Mind your 'Language' - PLEASE READ

I've recently raised the issue with the other moderators and we would like to see a small cultural change within the OSRS Advice CC.

We like to think that we create a good environment at OSRS Advice, and a large part of our friendly atmosphere is our policy on not swearing in the clan chat.

Despite the large majority of our playerbase being 18+ we choose to have a no swearing policy mainly because it makes the CC a more pleasant and easygoing place to be - we aren't competitive gamers in OSRS Advice, we are predominantly casual players who like to play to relax and have fun.

A lot of new players who join OSRS Advice aren't aware of our No Swearing policy, or slip up and will swear in the chat. I did it when I first joined and I've accidentally done it a handful of times since.

What we would like to change is how people respond to swearing in the CC.

When somebody swears it plays out a little like this:

Cutenoob99: Oh fuck, I just died!
Osrsmember1: Language!
Osrsmember2: Language!
3lven: I'm bad at pking
Osrsmember3: Language!


We very much appreciate people trying to moderate the CC, however saying "Language" doesn't help and can often lead to an escalation in behaviour as the person can be taken aback by the level of the response.
The reason this doesn't help is because it doesn't offer any context and it comes across that we are deeply offended by minor swearing.

We would now like players to phase out 'Language' as a response to swearing in the CC.
If somebody swears in the CC please use your discretion on how to handle the situation.

Firstly, How is the other person going to react to what I'm saying?

When you address somebody swearing, please be friendly and courteous and don't make a big deal out of it. By reacting or confronting someone you can escalate it into a situation that can be avoided. People have a fight or flight response and often double down when they're confronted.
People who swear because they've been hacked, or lost a bunch of items or staked are probably very emotional and aren't going to respond well in the moment.

What I do:

When somebody swears in a disruptive way, I will say
"Hey RandomUser, we have a no swearing policy in the cc"

That's all it needs to be, it's informative, it's friendly, doesn't escalate anything and I can type it quick enough that I don't die to a boss or pker.

9 times out of 10 they apologise and I'll say "No problem mate, we've all done it" - this is friendly and it shows the person that they aren't in trouble and clears any animosity they might feel towards me for calling them out.

If the person has a negative response to that, I follow it up with:
"It's our policy, but there are plenty of CC's that are more casual"

If they ask why, I say:
"Because it makes the CC a more pleasant place to be"

I think that it's fair, it doesn't come across as rude, precious or pretentious and doesn't affect the flow of conversation in the CC.
If people don't respond well or become argumentative, that's where you can refer them to a mod and get them removed from the CC.

I don't expect everyone to start saying exactly what I say, we're all different and we all have our own way of doing things - find what works for you.
I understand that when we're busy doing high focus activities in the game that we often don't have time to type out a long response, but there are often enough people playing that someone will be free.

If you are ever having problems with a person or you want someone to step in, please PM a Mod for help. My PM is always on unless I'm pking and I'm more than happy to defuse situations.

Lokandur wrote:
3lven: I'm bad at pking

shots fired

Lokandur wrote:
I don't expect everyone to start saying exactly what I say, we're all different and we all have our own way of doing things - find what works for you.
I understand that when we're busy doing high focus activities in the game that we often don't have time to type out a long response, but there are often enough people playing that someone will be free.

If you are ever having problems with a person or you want someone to step in, please PM a Mod for help. My PM is always on unless I'm pking and I'm more than happy to defuse situations.

Agreed. If we all have the same response it'll only end up being the same kind of annoying. I say be slightly lenient with this, I'll probably need some time to find my own words to use for this as well.

And +1 on the final statement. A lot of our mods have dm's open, so if you're currently in a situation where you can't react to cc or don't know how to react, feel free to pm any of us.

Good points lok, will try to incorporate this approach myself

I say 'please don't swear' these days, its short and sweet, I used to say 'language' before people started to point out it sounded hostile. I appreciate anyone taking the time to moderate our rules, and am always available to step in, my pm is always open.

I think this all makes very good points.

good points guys. i also think it should b posted what is acceptable as some people have different views on borderline words and concepts such as ass, crap, cancer and autisic jus to name a few.

