There was never anything wrong with the language. . .one man's profanity is another man's poetry. . .most here are not offended by language and discourse. . .

This does seem like a good idea. Although I don't mind offensive language, I use the asterisk a lot because I know it is not a monitored site and some parents may have objections which they could then have some control over.

This would be a good option for those who require a "family-friendly" atmosphere. I wouldn't use it, but I'd support it for people who would. Besides, it's probably better way for them to handle obscenity (if typing random characters in lieu of the actual ones, as in "!@#$", upsets one so much so as to mark every review that the offender has made with an "unhelpful", for example. The option to "turn off obscenity" will save those who are threatened with "juvenile" language from using an equally-juvenile response.)

This is an option I would have liked to have had the ability to use recently. I have to part company with my friends who feel that the reader should be the one who turns the filter on or off. However, if it is going to be left to the discretion of the writer, strict guidelines should be clearly posted and then enforced, stating that rough language must be used only when making a point and not gratuitously. Otherwise, everyone who disagrees with Michael Moore or George Bush will just post reviews calling them a-holes and that kind of comment adds nothing or gives us any insight to the person's thoughts, except to tell us that they haven't any. In my case, I was quoting other people in making my point and within those quotes were racial slurs and the filter rejected them. In my opinion, using symbols such as @ or $$ as a substitute for letters may still get the point across but I feel that the statement that I was quoting had lost some of the impact that I wanted the reader to experience. If used judiciously and sparingly, rough or obscene language can make a graphic point but if you're just going to use it to call someone names or if the writer thinks that a string of obscenities is funny, it will lose its proper place and turn RIA into just another one of the two bit blogs that already crowd the internet where anything goes, and very little of substance remains.

While the title of my suggestion is to add the ability to turn off the obscenity filter, a more appropriate description would be to reverse how it presently works. Currently the filter is apparently mandatory and rejects reviews that it determines to contain offensive language. Other sites (e.g. Yahoo!) work in reverse, and I think this is the better system. In other words, members should be free to post as they see fit, but members should also have the option to turn on a filter to screen out reviews that contain questionable language. This change would put the responsibility on the reader as opposed to the writer and would also keep the filter from rejecting language that isn't really offensive for those willing to take the chance. The bottom line is that reversing how the obscenity feature works seems like a win-win change to me.