Terhorst, that is a very sensible solution. I don't think either Fabrice or general users should have to vet this stuff, so you could just leave reported stories hidden until the user adjusts them.

Another click box next to "show story" could also be "18+" so people could gives others a heads up that the stories they're submitting have possibly offensive content.

Then, theoretically, the only reported stories would be ones that didn't have "18+" clicked, and the person who wrote them could regulate them.

Because in the end this site will never lack for stories.

I think people have a pretty good idea when they are being offensive to someone religion, race etc. For example, there are a lot of jokes among young Japanese men and women about the sexual (physical detail, hygiene problems), intellectual etc...inadequacy of white boys in Japan ( Japanese college blogs etc.). But, I think it's fairly obvious that these references should not be included in stories. In the same way, condemnations of ALL Christians, Buddhists etc. are offensive.

great idea terhorst

heisig stories might make an interesting psychiatric test; instead of "what do you see in this inkblot", it'd be "make up a story involving slaves, crotches, and shellfish..."

When coming up with a story in the "streetwalker" section of RTK3 yesterday, I thought of putting an "adult content" tag on one of my stories. As I posted it, I noticed there was a story by Katsuo prefaced with "vulgar". (Sorry, Katsuo, if I missed an earlier post by you about this.) I think it could be a good temporary/partial solution to people being offended by perverted stories if each of us honesty tagged those stories we thought could offend with sexual, religious, racist language, etc. It doesn't prevent anyone reading the stories, but at least you won't be caught offguard when halfway through a story you unexpectedly encounter a crude stream of whatever. Of course, putting a warning on a story could just draw more attention to it - I can heard everyone clicking over the the streetwalker section right now ...

I like how some say if you don't want to read a perverted story then don't. I hardly have a choice in the matter do I? If I'm scanning through looking for ideas to use or inspire, I can hardly help reading the words can I? And frankly, I am sick and disgusted by the perversion some people are associating with these kanji. Seriously, is that the only thing you can think of? I have no trouble making up stories with no perversion in them or violence towards women. Sure if there is a sword involved there may be the word cut or some other mildly violent thing but come on! If the only think you can think of is something sick and demented, please keep it to your self and do NOT share it with the rest of us. Until then, I'll keep hitting the report this story though I doubt it does any good..

I'm actually right in the middle of the 'shakuhachi' section right now. I use the "shakuhachi .. if you know what I mean" when it sticks better, but for some of them, just using the plain ol' flute makes a good story.

Mega, you are choosing to scan the submitted stories that have virtually no vetting aside from ordering by popularity.

Now, as a balance, I think we can have our own censorship level set. Something like "Hide story if X number of reports". You can set it to 0 to disable or any other amount based on what you think is a legitimate threshold. I'm not sure how well such a thing can be implemented (Fabrice is getting a bit overloaded I believe). In addition, if it seems a certain author is making innordinate amount of perverted tales, have the "Hide story if author has X number of reports". That should be a reasonable compromise, assuming it can be done at all.

There's no way, aside from "review by staff before publicly shown", to prevent perverted stories from getting through at least initially.

megaboyx Wrote:And frankly, I am sick and disgusted by the perversion some people are associating with these kanji.

I've seen some pretty offensive stories on this site. I'd have certainly had a much tougher time remembering some difficult kanji without them. I share my stories, perverted or not, in the hope that they will help someone else. If one of my grosser stories helps just one person remember a kanji that they were having trouble with, then it was worth it. This site is here to help people learn a difficult part of a language, not to send people to heaven or hell based on the cleanliness of stories. I'd have no problem with an 18+ filter that users could turn on or off, I guess.. Maybe that would solve the problem. But, I wish the easily offended would stay away from the report button otherwise. Seems like if Fabrice does have to check the reports, it just wastes time that he could be using to do other site improvements that would benefit everyone.

I feel pretty strongly about this subject because I normally come up with my least PC stories after repeated failures in a kanji and they usually really help stuff stick. I've shared a few of those and they've gotten many stars, which tells me they've helped many other people. THis makes me proud, then I'll get a report on that same story, making me wish I could send a certain finger back at the person who reported me. No offense if anyone reading this has reported me, haha. I don't even want to know.

I'd say: relax and focus on the kanji, rather than offuscating yourselves on dirty stories :-)
It's true that most people can make up their own dirty stories if they want to, so the need for sharing these is questionable...

