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Subject: 
Re: What Censorship Isn't
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:45:13 GMT
Viewed: 
3647 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Leonard Hoffman wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
   Where did the word “murfling” come from, anyway?

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

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.

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



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: What Censorship Isn't
 
(...) 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 (...) (17 years ago, 13-Apr-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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