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Revision as of 23:40, 27 May 2007 by Calton (talk | contribs) ("Attack site"? Please.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)In the fields of Internet discussion and forum moderation, disemvoweling (also spelled disemvowelling) 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 suppress Internet trolling and other unwanted posting. When used by a forum moderator, the net effect is to mark the original text as deprecated, while at the same time not suppressing freedom of speech; after disemvowelling text is still legible, but only through significant cognitive effort, and disemvowelled text has the advantage that it will not cause offence to anyone who does not stop and invest that effort in reconstructing their message. The presence of disemvowelled messages in the board also helps other visitors to see, by example, what kind of behaviour is not considered acceptable in the forum.
Disemvoweling would leave the first sentence of this article looking like this:
n th flds f ntrnt dscssn nd frm mdrtn, Dsmvwlng (ls splld dsmvwllng) s th rmvl f vwls frm txt.
Disemvoweling text in this fashion reduces its readability. The technique has been facilitated by plug-in filters to automate the process. Because the letter y is sometimes a vowel and sometimes a consonant, there are a variety of ways to treat it. To remove it only where it is used as a vowel is not easily automated. Aside from an "all-or-nothing" approach, one option is remove a y only at the end of words, where it is virtually always a vowel.
The word follows the standard patterns of English orthography; i.e., it may be spelt either disemvoweling or disemvowelling, with the former generally preferred in U.S. English and the latter preferred in Commonwealth and Irish English.
References
- Used as a forum moderation method as early as November 21, 2002 by Teresa Nielsen Hayden on Making Light. This was termed "disemvoweling" by Arthur D. Hlavaty in that thread, later the same day.
- Cory Doctorow (14 May, 2007). "How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community". Information Week. TechWeb Business Technology Network. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Scholastic Teaching Resources, Scholastic, Accessed August 09, 2006
Further reading
- Double-tongued Word Wrester by Grant Barrett
- Jargon File by Eric Raymond
- shrpshr.pl A Movable Type plug-in, written by Bryant Durrell, which removes the vowels from all comments coming from a specific IP address or addresses.
- disemvowel.tar.gz Another Movable Type plug-in, written by Thomas Hassan, which lets the moderator disemvowel specific individual comments.
- The process for disemvowelling comments in WordPress.
- Plugins/Disemvoweler by WordPress
- NP_CommentBuddy a plugin written by Matthew Brown that allows flexible and lossless disemvowelling of posts in Nucleus CMS.
- Making Light - Autodisemvowelling A discussion of Disemvoweling techniques, including the shrpshr.pl plugin, and Thomas Hassan's implementation, both linked above.
- A disemvowelling CGI script
- A 1991 Usenet mention of disemvoweling in a slightly different context (Scrabble set)
- A 1990 Usenet mention, in the moderated group comp.risks, of disemvoweling with a slightly different meaning (vowels replaced by asterisks)
- Cited in SFX magazine column, November 2006
- How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community by Cory Doctorow at InformationWeek
- Mac/Win/Linux Disemvoweling software