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Gaia-online banned the word "pedo", what can I do to make them correct this mistake?
Aldo
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
Hippo HoorayRegistered User regular
I'm a long time member of Gaia-online (feel free to laugh at me), I'm 20 and I am fairly aware of the inner works of that site.
On Saturday night the management of Gaia-online blocked the word "pedo" from their site, it gets replaced with "*****". The reason for this is that the management is aware that there are paedophiles active on their site and this is their way to deal with it. This is the complete announcement on the issue, this is an amendment posted in a subforum, detailing that circumventing the word filter is a punishable offense.
Naturally, reality does not work like this. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible for individuals to contact the management of gaia-online, so there is no way for me to tell this to them in a clear and civilised way.
I believe the only way to get through to the management, is to get in contact with some sort of organisation protecting children. I understand that there are in fact think-tanks in the USA that state that what gaia-online has done is a good way to fight against paedophiles, so it is important that I get in contact with a decent organisation.
PA, I need your advice! Where do I start?
On Saturday night the management of Gaia-online blocked the word "pedo" from their site, it gets replaced with "*****". The reason for this is that the management is aware that there are paedophiles active on their site and this is their way to deal with it. This is the complete announcement on the issue, this is an amendment posted in a subforum, detailing that circumventing the word filter is a punishable offense.
Naturally, reality does not work like this. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible for individuals to contact the management of gaia-online, so there is no way for me to tell this to them in a clear and civilised way.
I believe the only way to get through to the management, is to get in contact with some sort of organisation protecting children. I understand that there are in fact think-tanks in the USA that state that what gaia-online has done is a good way to fight against paedophiles, so it is important that I get in contact with a decent organisation.
PA, I need your advice! Where do I start?
Aldo on
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Posts
t Richy: you're understanding this right.
I can't even think of words with pedo in it.
Why is this word-filtering an issue to you? Do you call people pedo a lot?
Having the world "pedo" banned isn't going to result in more (or less) child predators on the site.
In fact, it basically affects nobody, except people who call other people pedos.
So, why is this an issue for you? Is it a free speech thing? Are you opposed to censorship in all its forms? What?
If they aren't announcing themselves are children are actually less safe!
I think you should call To Catch a Predator and get a sting operation set up.
(Actually, I have to second "what's the big deal?" It's a stupid policy, but doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things)
It's like how a certain troublesome word is banned here at PA, while other racial slurs or other discriminatory epithets are not. The policy itself is asinine, but it has also been explained well and is understandable. It doesn't actually solve any problems, but it avoids problems that could come up if people were allowed to freely use that word rampantly.
I get the feeling maybe the people who run Gaia, given how popular it is, were sick of the word being all over their forums.
Often the perception of something is more important than the context, especially with say, reporting media.
For example, a while back there was a fellow who posted something to the effect of "Penny Arcade is a gaybashing site ran by homophobes".
He posted this in SE++, of all places.
His evidence? The massive amount of instances of the word "fag" on the forums. Totally ignoring context, usage, anything.
He just counted numbers.
I imagine Gaia's admins want to avoid some media dink posting some Newsline report about how it's a farming ground for child predators, and their evidence is "The word "pedo" appears on the site 610,000 times".
Ignoring the fact that, of course, in all instances the word is being used as an insult. Ignoring that Gaia, as one of the most popular forums on the entire internet has over a million posts a day.
Ignoring the rest of the facts and the context is what mainstream American media does best!
Others are better with words, so I'll just copy/paste a friend on this
Like I said, the word isn't slanderous, it's a clinical term, and the idea that it would make sexual predators leave because a word is filtered is simply preposterous. I'm sorry, but your average pedal-file isn't going to run a topic search on the forbidden word in question and think that they are going to score, the ban is if anything, damaging. Aldo brought up a very good point, knowledge is power, and if you cant be knowledgeable, you're pretty much doomed to make dumb mistakes. By making the subject taboo, essentially the occurrence of that kind of predatory behavior could go up, not down, because somebody might have been able to be forewarned, but with this censorship in place, is now more vulnerable.
Please, don't treat this whole subject with a cynical "lol who cares? internet serious business!" victims of paedophiles, are real people, this can be your little sister, this can be your daughter. The issue is a serious one and I want gaia-online to do something about it.
This is why I made this topic, I am aware that I, as an individual, cannot change anything, that is why I'm looking for an official organisation to help me, I can't do this all alone or with the help of a few other kids on an internet site. I need a serious organisation to make gaia-online do something for children.
And the whole "the internet is full of pedophiles" thing is basically just a scare tactic by the media to make you watch their shows. The best solution is to just ignore it, and I'm totally dumping this in D&D.
They banned the word because there were probably a lot of people going around using it to describe others, based on the nature of the game. I don't see a problem with a filter. A lot of forums have them. If a kid doesn't know what a pedo is I would sure as hell hope they're not learning about them from Gaia online. You're talking about filtering out bad words vs parents not watching their kids on the internet. If you want to get a group started to petition that gaia online does more to prevent pedos from joining, then that's great.... But forming a group to raise awareness of the word in genral and bitch because they don't want it spoken on their site, which they allow you to become a member of, is kind of pointless.
I don't think others are acceptable either. A few in particular though are probably more likely to pop up on a mods radar, but I'll bet if they see any racial slur used against someone they're going to lock it down.
