Flight Rising Discussion

Yeah. and sometimes you can speak the English language natively and still not have the context! Like, I live in England. The latter half of the Maine cat breed? That wouldn't cross my mind as a slur AT ALL. I'd think you were either shortening the cat breed's name or else too lazy to type the extra two letters in racoon.

@Charaquan RE the cat one though that's, again, something where just because you don't know it's not hurtful or offensive doesn't mean that other people won't find it to be that. I live in England too, and iirc I was ten or eleven when I first found out that was a slur. And that's even with it not being something I've ever actually heard used as a slur here.

@Sawataris: Sure. I wouldn't personally purposely name a dragon that purely because I just don't like the name. If it came up in the RNG though, I'd accept it. I don't look at random names. Because surely, the site wouldn't suggest something not allowed?

And there are certain things where the first step is to politely contact the person and maybe ask them not to do that. Like I was on a site where student characters weren't supposed to drink alcohol.

There was some confusion over American/British usages of Cider. The site was an American site but the roleplay was set in Scotland. I politely contacted the user and informed them of the little error.

They edited their post. No harm done.

@Charaquan Yeah, I mean I definitely agree that the name generator needs to actually have an eye kept on it to make sure that any banned/offensive but not-yet-banned names don't come up on it. Hell, if things get put in the generator and the staff are actually keeping an eye on it, they might be able to catch genuinely offensive things they'd missed before and pre-emptively ban them without needing to wait for someone to report it. Which also means less people are going to potentially have named their dragon that unwittingly and fall foul of it, too.

Honestly, I think in general we need to have a list of the banned names and why they're banned. That way, if someone tries to go for something that's a slur elsewhere but not where they are, for example, they can go to the list and find out exactly why it's banned, rather than having to go 'why is this banned, that doesn't make sense' and other people having to explain where/why it's offensive.

It might make it easier to circumvent the list, but just make it very clear that anyone who's reported and investigated in terms of that, and found that they genuinely were trying to circumvent the rules, it won't be tolerated.

Let's see...we're in agreement on the name generator thing. I'm not sure why 'Fever' is offensive though? The only thing I can possibly think of is the stupid slur involving the word 'fever' that's a derogatory term for interracial relationships. But fever does have a legitimate use too.

Fever on its own? Don't see what's offensive about that. Or hyperthermia which is another word for fever or heatstroke or dangerous fever depending on regional variations/severity. And hyperthermia isn't generally used in the slur sense. And just because I exalted the dragon doesn't mean anything.

Even assuming FR staff are assuming I implied the dragon died of said cause... 'The dose makes the poison.' Just because I name a dragon 'Water' and exalt it doesn't mean I mean the dragon died of Water Intoxication. Same thing. Though technically, that's too little salt, not too much water.

And the banning a dragon named EXALT makes no sense whatsoever. Canonically, lore-wise, exalted dragons aren't dead. Naming a dragon Exalt then implies the opposite of being dead. Something like a nun or monk, maybe?

As far as the banned stuff goes, yeah, we need a list of banned names. Will it make easier to circumvent the filter? Sure. But here's the thing - if there's a list of what's banned and why: it's pretty obvious when people are trying to circumvent the filter and as you say, you can investigate and pretty much have a clear no tolerance rule for that. And now, genuinely confused people don't get punished unless they were too lazy to look at the list, which is their own damn fault. And if they are trying to circumvent, their own damn fault.

And there are legitimate names which don't really mean very nice things. Like 'Amasa' is a Male Hebrew name meaning 'Burden'. (Thank you, Merschat). I only just found that out with a Google search. Genuinely Googled it. I don't google during dom pushes.

@Sawataris, @Undel

@Ismaiel

Basically, if it'll land you on Law and Order: SVU, that's roughly what "goof" means here. It started out/is most commonly applied to child molesters- it originated in prison, and now more or less encompasses sexual offences.

Bizarrely, goof/goofy is also used to mean silly. Multi-use slang ahoy!

I've literally never heard anyone use the word Goof in relation to molesters.

Terrifying. That really ruins the fun of that word for me.

[quote name="Pixar" date="2014-09-25 23:19:11"]The naming situation is really dumb on this site imo. No offense, but it reminds me too much of Neopets with all the banning of having certain words in names, not being clear on what they wanted us to do and not to do and also "babysitting", as someone said before me. I really enjoy FR but I shouldn't be scared of doing something wrong on accident and getting in trouble because the rules weren't clear. And c'mon, we're having a festival revolving around [i]guts, disease, blood, gore and more guts[/i]. Some of the names that are banned would be perfect for these dergs but nope.[/quote] My thoughts exactly tbh I really hate how coddle/hand-holdy this site is most of the time.

If "killed" is banned, does that also include "annihilated" and others? What about "obliterated", "decimated", "eradicated", "exterminated" or simply "destroyed"?

Perhaps "squashed" is too violent? How about "smooshed", "squelched", "splattered", "squeezed", "crunched" or "pulverised"?

Surely not the lovable "kablooey"⁈

@Fawks

Good point.

But now I'm going to have to go and name a dragon "kablooey" just for the heck of it.