@quacking

Because the fact that sex-based stories are often easier to remember IS a universal truth.

Thus spoketh Heisig: Thou shalt maketh use of the crotch primitive!

Who's up for mounting an inquisition on the heretics in the Alternate Primitives thread?

I do not base my opinion on Heisig's intentions.

I have my own opinion and that is, that I simply do not see the need for explicit stories to be shared on this site.

Amen

Silmara Wrote:I do not base my opinion on Heisig's intentions.

I have my own opinion and that is, that I simply do not see the need for explicit stories to be shared on this site.

Amen

Fair enough. The thing is, I'm almost 1700 kanji in, and I've yet to see any stories that I would consider "explicit". I'm not convinced that this is as big a problem as people are making it out to be, unless those last 300 frames are such cesspools of depravity and horror that merely gazing upon them is enough to turn sane men mad and mad men into babyfurs.

Silmara Wrote:It was said earlier that Heisigs method was developed for home use with everybody staying in their own filthy world, so stop saying that sharing stories with explicit content was intended by Heisig...

I also think that shocking, or funny, akward stories, which help you remember perfectly, can be made up for every Kanji without using any sexual implications. So I do not quite understand why explicit stories HAVE to be posted in the first place.

If one has a filthy imagination thats fine with me but they do not have to share this with everyone and if people who like those stories can not make up their own - thats sad.

So when you actually run into these kanji in the language, or decide to further study, say, the etymology of the characters that you're whitewashing, are you then, too, going to ignore or pervert the original meanings into something that completely twists the characters and/or words into completely arbitrary forms that meet your own criterion, rather than, you know, their actual use and past etymology?

Can you afford to ignore vocabulary and kanji that offend your sensibilities at the expense of your linguistic prowess? (Not every kanji is explicitly sexual, but a great deal of the radicals that Heisig assigns completely benign primitive meanings to have sexual connotations-- which, you'll eventually have to go back and learn if you're at all serious about studying kanji in the first place. Violence and male chauvinism are also prominent themes-- Do you have a problem with them?)

You can only ignore the sexual and/or strict Confucian connotations for so long before you stop actually "studying" and begin to just make shit up.

Why are people so afraid of sexuality? Why do they shy away from male and female genetalia and sex? Why does this ridiculous taboo exist?

I think stories containing the HAND primative should be removed, because hands are used to make cakes!

Damned cakes!

The cake is a lie.

Or is it?

You see where debating censorship gets us? Condemning cakes. I love cake, and I find it offensive to speak about them this way...

alyks Wrote:You see where debating censorship gets us? Condemning cakes. I love cake, and I find it offensive to speak about them this way...

You're dirty...

QuackingShoe Wrote:Who's up for mounting an inquisition on the heretics in the Alternate Primitives thread?

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition..

Shibo Wrote:

QuackingShoe Wrote:Who's up for mounting an inquisition on the heretics in the Alternate Primitives thread?

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition..

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisiton!!!

FutureBlues Wrote:So when you actually 走 into these kanji 中 the language, or decide to further study, say, the etymology of the characters that you're whitewashing, are you then, too, going to ignore or pervert the original meanings into something that completely twists the characters and/or words into completely arbitrary forms that meet your own criterion, rather than, you know, their actual use and past etymology?

Errm, if you actually pick up an etymology book you'll realise almost every other non-sexual story is also etymologically wrong. As a matter of fact learning Heisig's way as a whole is by no means correct in the etymological sense, but correct in the fact that the user can remember and interpret the kanjis meanings which is the aim of a person who would like to READ and WRITE kanji, not know the history behind its meaning.

Learning kanji is one thing, studying etymology of the kanji is another.

Some scholars themselves don't even know the *true* etymology for a specific kanji because it has been physically, phenomenologically altered over the years as a result of mis-copy, simplification, mis-hearing, and all other factors which come into play.



The best analogy i can think of right now is like trying to learn mathematics looking at Pythagorean novels. We currently use our 'modern' notation to study mathematics no one else would understand pythagorean notation as it simply does not make sense, it has evolved way too much from.

[ファブリス]

I will implement some kind of filtering for members who don't want to read stories with sex, violence, or other gratuitous elements. I just don't have the time now.

The idea I've retained so far is that it is the author who will tag their story for sexual content and/or violence, for example. This is better than auto hiding stories based on votes, even if that's limited to members who opted in, because the reporting system is not precise enough. Even if I add an explanation field, filtering based on reported stories will require too much maintenance, and will leave me as the "judge" which is something I am not asking for.

The solution where the authors tags their own stories is very positive in that it empowers you to be responsible with what you share, and to respect other's feelings.

