic censoring isn't that much of a problem here, as long as we can display and discuss our pigeon poop welds. :D

[whateg0]

Automatic censoring isn't that much of a problem here, as long as we can display and discuss our pigeon poop welds. :D

Well that proves it! That filter don't stop poop!:D:p

Dave

[usmcpop]

Dave, maybe they just took the filter out to clean it. Let's try it again later.

[1990notch]

Political correctness is way overdone. Now you have to think twice about describing hardware or electrical connectors as male or female just because someone somewhere MAY be offended. I never gave a second thought to that terminology when I was growing up.

Strange how at the same time we are supposed to be ultra considerate of offending others, the actually offensive stuff like the Jack@$$ movies and gangster rap is so popular.

[villemur]

Strange how at the same time we are supposed to be ultra considerate of offending others, the actually offensive stuff like the Jack@$$ movies and gangster rap is so popular.

Now that I have young children I am appreciative of the SPAM filters and I think that the moderators here do a great job. We shouldn't get a vocabulary lesson because some purveyor of prurient parcels decides to SPAM our beloved WelkTalk on a Saturday afternoon.

I really enjoyed the Jack@$$ movies, I think that they are hilarious. No, they are not appropriate for children, but it's easy enough for me to keep my children from seeing them. However, I shouldn't have to censor my children from reading an educational welding site.

[boykjo]

WOW........... Look what I ****'* started.............

Thats all I got to say about that....................

[Archaic]

As an old coot without kids about I tend to forget the challenges that those of you with young children face on a daily basis and their exposure to media of all types. I should give that far more consideration.

This filter that autonomously ********* out my words truly aggravates the snot out of me. BUT. I can see that it serves a useful purpose even if it is an aggravation, at least to me. I intend to go with the flow and you will hear no more carping or quibbling about it from me.

Adios-----

[TOMWELDS2]

I feel like such a 'richard' for not having the 'marbles' to get involved in this 'water barrier' conversation sooner......:rolleyes::D

[whateg0]

Remember the SNL skit where they substituted the word 'buttocks' for ...?

Dave

[stevinator]

Now you got me wondering if we can use the term pipe nipples.

[stevinator]

I guess you can here but probably not much longer at work.And we're a gas company.

[boykjo]

SNL............... ever seen the "cork soakers" skit...........Funny!

[Blacksmith]

Its been going on for a long, long time. For those of you who have worked as electricans, particularly in shipyards or on ships, you know there is a certain slang word for a motor connection box that also refers to a piece of male anatomy. I got warned not to use it in 1989 as a Chief Engineer in a shipyard in Maine because a secretary took offense at the slang word and filed a class action suit against the company.

[whateg0]

We just had sexual harassment prevention training today at work. They didn't used to have the word "prevention" in the title. That was an hour well spent.

Dave

[usmcpop]

Where I used to work, the women were worse than the men, for the most part.

[Garfield]

Where I used to work, the women were worse than the men, for the most part.

Thats because have you ever heard anything happen to a female accused by a male of sexual harassment?
Any thing bad any way:)

[cpurvis]

Archaic, I'm with you. I think these automatic filters do more harm than good.

All bulletin boards have moderators who can either notice themselves, or be flagged by others, if a member's post are obscene or offensive. After a warning, if it happens again, bounce that person. End of problem; others can freely discuss owlingbay allsbay or ykemda layout ink without a bunch of asterisks appearing where the correct, non-offensive for umpteen million years, terms used to be.

[tacmig]

Hello all,

New to the Hobart boards. Looks interesting and seems to be a lot of great folks here. In any event, I just couldn't hang around here any longer without jumping in on this one (politically correct). I think we can all agree at some point that political correctness is simply a crutch to be used in case of an emergency and really carries no weight in the real world of true thinkers. Tolerance is an element that only you must comply to and is only a mask to make those that are offended or otherwise weak-minded feel better. But my question here is: "how can you offend us"? We are all welders, enjoy Jeff Foxworthy, shop at wall mart and for some of us are proud to be a red-neck. The only way I know of to offend a welder is to mess with his tools.But for a welder this is not really an offense nor does any "political correctness need to be administered. The only thing required here is good health coverage for the offender.

TacMig

[hankj]

Don't know why I'm posting in this thread. Must be the vodka.

Anyway, the occasional bleep of a word that the software is programmed to recognize is no biggie.

What I find amazing is that so many "adults" cannot find a way to express their ideas in language that is acceptable, and take offense when that failure is emphasised by a string of asterisks.

Ludicrous.

Hank