The "Violence" tag is a sop to those of us who find pictures of lopped limbs more obscene than naked children. Obviously, from the observation about "Off with their heads," the flag is not monitored or enforced. It hasn't even been thought through. What matters is to avoid offending the pathological prudes who shudder at the thought of naked children but enjoy watching them get the beatings they deserve.

The Language flag is ludicrous, as its name implies. The first time I saw it, I flagged it immediately because sure enough, everyone in the thread was using language!!! That is not a frivolous response. I take language very seriously. The notion that we all, internationally, have some sort of reliable instinct for what are offensive words (and what contexts make them offensive) is, in a word, bullshit.  I worked in the translation business for years, and many of my favorite language stories come from the wonderful tangents there, like the poor sales guy of the religion that must not be named who nearly fainted when a lovely visiting British client turned to him, alone in his office, and said, "Have you a rubber?"

Bess Truman taught her farmer husband to say "manure" when talking to reporters. They were offended by "manure." Oh well. My mother once slapped me for saying "Baloney!" to another boy, because she KNEW WHAT I MEANT. Ironically, I didn't know what I "meant" until a few years later. DH Lawrence spent an entire novel trying to liberate the word "fuck," and all he accomplished was to make the hatred in the word more socially acceptable.

My mother became hysterical, in 1966, when I said, at the table, that I got screwed on a test. Is "screw" Language? I had a customer who demanded that we change the French word "tampon" to "buffer" in her documents, and it did no good to point out that in French, Kotex is not a "tampon," which is a French word for a kind of paper, borrowed by the French computer industry to avoid having to use the Anglo-Saxon word "buffer" (and the French hate borrowing from English, as their computer vocabulary will tell you). Of course, it was also borrowed from French (tampon, that is) by Americans to give "rag" some panache. And "rag," which used to be the literal word for "tampons," became insulting.

I can revile people and offend them quite adequately without resorting to the forbidden seven. I presume that will not require the "Language" flag. My own practice is to always flag "language," on the assumption that any post I make will offend someone. And if the post is passionate, I flag "violence" to warn people that it might be too rough for them. Though I've never actually done anything as infantile and testosterone-addled as threatening anyone. "Nudity" I flag if I see faces in the avatars. They are, many of them, naked. Likewise animals.

When you do stuff like that, it renders having the flags in the first place useless.
This is not true. I use them differently than you want. I'm tempted to say, "Suck it up," but I suppose that would be offensive because it would be taken to mean oral sex when in fact it means "Pull in your gut and move on." (See James Jones, From Here to Eternity or George C Scott, Patton.) But "offense" is in the eye and ear and dirty mind of the beholder, so there I am, offensive again.

What I do simply means that people coming to find 'language, nudity, or violence' will be puzzled (and why not needle them? Perhaps you should also "warn" people who construct their thumbnails to give a false impression of the amount of nudity in a picture. Like it or not, they are doing exactly the same thing. But golly, wouldn't we look silly, reprimanding people for not enough sex in their pictures...). And it means that people who shun these things will not visit the thread -- this is tragic? The real offense, as is usual with authoritarian communities, is not the effect of the crime, it's the cojones to commit it. My gallery warning was issued because I pissed off a pet vendor. I got this one for disobedience; the offense is just a detail.

And lcm, thanks for the kind words. But there is no point in my modulating anything. This is, after all, Wonderland, where words mean what the authorities mean, the rules are do what we say whether we said it or not, and when it's time for me to go, "Why?" will be irrelevant. When I got the first warning, I asked why and got a bunch of platitude "understanding how upset" I was. It did no good to point out that I wasn't "upset," I just wanted answers. It did no good because none of the admins care what I think or why I think it. Or even, in their heart of hearts, believe I think it. And it's not personal. Welcome to Wonderland.

Mick