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BikePortland censors the word "jerks".

In a comment I made to BikePortland they censored the word "Jerks".

They censored three words I used. The first was "Asshat", which while I clearly don't think that to be a terrible word, I will at least give them the leeway to censor that on their own site.

However I am not sure what the problem was with the word "Jerks".

Here is the original text of my comment:
Too bad River City Bicycles is staffed by clueless asshats.
I went in there twice in the last couple years to buy some moderately expensive bike things (a couple at about $300 each). The first time they were jerks, I chalked it up to maybe a bad apple or someone having a bad day. Last week we tried again and they were jersks again. So we left and spent our money elsewhere…
Too bad too, I am in the market for a new Cannondale and they won’t get my business.
(Note, the second occurrence of "Jerks" contains a typo extra s, I understand that already - no need to comment and tell me.)

They replaced the "jerks" with **moderated** That seems a bit lame.

And as for what happened at River City bikes, well - it is not really that big of a deal. I just felt that the clerks gave clueless answers with lame excuses - and instead I chose to take my business elsewhere... The Bike Gallery guys were very nice and helpful, as they always have been = despite the fact that their model of the tag-a-long bike I was looking for would not fit my bike. I wish TREK made more models in the USA so that I could buy more stuff from Bike Gallery (I try to buy as locally made as possible. Portland, then Oregon, then Pacific Northwest, then USA - you get the idea).

Anyway - Kudos to BikePortland for excessive censorship.

Jonathon Maus, author of BikePortland later responded with this:
I do not have rigid rules for how I decide to moderate. In some cases “jerks” would be OK…but since you first called them something less appropriate I decided I did not like the tone in this situation.

And “BikePortland” is not some organization. It is one person (me). It is my business and I reserve the right to moderate any word at any time for any reason.
Yay Jonathon.

And since your readership is probably a hundred thousand times mine, as I am pretty sure that only myself and the friends I trick with TinyURL links ever read my blog - you probably have a much bigger "right" to reserve.

However, I find it a little absurd that you did not like the "tone" of me complaining about a Jerk working at River City.

Bah, whatever. In any event - it sheds a little light on what may or may not be edited at BikePortland if people disagree with Jonathon.

And no matter what you say, the staff at River City were, in my opinion, Asshats.

Comments

Kenny said…
That sounds like the reason why I quit GuitarGeek.com's GeekChat. I think I told you about this, but after a thread was raised that they should start berating people who use the term "gay" or "retarded" in the (you know what I mean) ways and I opposed it as censorship, the response I got was so appalling that I decided to delete all of my threads and posts (as many as I could) and abandon the site. I used to post there a lot, but I'm not going be part of something that uses member-imposed fascism just because someone is overly sensitive to calling a piece of gear "gay" or "retarded". It wasn't even in reference to calling a person gay or retarded.

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