Some of these stories are really memorable though haha
And remember, if sex was a "sick" thing, you would not be there to talk about it :-D

Haha, I have a ton of stuff unshared, but the feeling of seeing stars on the stories and knowing they've helped someone is one of the best feelings in the world.

Seeing a report on a story that's helped a ton of people is a pretty crappy feeling, too, if it's one of mine. I love giving props to people who've helped me remember. I give stars out any time I can. I just think that reporting is a pretty crummy thing to do, most of the time. There's no way to give a reason, people don't bother to email or message when they've reported something, and all it does is make my day a little less happy. But, whatever, I guess. I probably don't want an email or message anyway unless it's to tell me I've used the wrong primitive, or something constructive. I don't really care if someone is offended, honestly. =)

I haven't read all of this thread, but I guess I'm glad I don't read the kanji stories on this site O_o I think I would be very disturbed.

I think the inappropriate stories should be censored/blocked, so that members can choose to view them or not. Like on the art site I visit, pictures with mature content like nudity are automatically blocked, but you can change your personal settings to unblock them.
If you like using perverted or gory stories to remember kanji, you can still do so, but not at the expense of young or sensitive learners.
A kanji learning site should be appropriate for people of all ages!

Mmmm, old thread resurrection... I'm not sure there is much point in discussing this again. Some people like those stories because they are easier to remember some people don't like them but most people seem to agree that providing a choice would be good...

Now if and when this is implemented is up to our most revered webmaster to decide

Apparently, many of you are unaware that some kanji are actually rooted in sexual etymology.

You know that one primitive that you think of as samurai/gentleman? Well, its actually originally a pictograph with the literal meaning of ERECT MALE ORGAN, which is meant to connote masculinity.

Also, there are a handful of kanji in which the primitives are meant to explicitly depict sex acts.

This is what happens when you study languages and cultures with ancient roots where the religions of the day didnt demonize sex. If you don't believe me, look up the "Japanese penis festivals" on google which are still celebrated to this day. The locals carry around an extremely realistic flesh-colored statue of the male genitals. Its even customary to eat penis-shaped candy at the event. If this offends you, maybe you've picked the wrong language and culture to be interested in.

Let the pervs be... If Heisig didn't want sexual imagery, he never would have come up with the "crotch" primitive for what is literally a hand. If a filter is instituted someday, I would certainly hope that the default settings allow the site to be seen uncensored.

nice point Dragg :-)

Dragg Wrote:Also, there are a handful of kanji in which the primitives are meant to explicitly depict sex acts.

色

Colourful language.

Dragg Wrote:Let the pervs be... If Heisig didn't want sexual imagery, he never would have come up with the "crotch" primitive for what is literally a hand. If a filter is instituted someday, I would certainly hope that the default settings allow the site to be seen uncensored.

I agree 100%. Besides, as Heisig himself says on page 5 of the Introduction section:

"The aim is to shock the mind's eye, to disgust it, to enchant it, to tease it, or to entertain it in any way possible as to brand it with an image intimately associated with the key word."

Loosely translated, the ends justify the means. If it works, use it. Political correctness be damned. The more vivid the better. That being said, I am sympathetic to the more easily offended individuals using this site, but any filter that might be implemented should NOT be the default setting as this flies in the face of the broadest application of the Heisig method.

Interesting thread here. I've definitely shared my own share of sexually charged stories, though I never realized there might be this much debate over them. It also never really occurred to me that kids might use this site. But really, its all just text, and how bad can that get? I went to a religious school, and kids were saying more perverse things back in 7th grade!

[ファブリス]

Dragg Wrote:"...where the religions of the day didnt demonize sex"

Hallelujah!

I could go on and on about my views on sexuality, depiction of sexuality, etc, which changed a lot recentlybut everybody has their own opinions and go through their owns "insights" in life.. but that kind of subjects I think is way out of topic on this forum Not that it wouldn't be interesting to talk about but there's probably better places to talk about this, self-development forums, forums about sexuality, spirituality..

Back on topic, concretely, I do reckon the need to allow the user to filter stories, even if I disagree with the complaints (especially the use of the word "perverted", probably not warranted in most cases), but I digress....

Right now, I don't have the time. I am going to have plenty of time after I take a well needed break off my day job, but nothing set in stone yet.

