Editing Philosophical Research:Spaghetti containment procedures (section)

== Swear words and offensive versus inoffensive communication ==

One of the major principles of the Litho<em>graph</em>ica ontology project is that the specific words people use to describe things in daily life or in philosophy texts do not actually matter; the network of concepts beneath language is the thing that matters. This is to say, the ontology project cannot outright ban rude words just for being the wrong words, and to some extent they must be allowed. At the same time, rude words go somewhat against the principle of labeling everything to be [[Term:post-language|immediately comprehensible to newcomers]]. When people perceive collections of words as rude those words may not properly communicate the intended message. As a result, there are two kinds of pages or text areas within Litho<em>graph</em>ica: areas where a wide variety of rude words are technically allowed and areas where they are not, and where everything must be "sanitized" and "sterilized" to certain standards.

<b>Thesis portals</b>: Thesis portals are something of a free and open area meant to hold relatively unfiltered thoughts, with a few caveats. There is no requirement to use any particular kind of language within thesis portals, or censor thesis portals. Some thesis portals may choose to use censor bar markup or redact parts of entries for their own reasons, independent of any particular wiki-wide policy. One caveat with thesis portals is that their freedom is directly tied to them not being a social experience. Having a thesis portal and saying things on it does not entitle you to go to the ontology project and assert those things as universally true, especially if your attempts to prove them will lead to significant controversy. As well, if a thesis portal is deemed to be intentionally hateful as opposed to merely examining concepts of prejudice or violence without intending anything, that particular portal or subsection of a portal may end up being expelled. Thesis portals are for genuinely exploring a wide variety of concepts and possibilities, but they must fit the one criterion that as long as they exist in the form of an isolated text that people can choose to read or not read they do not harm anyone.

<b>Item prototypes</b>: If there are pages prototyping a series of Items without turning them into Ontology pages, these are considered essentially the same as thesis portals. When any part of them is transferred to Item Ontology pages, it should be revised to follow Item page rules.

<b>Items in Ontology pages</b>: These are considered the "polished" side of the project and obey post-language rules. An Item page should be maximally readable and understandable to as many people as possible regardless of their level of education, and it should avoid offending almost everybody, or failing that, the greatest number of people that is possible. Language is not required to specifically be "neutral" given [[SPOV|the impossibility of such a thing in practice]], but it should be possible for two people within an ideology rival to your own to explain to each other as an unobjectionable statement, such as if an anarchist has written a page that a Tory will explain to another Tory, or a Trotskyist will explain to another Trotskyist. Think of it this way: you must make all statements and terms inoffensive, but you can and should do it through attempting to make what you say objective to what anyone can observe and follow rather than merely following some arbitrary set of rules for [[redlink - virtue signalling / "politically correct"|what somebody told you is okay or inclusive]]. Do not be worried about post-language turning into a requirement to appease reactionary values. [[redlink - facticity|Facts that are accurate to real life]] do not have to be censored. Likely, the main reason you will have to revise a page for post-language is simply to iron specialized jargon and academic framings out of it while whatever progressive statements may be on it remain intact.

<b>Item aliases</b>: These are a special gray area. The label of an Item must be maximally presentable, but the alternate names of an Item can be almost anything which ordinary people say in common vernacular, in addition to academic jargon or any other register of language. This is to say, you can include swear words in alias fields as long as you use censor bar markup. Basically, the aliases field exists to aid people searching the ontology for a concept they have trouble naming, so if people are searching for an expression including a word such as "bullshit", or a concept which occasionally has that in one of its labels, then it should be in the aliases field. Put swear words in the aliases field and then continue down to the rest of the entry as if they weren't there.

It is important to distinguish between swear words and "swear-concepts". It is not [[E:Q26|words]] that are inherently offensive, but the [[E:Q27|concepts that words refer to]], such as [[Term:microaggression|microaggressions]] against some particular subpopulation of people or kind of person. "Swear-concepts" with an intentional nature are not allowed inside Item pages regardless of what word they use, but if swear words become detached from their corresponding "swear-concept", such as somebody referring to a computer program as "being a bitch" yet somehow with this usage including absolutely no microaggressions or danger signs, it may be okay within thesis-portal and alias-field type areas. There may also be edge cases where if an entire Item or Term page is specifically about the existence of a particular "swear-concept" and how and why texts have decided to use it to upset people, it becomes okay to document prejudices themselves in order to tear them apart.

Additionally, it is worth remembering that something being allowed is not identical with it being encouraged. You can take from this fact what you will. Make thesis portals and ontologies with good content. If [[E:Q3323|the flappy planes are in the stick towers just fine]], it doesn't matter how they're labeled.