I am aware that to get my point across I have to keep repeating it, so I'll do just that.
Is there an organisation in the United States of America that is looking after victims of paedophiles that can explain to Gaia-online that what they are doing is morally wrong and is not solving any problems on their site?
Both of these points are quite obviously untrue.
First of all, with or without the word being banned, the site's moderators are going to ban people who try to solcit sex from kids over the internet, only now it'll go through proper channels. Kinda like how G&T used to get clogged up with people shitting in bad threads (keeping them at the top) rather than having moderators quietly delete them.
Second, even if your first point wasn't completely ridiculous, it is not Gaia's job to keep children safe on the 'tubes. The Internet is a scary, grown-up place and it's a parent's job to parent their kids.
They're not doing anything morally wrong or illegal... You don't seem to be comprehending this. It's like saying that if PA forums banned swear words then kids wouldn't learn that swear words are bad. It makes no sense.
Now if gaia has no warning whatsoever about not soliciting or giving information to strangers, then yeah, they should do that.
To answer your question... Yes, there probably is a group somewhere in america that would petition this. They're called lawyers, but since no laws are being broken there is nothing you can do to MAKE this company abide by your wishes.
No, no it fucking isn't. It's a parent's job to parent. Look, you're quite obsessed with making Gaia change what they're doing here when it's obviously just an effort to clean up forum spam.
Man, what the hell do you think some forum administrators give a shit about your opinion? You can't make anybody do anything; if you disagree you're free to leave that awful place, end of thread.
sdfsddfd
What they are doing is telling "hey there are paedophiles on this website and to solve that problem we have banned the word "paedophile" have a nice day!" That is stupid, that is retarded, that is not helping anyone, that is making the subject of paedophiles a taboo.
I'm not looking for a lawyer, I don't want to sue Gaia-online, I want to get through to their management and make them understand that what they are doing is stupid, retarded, not helping and potentially dangerous.
Well, it's a fucking forum, right? You could, I dunno, make a post about it? If (as seems likely) they don't give a shit what you think, then there is nothing you can do so for god's sake don't spread Gaiadrama to another forum!
where's your source on that. What statement has been released in site press or third party press where someone has claimed this or gaia online has claimed responsibility?
because otherwise it just looks like gaia doesn't want their google hits associated with pedo related words so they're putting a stop to it.
Everybody who owns a fucking computer knows what the difference between a mouse and a keyboard is. Hyperbole is not effective debate. And anyone who's seen one of those retarded Dateline specials (that you seem to have been taken by) knows there's bad people on the Internet. Stop being stupid.
also, what do knowing the difference between a mouse and keyboard and telling your kids not to talk to strangers have in common? You're talking about computer maintenance and online safety.....
I did read the OP.
Look, if Gaia doesn't care about you making a post on Gaia, who do you think is going to care about it here? There ain't shit you can do. Get over it. There's your help and/or advice.
/pedantry
The site can filter whatever content they want. If they want a clean site with no swearing, and they consider people calling other people pedos offensive, it is their perogative to filter it. Having the word available doesn't have any effect that will help the community. Language is a funny thing, you can warn people about potential perdators wihtout ever calling them by name. Having it banned most likely prevents more problems for them than it can cause.
No, it got to the point where people were simply coming into a thread and posting "the word" and nothing else, and there was a deluge of "ironic" racist humour. It was basically all that was happening for a while, so I made a rule against racial epithets. After it calmed down, and a lot of the idiots left in protest at the loss of their right to call people dirty chinks, the rule was relaxed somewhat. Later, someone used "the word" in a thread title, there was some discussion as to whether that was ok, and Robert said he didn't want the word used in any context. I don't necessarily agree, but it did solve a problem.
Re: other racial epithets, there's no racial epithet that is "ok" on this board. You are also not allowed to call someone a faggot in anger. The difference with "the word" is that there's no context based wiggle room.
Aldo, why is this so important to you? Is it a freedom of speech issue? Or something that you feel is just inequitable- why this word and no others? Was it that you were abused as a child, and now, you feel that any curtailing of the issue is an affront to those who have been abused?
Or do you like calling others "pedo"?
C'mon- I'm really curious as to where your outrage is coming from.
Don't you find your rightous indignation over not being able to use the word to be just as outlandish as their refusal to allow it to be said?
You really think that kids not seeing the word 'pedo' some how puts them in more danger? Frankly, it sounds like you and Gaia should form some sort of overreaction PAC...
I care about this because I care about others. This is a serious issue that fucks up children. I haven't been sexually abused, nor any of my friends or family, this does not mean I can not care about the issue.
*edit: I don't think that "pedo" is being used as much as, say, "n*****" or "gay" or "chink" or "noob" or "retard" on gaia-online. Me for me, I have never seen it used as a way to call people names.
If you're really concerned about child predators, call them that. That's much more descriptive than pedophile anyways.
Is Gaia an open forum to discuss serious issues like paedophilia? It doesn't seem like it. It doesn't seem that it's a proper subject for an MMO. Most of these games are specifically geared towards kids, and specifically state that adult matters are not allowed. Not only that- but Gaia Online has a specific section of its website dedicated to Saftey Tips that go over the type of information you would probably want to see. They apparently take the issue as seriously as you do- only they do it outside the game.
All they're saying is that this kind of language isn't appropriate, and they've removed it. It doesn't mean they don't care about preadatory behavior.