Its not an exact science, given we are global. Ass doesn't offend me one bit, its commonly  a word used for someone being silly like a donkey as well as a word for , bum, rear,bottom, that also to my mind is not offensive. However  it is probably one of the most remarked on words, because it does offend a lot of people it seems. To me  the word crap is the same as shit...since it covers  the same bodily function, and so the mental image is the same. However for some one is a word they would not say  and always gets picked on, whilst crap is seemingly in another context and deemed ok.
Cancer is a very emotive word, I have had people thank me in pm if I have requested people not to use it. They now say 1 in 2 of us will have it in our lifetime, to my knowledge at least 3 clannies have battled it, it is not trivial, and most of us will have had some part of our lives touched with it, we need to respect real life issues, similarly with 'aids' and as you mentioned autism, people play to relax, these sort of reminders of the darker days of real life are best kept to a minimum.
We are not here to jump on people and cause drama, but just to be mindful, some words I can guarantee will get an instant reaction, even though they may not trigger me. The policy has been not to make a list, just to gauge what is appropriate and what causes offence, pm if possible, people can be very reasonable if they are asked nicely and understand.

If one really takes note about our  "language" warning,our lower levels have taken their lead of what they give warnings for language from our moderators...
We tried to list offensive words once and it became a joke..what is offensive in different countries and cultures is was too hard to keep track of and varies to much,,,.We created the disclaimer so we could have our members moderated by fellow countrymen..
Our members follow the lead of the moderators for that time period...It is a drawback of being a 24/7 clan,but we found a way to make it work.
We have been successful since we adopted this approach..let our mods do their thing and let the body follow them..

Very interesting post indeed, and I agree to try to soften the way we address the person we want to correct. We come from a very different etnia, therefore our learn and use of english is not the same everywhere. But the thing I like most is the way other subjects are treated too, someone is always remembering the clan about those words, that might be sensible to some people. Thanks Lokandur
Best, Bod.

This seems like a relevant time to bump this back to the first page.

Bear wrote:This seems like a relevant time to bump this back to the first page.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to make an announcement in the Discord and @ everyone to this thread with an explanation.

Only suggesting as I'm sure a lot of people who may be active in Discord don't check the offsite as much.

I also got a few reports of someone making cancerous jokes in the cc last night as well. Do not have the usernames though.

I just want to start by saying, thank you Lok for taking the time to make this informative post in spite of leaving. I hope you're doing good

I'm sure many people will find your advice useful (I did). I too think informing people of the clan rules is far more constructive than 'LANGUAGE!?!?!?!'.

Lok, we have a no swearing policy in cc. Surely we could use *explicitive* instead of the actual word in the example?

Bear wrote:This seems like a relevant time to bump this back to the first page.

Thanks bear c:

Just making a post to hopefully bump this back to the top of the announcements section for further awareness after an incident that happened in the cc today!

Please read and take note, thanks!

I completely agree with this I think this is great because its one of the best traits of our cc clan and we want to keep any forms of toxicity away and keep the environment in game and irl safe. So Thank you for bringing this thread back up again.

Thanks for posting this; probably my biggest pet peeve is when someone gets "LANGUAGE" spammed at them 3 times when they accidentally swear. As mentioned above, 99% of the time this isn't malicious, it's just unknown to some newer people that we choose to avoid stronger language. From day 1 on the mod team I was told not to just scream LANGUAGE so it feels pretty grating seeing mods doing that themselves sometimes. From now on if I see somebody just say "Language please" in response to a swear word, I'm going to private message them directly to offer some replacement phrases or other ways to address the situation

Personally, unless someone is recurringly cursing or it escalates beyond just a single curse word in one sentence, that it's usually just easier to try to change the subject. Worst case scenario, if a single user becomes a frequent flier in the potty mouth category, trying to reach out to them by PM or Discord might help, too?

Overall, definitely agree; I've seen a few times where someone just says something a bit risque and everyone heads to the "Language!" retort. It doesn't always help the situation, especially if whoever did the cursing didn't realize the rules or feels bad/embarrassed about it.

It makes me happy to see so many people have read this and hopefully can deter people from just simply saying "Language!" to gauging different methods of de-escalating the situation.