FREE SKULL[CENSORED]

[ZeTurd]

Let me preface this post by saying that I fully understand that 2+2 is a privately owned website, and that I support our supreme overlords' right to institute whatever arbitrary rules they want to.

However, I must admit I fail to see the purpose of a profanity filter on a site that caters exclusively to people old enough to play poker. I'm not aware of any online poker room or brick & mortar casino that allows players under 18 years of age. While it's not always readily apparent, the posters frequenting this site should be old enough to drive, vote and have sex (or legally purchase porn if the former is lacking.) So what's the problem with a little profanity?

Legal reasons? If I remember correctly, the TOC should free 2+2 from any legal consequences for posters' actions. It strikes me as absurd to believe that 2+2 could possibly be facing legal repercussions for allowing profanities. But then again, I'm no lawyer, so what do I know.

Decorum? I find it hard to see this as a legitimate reason. I doubt I'm mistaken if I say that close to 100% of the posters on this site are able to substitute [censored] with the appropriate profanity when seeing it in context. It seems like an empty gesture.

I'm not going to loose any sleep over not being able to see [censored] and [censored] in their uncensored glory, but I think there are a couple of good reasons to let the profanity filter go:

- As evidenced in the recent FREE THAC thread, it can be really easy to miss profanities if you mix profanities with other words (skull[censored] being the case in point.) I'm used to the profanity filter babysitting for me, so I'm not really too conscious on the profanities I'm including in my posts; I just assume the filter is going to take care of them. I highly doubt that THAC tried to circumvent the filter on purpose. I got a 3-day ban myself for posting a picture with a profanity in it. It never crossed my mind that there was something wrong with it when I posted it. These things will continue to happen, which means two things:

1) Extra care is needed from the posters on the site to avoid accidentally circumventing the profanity filter.
2) The work load for the mods is increased.

Do we really need that?

- The second reason is a bit more technical, but a valid one I think. I don't know how many words that are currently included in the profanity filter, but surely it has to be 100+. For each post being posted or previewed on the site, a script has to run to check for these 100+ words in the post and replace them with [censored] when encountered. Depending on exactly how this is implemented it might take a noticeable toll on 2+2's already fragile servers.

In conclusion: Free skull[censored]!