Editorial > Language

In the last Editorial, you guys said that the word "sexy" is not allowed. What if somebody tries to avoid that, by doing stuff like adding letters (i.e. smexy) or putting in spaces or other marks (i.e. s-e-x-y S E X Y). Will that be overlooked, or will the user be warned? ~rainbow_salsa

The player will still be warned. Trying to hide words that are not allowed by altering the spelling or adding/subtracting things to it (especially to get past the filters) is not allowed. If it's obvious you are trying to communicate a word or concept that isn't allowed, be prepared to be warned for it. And trust us, we're on to just about every trick in the book. ;) (Issue 310)

Excuse me, TNT. I know you blocked the "h" and "d" words, but are we still allowed to say darn, drat, dangit, etc.? Please answer. ~12372 (piggy) My cat says hi.

Yes, those (along with heck) won't merit you a warning. But please, for the love of everything, don't post certain words just because you can, or abuse them to the point that the monitors feel they need to take action. It just ruins things for everyone else and makes more rules. *pats kitty* (Issue 310)

Special Notice of TNT Flubbing +1

Sooo... there's no great way to say this so we'll start from the beginning. :P

The Support/Monitoring and Content departments had a total communication failure. While we (Content) do site stuff and write the Editorial, they (Support/Monitoring) have the thankless job of enforcing rules and dealing directly with millions of players, and it seems that somewhere along the line one head wasn't aware what the other was doing and... yeah. As such, we unknowingly gave you guys bad information on two rules we clarified here in the Editorial recently - rules we thought were correct but didn't verify. Yes, we know we stink because of it and it's really embarrassing to admit it, but we're happy to shame ourselves if needed to get the proper info out there. So, along with this rambling apology, we'd like to re-clarify some rules mentioned in a couple of Editorials. Here we go:

• "Hell" and "damn" are in fact NOT allowed, despite our big, babbling response in a past Editorial saying it was okay in certain forms. (Acronyms containing the words are also not allowed, just like acronyms containing profanity are not allowed.) While our answer was the rule at one point in time, the words have just been misused too much and the rule had to be changed to disallow them completely. So, regardless of how you use them, "hell" and "damn" are no longer allowed.

• Religious usernames are an outright no-no. Just having a username as such stirs up conversation when other users see it on the Neoboards, so these usernames had to be outlawed (same reason usernames of a political nature were already outlawed, as we mentioned in that same Editorial). This includes all religions no matter how large or small. Users with old, established accounts will be grandfathered in (meaning no worries!). Anything created recently will be looked into and we'll work with players broadsided by this, but anything created from here on out will be frozen.

• This wasn't stated in the Editorial before, but we'd like to clear this up, too. Using the word "sexy" in usernames is not allowed, either. This has been in effect for quite some time, but it's made clear now. Old usernames are again grandfathered in, but usernames of this nature will be frozen if they are created now.

So, that's it. We'd also like to apologise to the Monitors for causing confusion. Despite our attempts to help them out by clearing up the rules every week, we appeared to have made things worse this round. DX Whatever the Editorial has said in the past, they're the ones that need to enforce the rules and it's their call about what is and isn't allowed. We hope this clears things up!

And yes, they've checked other rule clarifications for inaccuracies. ;) (Issue 309)