Katsuo Wrote:Regarding tolerance...

Two opposing views in this thread:

A: Sexual stories are offensive and should be banned.
B: I should be able to write whatever I like.

Surely tolerance means not insisting that others conform to your own views.

You may disagree with, dislike, or not understand another's viewpoint, but if you are tolerant you will accept their right to it and compromise.

I don't think either Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandhi would subscribe to your defintion of tolerance. The whole idea of civil disobedience is based around not accepting compromises such as segregation. Sometimes you just know you are right and you shouldn't give in.

This is also the case with censoring or even filtering written works. In most free countries, the written word is considered nearly sacred. There is a good reason why even mature written books don't have ratings or parental cautions. Any 9 year old in the US can buy a copy of the extremely explicit Trainspotting book and yet he can't buy a ticket to see the movie-version.

To me, having filters on a site like this is like compromising with all those people in the 1990's who wanted to ban the classic Mark Twain novel Huckleberry Fin from school libraries. Even though the novel was incredibly progressive for its time in attacking the institution of slavery, they objected to the use of the n-word.

Compromising with them would have meant issuing two forms of the book, one with the n-word and another edited version with all "offenses" removed.

It doesnt really matter that Mark Twain's book is a masterpiece while most of our stories are probably seen as fairly weak. In 1895, many people saw Finn as the epitome of gutter-trash with a complete lack of morals.

You can can call me over-reactive if you like, but I cringe whenever I think about words, and therefore ideas, of any kind being restricted in any way.

[ファブリス]

I understand the concerns expressed by Dragg and Katsuo (as quoted above), but that's not the point.

It's up to the user to choose what they want to read. To take Dragg's example above, a 9 year old may be able to buy the "Trainspotting" book, that doesn't mean they get the colourful excerpts from the book under their nose everytime they go into the library.

Likewise, I am sick and tired of hearing about the mess that is this planet on a daily basis. Sometimes I just want the good news, because the truth is, the media completely manipulates our view of the world and thus our hopes and what we want to achieve in society. I can exert my choice and choose to read things that lift me up, and give me energy or hope. Do I have to be force fed the usual crap that is relayed by the news media (eg. man raping his wife and daughter and then cutting them in pieces), just because it happens somewhere in the world, or because this sort of thing is possible? I exert my choice and I keep a distant eye on the world's news, and I read a lot more Tech/Science etc. because that's what I like.

I think the discussions on what is ok and what is not ok are moot, and irrelevant. It's mostly a problem of presentation, and a question of choice.

A good filtering system should let the user read what they want when they want, but let them default the "selection" to what they deem useful or relevant to them. I don't see how this would be different from letting the user pick various tags for stories to display.

Having some kind of filtering based on tagging or self-tagging by the authors and appliable to users who opt in said option does not limit your expression in any way.

ファブリス Wrote:I will implement some kind of filtering for members who don't want to read stories with sex, violence, or other gratuitous elements. I just don't have the time now.

The idea I've retained so far is that it is the author who will tag their story for sexual content and/or violence, for example. This is better than auto hiding stories based on votes, even if that's limited to members who opted in, because the reporting system is not precise enough. Even if I add an explanation field, filtering based on reported stories will require too much maintenance, and will leave me as the "judge" which is something I am not asking for.

The solution where the authors tags their own stories is very positive in that it empowers you to be responsible with what you share, and to respect other's feelings.

Yes, but it also means a lot of work may be done without the goal being met--simply put: if I don't tag my sexy story, what's going to be done about it? What if I don't think my story is sexy? In the end, you'll just have a somewhat reduced number of stories as a result of some responsible and consistent self-reporting users, but this thread will likely continue or rekindle at a later date.

You would not be required to be the judge in an auto-filtering scheme: you set the scheme to filter at X reports, and the community decides. You could also have the profile include the number of reports required to filter content.

To use your own analogy of television, what if every station (TechTV or whatever) always had one horribly depressing story on FIRST whenever you changed the channel, and then you could enjoy the station? That's what's happening here--I'd love to simply self-censor, but on so many pages, these stories are bumped to the top. When you turn on TechTV now, those stories have been auto-filtered by editors who don't think those stories are appropriate for TechTV--that's why you don't see them there and can turn to them as a safe-haven. No such safe-haven exists here.

Good grief!

What could be simpler than (a) each person tags their own stories as having mature/offensive content if they think it might upset someone else, and (b) each person has an option in their profile as to whether they want to see or hide mature/offensive content (default is hide)?

It is not a question of free speech. The reader chooses not to read something, not a censor.

