New to me… disemvoweling: a compromise between preserving free speech and letting trolls take over a public online forum.

In the fields of Internet discussion and forum moderation, disemvoweling, (also spelled disemvowelling) which appears to model the word disemboweling, is the removal of vowels from text either as a method of self-censorship (for example, either “G*d” or “G-d” for those whose religious beliefs preclude writing God in full), or as a technique by forum moderators to censor unwanted posting, such as spam, internet trolling or political opinions.[1] The net effect of disemvoweling text is to render it illegible or legible only through significant cognitive effort, thus suppressing unwanted comments and discouraging such comments from being made in future. 

Post was last modified on 26 May 2022 3:13 am

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  • Though I invented disemvowelling as a moderation technique, the person who instantly *named* it disemvowelling was Arthur Hlavaty, known on Live Journal as SuperGee.
    It's a great word.

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Dennis G. Jerz
Tags: censorship

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