Subject:
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Re: What Censorship Isn't
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:45:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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3868 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Leonard Hoffman wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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Where did the word “murfling” come from, anyway?
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Todd coined it. Altho it has since become a “bad” word, he intended it to
sound a little silly. The rest of the admins loved it, expecting that the
community would accept it as a compromise between no cursing and free
speech. It still amazes me that so many people seem to be upset about
murfling and use it as reference to an ‘Orwellian’ world where civil rights
are slowly eroded away by a malevolent government. The original intention
was to reinforce those rights, never to take them away.
Whether the intention is what happened or not is a matter of debate, but I
can assure you that it was with the best of intentions.
-Lenny
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From what (and how) I’ve read no-one has claimed that murfling is eroding
anyone’s rights. They have claimed that the term is a euphemistic way of
saying censored and that the use of euphemism is bad (at least from my
reading). From your description above it sounds like Todd chose a word
because it was a “silly” way of saying censored... which is a euphemism in my
books.
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On the contrary, people have said it is bad. Describing something as
“Orwellian” is making a judgment call about it- “Orwellian” is not good.
And Todd’s coining of the term was because he felt this particular solution had
never been developed before, thus in need of a new term. He is not one to sugar
coat things, nor to introduce new terminology on the fly. (As a side note, he
spent a lot of time making sure that ‘lgbt’ was the generally accepted acronym
before setting up lugnet.people.lgbt- inventing new language that is ultimately
redundant is not in his nature)
I do not feel murlfing is censorship, and I’m certain Todd would agree. Using a
‘silly’ term was, as I remember, to keep the discourse light hearted and
friendly. If ‘censorship’ was a better, more direct term, then why try to argue
that it isn’t censorship? It would be better to argue that it is a necessary,
good form of censorship.
-Lenny
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: What Censorship Isn't
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| (...) From what (and how) I've read no-one has claimed that murfling is eroding anyone's rights. They have claimed that the term is a euphemistic way of saying censored and that the use of euphemism is bad (at least from my reading). From your (...) (18 years ago, 13-Apr-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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