To dip back in to the discussion, I find the overall condescension in this thread, towards people who may be offended, appalling. If you're free with sexuality & violence, that's great, but it is incredibly narrow-minded and presumptuous not to respect that others may be in a very different place.

Fabrice, your work on the site is and always has been remarkable; I think filtering would be great when you get time, especially if you want the site to continue growing and appeal to the largest number of people, like the kids who have been showing up here with increased frequency.

For now, though, I wouldn't let my kids use this site, and I don't think that makes me a bad parent.

I do understand that some people are offended by "perverted" stories, and some kind of filter may help them out. However, sometimes its those "perverted" stories that really stick. Personally, there have been a number of times where I've read a story and thought 'man, that's just too much.' However, when trying to recall the kanji weeks or months later, it's that "perverted" image that keeps popping back into my mind to save the day. My "clean" story is long gone - washed away, if you will. So don't be too quick to discount stories based on sensibilities. We're dealing with long-term memory retention here, not value judgments, and since this thread last heated up discussion I've done a lot of thinking about efficiency in learning - and having a story that sticks in your brain easily and quickly is the best way to go, regardless of its content. So if someone comes up with a story that may offend someone, but is a perfect mnemonic, I can only that them.

billyclyde Wrote:For now, though, I wouldn't let my kids use this site, and I don't think that makes me a bad parent.

Kudos to you if your kids are learning kanji, Billy! And it's very important to monitor internet usage for munchkins. How old are your kids?

My boy is only three, but I hope he wants to learn some day. I wouldn't let him read all of the stories on the site either, but I'd certainly help him come up with some stories and let him use the SRS portion for reviews. I might peek at the site to help him with some appropriate stories as well.

You people that worry about kids using the site and finding offense stories were either very naive children or don't remember being a kid.

billyclyde: To dip back in to the discussion, I find the overall condescension in this thread, towards people who may be offended, appalling. If you're free with sexuality & violence, that's great, but it is incredibly narrow-minded and presumptuous not to respect that others may be in a very different place.

Fabrice, your work on the site is and always has been remarkable; I think filtering would be great when you get time, especially if you want the site to continue growing and appeal to the largest number of people, like the kids who have been showing up here with increased frequency.

For now, though, I wouldn't let my kids use this site, and I don't think that makes me a bad parent.

~~~~~~~~~

The notion that "it is incredibly narrow-minded and presumptuous not to respect that others may be in a very different place" is in my opinion unrealistic. I am an adult. You are an adult. If you do not like what I say, you are free to ignore it. However, for you to expect me to censor myself because you or someone else might be offended is even more incredibly narrow-minded and presumptuous. Further, to censor the content on this site so that no one will be offended would likely severely reduce its utility to many of its users and contributors. I among many others have found much of the adult-themed stories immensely helpful in remembering the Kanji.

In the end, I think this is really about whether this site should be made safe for children. I, for one, find the notion that a site such as this, which derives much of its high-value content from the input of its users, most of whom are adults, should be "sanitized" for children, to be unreasonable. By definition, we are adults, not children. We do not learn like children. And more importantly, as adults we do not need to be shielded from adult themes and experiences.

To those of you who have children, I would say, the internet is not so much different than the real world. If you would not let your children roam around city streets alone, they you should not let them roam the web alone. Just because you have a child and you want that child to be able to use this site, this is not a sufficient reason in my mind to require that I and all the other adults using this site should have our remarks filtered, sanitized and/oe censored. Moreover, I would say that billyclyde is indeed being a very responsible and good parent by not letting his children use this site unsupervised.

I think that ファブリス's valuable time and effort is better spent on Trinity and other improvements of real value in support of learning Japanese.

[Katsuo]

gibosi Wrote:If you do not like what I say, you are free to ignore it.

I don't think the above is a practical solution:
Someone does not know whether they will be offended/upset by a comment or story until after they've read it. By then it's too late, of course.

My suggestions to story writers:

1) If possible, make your sexual stories suggestive rather than explicit. Then how "dirty" it is will depend on the mind of the reader. Heisig and others do this.

2) Preface the story with a word like (Sexual), (Explicit), etc in brackets, e.g:

"(Sexual) While playing your shaku-hatchi, you . . ."

Then people who are scanning can easily avoid those stories (or home in on them, if they prefer).