Wikibooks:Profanity
 | This page documents an official Wikibooks policy that the Wikibooks community has accepted and Wikibookians must follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy. |
Avoid profanity (words or images that could be considered offensive by typical Wikibooks readers), but not at the expense of accuracy. We strive to create a serious educational resource with brilliant prose. Consideration to how others will perceive it is therefore an asset. Profanity is never acceptable in Wikijunior.
Usernames
Avoid offensive usernames. Wikibookians feel that tolerating offensive usernames has few, if any benefits, but can turn away contributors who see them in a list of recent changes or elsewhere. For the purpose of Wikibooks, this outweighs freedom of expression. Users with profane or obscene usernames may be blocked without prior warning.
Modules
Module titles should not include profanity unless specifically required by the content. Modules with inappropriate titles may be moved on sight to more appropriate locations, or speedily deleted and do not need to be listed on requests for deletion.
Well written modules should not, on the whole, need to use profanity. It may, however, be warranted in some cases: modules specifically about how profanity is used in society are an example, and when mentioning someone else's use of it, you should go ahead and be accurate.
Include the full, uncensored version when including exact quotes that are relevant to the module. There's no point in ever turning an instance of "fuck" into "f***" or "the f word". If you wish to eliminate the word, you should paraphrase rather than quote it.
Other pages
Other pages don't have the same requirements as the module pages, but profanity should be avoided there as well. Talk pages in particular are for conversation between users about a page, and in such conversations (except perhaps conversations about profanity itself) do not require profanity. Wikibookians may not verbally attack or abuse one another anywhere on Wikibooks, as we are all required to be nice to one another.