It is a question of loving thy neighbour, which I personally think is an admirable goal. Young or sensitive readers may come to this site, and it's unfair to offend them needlessly.

It does rely on people being responsible. A complete solution would need a censor going around policing some policy. deviantArt works in the way I outlined above, but because it has a vast number of participants, and it's commercial so they probably don't want to get sued, it does have staff trolling around deleting offensive entries.

But seriously, aren't you guys mature enough not to have to need that?

There is an incredibly vast spectrum of what may be deemed offensive, and I'm not sure how a filtering system can adequately appreciate these distinctions. For example, take the kanji that has "guy" as a keyword. The primitives are "woman" and "crotch". Almost every story on its page is at least mildly sexually suggestive. At last check, I believe there were only two or three non-sexual stories there, and one of them involved turning the "crotch" into "handle" instead. Anyway, I'm guessing that, based on the lack of reports on the page, even many of the more conservative readers don't have a problem with such stories as long as they are tame enough according to their own subjective criteria.

Furthermore, using voting to auto-hide stories or self-tagging will probably always be at least a little ethnocentric since there are so many Westerners on here. For example, many Mahayana Buddhists (although rarely in Japan) would view the killing of an animal for food as being more morally "wrong" than a public sex act. Do you think most people here will respect their sensitivities by voting or tagging a story based around a hamburger since it could be considered the result of violence?

A better solution might be to create a parallel but non-overlapping section of the site specifically made for kids and other sensitive people. It could look exactly the same as the current site interface, but you could change keywords like "grope" to something less likely to be construed sexually. And you could require that the crotch primitive be changed to hand for the stories in the section. Seems like a lot of work, but it might be worth it if you really want to attract the most people while not turning others away in the process.

Also, although I have never used them, I was curious about liosama's suggestion for people truly offended to use software like Net Nanny. For all I know maybe these are junk, but is anyone at least trying them? Even if they are not good, I don't see how people can reasonably expect Fabrice to make a better filtering system than the professional options already available..

Er, are there any kids? Some sixteen and seven year olds, but I doubt there's much they haven't imagined already...

It's definitively up to the person whose offended to filter what they read, rather than ruin it for the rest of us. For kids, this means the parents.

I mean, what does that even mean, offended? How can you be offended? If some moral nut comes on and sees something sexual, would it truly ruin their lives? Jeez, people should grow the hell up.

That's why I'm not arguing the issue itself anymore, just trying to give ideas to implement a solution. No having to make personal judgments at the site level--let the community decide by reporting. Easy.

Based on some of the ideas presented here and in the kanji for kids thread, I have put together the Kanji.Koohii: Sanitize script.

It follows the community model defended by plumage and others. It presents the user the choice of hiding all new stories, all favorite stories (check both if you don't want to see any stories but your own), all stories with more than a user-settable number of reports (as proposed by DrJones), as well as offering the option to hide the report buttons (for those not interested and to avoid misclicking).

I think it's most suitable for people like the original poster who want this kind of filter for their own peace of mind, and less in a kid/parent setting, but nevertheless I will attempt to present an approach for the latter case in the other thread.

if i had a motto regarding story creation, it's "if your stories aren't being reported, they aren't memorable enough."

the point is for stories to be memorable, because Remembering The Kanji is the title of the book. making crude stories just happens to make them more memorable, so people like me aren't making them vulgar for vulgarity's sake, we're doing it for the very reason we're using this site: to remember. not convinced? make our recall rates public, and see if people like me forget our crude stories before some prude forgets their forced and boring ones.

although they wouldn't admit it, i'm sure there's at least one person reporting my stories who remembers my story before their own.

If a story is "sensible" and "safe," it will have much less of an imprint on your brain than a story that is "perverted" or otherwise 'out-there.' I generally star good stories that have been reported by prudes for this reason.

If anything, reporting should be the other way around, like starring. Currently, there is no way of saying that any given story is of low quality, but there is a way of saying that a story is good. The same should apply to content. Instead of people of varying sensibility reporting every story that vaguely references a sexual organ, allow people to go through stories and mark them as "safe." Only the fully Disney-level safe stories can be marked as such. Also, the story shouldn't actually become safe until some number of safe marks are given to it. This number should not be displayed. There can then be a safe version of the site that people can visit (I wouldn't call it a kid's version because then kids wouldn't go there); maybe the safety zone, or a safety filter?

Anyway, the main benefit of this is the same as the current star functionality: users can convey their opinion on a story without hurting anyone's feelings, coming off as prude, etc. If a story that references sexual organs without actually mentioning them and it is reported, then that's being prudish, and it might get stars to counter that (even if the story isn't that good). If it isn't marked safe, that makes sense.