Thread:SLScool/@comment-45571174-20200707030203/@comment-31440879-20200713043553

10-12 year olds, and I'm sure they can handle a few swear words. Maybe your 10–12-year-old friends swear. Maybe a YouTuber you watch whom you know to be 10–12-years-old swears. Can you say the same for everyone else? A lot (which, to be fair, is different from saying "all" but is also different from saying "some") of the 10–12-year-olds that I've met within the past several years have not been so tolerant. From that, and my own research and observations on the internet, I do not believe it is okay to freely allow swearing on a website where a lot of younger people go. I would, however, like to point out that you aren't addressing the actual issue in your statement: most of the underage people that make accounts are 10-12 year olds And do you really think a swear word used as a joke, or an inoffensive way will harm anyone? Especially if it's not directed at anyone? Even if the message has nothing "that is obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane, or otherwise violates any law or right of any third party, or content that contains homophobia, ethnic slurs, religious intolerance, or encourages criminal conduct" (quoting the Fandom Terms of Use because it's more logical than me spending more time coming up with a worse description, not necessarily because we're on Fandom) and is not targeted at any specific user (I'm not mentioning the "as a joke" part because that's something I've already stated my stance on), there's still some harm. In addition to the aforementioned issue of swear words being viewed by people who don't want to, there's the issue of its effect on everyone else; while it's not a strong enough issue to warrant banning swearing everywhere else (i.e. places with older audiences), it does still factor in here. One effect is that it normalizes swearing amongst them; even if it doesn't have any negative effect on them (I won't try to argue in this post that it does), it does mean they'll be more likely to swear in front of kids, both in real life and on the internet, including the Discussions. That's something we don't want.
 * You don't actually know that. How do you know they aren't 9 or 5 or 15? As I said earlier in this thread, what people post doesn't determine their age. You're welcome to guess based on what you think is logical&mdash;and I suppose I am, too, when I'm not acting as an administrator&mdash;but you can't present your guesses as anything factual.
 * People with accounts aren't the issue here; the viewers are. About 1/2000 people on Fandom are people with accounts; the other 99.95% are people without accounts (i.e. your typical viewer).

Do I believe that the rules against swearing in front of kids should be changed&mdash;that teaching all kids swear words and letting everyone swear freely would overall be a good change? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the general "swearing is bad" idea, which is held in majority by people who work with children (parents, teachers of children, "family-friendly" organization workers, etc.), is an idea I am not going to work against. It's not a view held only by very few people; it is highly prevalent. Whether or not it's unfounded, I'm going to stand by it when considering what the rules should be. Plus, there's the general request by Fandom to disallow swearing on Wikis with younger audiences (based on the targeted audience of whatever the wiki is about), and a good chunk of Minecraft's audience is younger people.