Profanity in movie quotes
 

There's been some debate over whether movie quotes within movie pages that contain profanity or other perhaps offensive language should be censored. Currently, the site does censor movie quotes on the main page (which is sensible since this is the first page any user will see when first accessing the page).

The question is, should this apply to all movie pages? Should they be censored or completely removed?

According to the Rules Standards and Principles page, swearing should be kept to a minimum in discussion pages and perhaps this should also extend to the actual movie pages as well.

Comments are welcomed, especially from admins.

I've already stated my opinion on this, which is no. While it's not enormously necessary to include quotes in captions, if we do include them (a decision for the person making the page, really), we should quote the line directly from the movie, not modify it to make it wrong by throwing in random wingdings. Writing "f*ck" looks childish and no actor has ever said "fstarck" in a movie.

Apart from anything else, our readers will presumably be old enough to see the movie in question and hear the actual line, so it's not like there's any point pretending it isn't there. I can see arguments for censoring nudity in screencaps to keep the site safe for work (and thus it's probably a good idea to add a rule to the rules and standards page saying we don't do X / NC-17 / unrated porn movies, because you know someone's going to try it sooner or later), but I'd argue overt censorship of language and starring out words looks less professional than just having the lines as they are.

It could be argued that placing an asterisk is the equivalent of using a "bleep" to censor language in audio and visual media. Professional media such as newsmagazines and broadcast television will often censor language that they feel doesn't meet their standards and practices.

Yes, and I've never been a fan of it: it's not like it hides what the word is supposed to be (with bleeps you often get part of the word anyway), and it seems to be done in the bizarre belief that children don't already know all those words from the playground anyway. Certainly, our readers are supposed to be big enough and ugly enough to know them, so what's the purpose of pretending they don't? As an addition, it's usually the case that the more respectable a publication is, the more it prides itself on treating readers like adults: tabloid newspapers over here will censor, but the broadsheets and former broadsheets will quote bad language precisely as it was said.

A) I think we're overestimating the average age of the users here, and B) technically, language would make something NSFW. Keep in mind, we've censored gore as well, as well as nudity. I'd prefer to err on the side of caution. Aside from it being weird to look at, where's the harm?

I vote not to censor.

Often times quoting what they are saying in the scene explains it better than having "John Connor holds a Glock 36 to his head."

Seeing a profane word in print is much different than it being said out loud.

Also about censoring gore. I thought it was stupid to censor the gore on the SPR page.

This is NOT up for a vote. We maintain a professional standard in text and images (but mostly for nudity, not for gore so much) because people IN the industry use IMFDB as a scholastic resource, something which many OTHER sites cannot claim.

I have seen NEGATIVE response personally when very HIGH RANKING or important people in the industry happened upon a page where there was a lot of vulgar and profane idiocy (mostly by a single former member. No, not the one who was banned, but this member swore every other word). We are not here to look like we're a bunch of profane 14 yr olds.

Of course the valid question is: Does IMDB allow profane quotes? Yes, but IMDB is a behemoth with MILLIONS of users each day (and only 17 mods). There is too much of IMDB that is used for by industry professionals, the 'quotes' section is a very SMALL portion of the site's footprint. Note that PROFANITY is frowned upon in the 'reviews' section or the 'summary' section .... the sections that the general public sees first. Even in the message boards, you put in certain profane words, the software AUTOMATICALLY censors you. If you post too much swearing in your message, the Mods will delete your discussion board post.

Someone always (with regularity) comes up and complains that they can't swear on the main movie pages. I say, "too fucking bad"... those are the rules. Live with them. ;)

I'm curious, what's the movie?

But I don't think quotes should be censored. There shouldn't be swearing on discussion pages and intros, but quotes should stay intact.

Saving Private Ryan.

The quotes were never an original part of IMFDB. It just started to creep in. IN fact, we are not a movie review site. People just started putting in Quotes like IMDB did and then it started as a nice little trivia item on the main page, but we are first and foremost a GUN REFERENCE IN MOVIES (et al) site. We also don't allow ANY quotes that are not 'gun related specifically'. People who make pages like to put in cute quotes from the film, but many do not. We are not all about the 'quotes'. That is NOT the focus of this site.