Bluenose Bowdlerizer

"steve: whats your opinion on censorship insomniacdude007: **** censorship"

- bash.org # 524037

Editors vary in their styles. Some revise on a line-by-line basis. Others leave text untouched and add new content. They respond well to feedback. Then you run into someone that is anal-retentive about anything that may appear "offensive".

The Bluenose Bowdlerizer is a wiki "contributor" who does nothing but censor words he or she finds offensive. Neither the circumstances nor the standards of the rest of the wiki matter to the Bluenose Bowdlerizer—if they think a word is the least bit "naughty", it gets excised. Reasonable censors will actually go through the effort of rewriting the passage so that the offending terms are no longer needed, but the far more common simpleminded variety will merely replace all but the first letter of the "bad word" with asterisks, use spoiler font, or "safe" swearwords. In short, they are rather #$¢%ing stupid.

They will then sit back and bask in the illusory satisfaction that they have made the world a measurably better place—at least until their change is reverted.

A well-meaning editor will understand the guidelines if receiving feedback from the mods and will fix their errors. The Bluenose Bowdlerizer rarely has anything other than moral indignation to offer a wiki—they are usually too busy making it "safe for children", regardless of whether children are part of the intended audience or not, to actually contribute anything of value.

Not every troper who removes a few curse words is one of these, though. Sometimes vulgar words are gratuitously inserted into articles making them come off as immature. Removing such words when used inappropriately is encouraged on this wiki.

On the other hand, replacing them with asterisks or other symbols (or inserting symbols into a word so that it's more difficult to find in a web search, such as "s-e-x-y" instead of "sexy") is discouraged and a bannable offense if done repeatedly. This includes Censorware, automated programs that do the censoring while editing and are just as undesirable as "symbol-substituting" Bowdlerising.

See Moral Guardians, Culture Police and the Scunthorpe Problem. Compare This Trope Is Bleep.

Not to be confused with that sailboat that's on the Canadian dime, the Stan Rogers song about said sailboat, or the denizens of Nova Scotia, Canada (known as 'Bluenoses' since the late 18th century). Nor to be confused with sailors who have crossed into the arctic circle for the first time or ardent supporters of Rangers F.C.

And of course, this should never ever be confused with a certain Rudolph Expy.