Many people are talking about a clear definition.
You're wrong. It's not clear. [...] Or, you've already stopped playing BM as a game with friends. I'll explain.
You see that numerous players disagree with your interpretation of the rule. I am the only one willing to speak up about (and given the abuse I've gotten, notably from Velax and Elroy, but not exclusively them) I understand why people aren't willing to speak up: to do so is to suffer blanket IC discrimination. But the fact remains that my interpretation is evidently common.
If the interpretation advocated by people posting here is so obvious, then that implies that other players are, by and large, in their usage of the vulgarity feature, stupid and/or malicious. [...edited...]
Given widespread misunderstanding about the feature (evinced by the frequency of reports that others on this thread apparently disagree with), the only obvious conclusion about vulgarity is that its use and definition are not obvious.
I will reiterate what Kale said, in that I do not believe manner and content are separable, or even different.
For example, in the "!@#$ you" versus "Good my lord.... etc" the content IS different. They are semantically different things. One of them refers to a cultural taboo (violent sex with an offensive connotation), the other contains items of cultural respect (titles, ladies' dignity, etc, etc). That's a difference of content.
Really, I don't understand what people mean by "manner." You seem to liken it to tone of voice. Well, "tone of voice" in text-based messages would be things like italics, punctuation, capitalization, message type, message length and structure, etc. THAT is the "manner" of the message. In which case I would justified reporting things as vulgar if they are categorized under the wrong message type or have bad grammar: peasants have bad grammar!
Indeed, personally, I find the "manner" rule not only incomprehensible, but discriminatory. As a rule of thumb, I do not report vulgarity on players whose writing (And user page) evince limited grasp of english, despite the fact that some such players' messages are regularly vulgar and fail in even basic things like using titles, avoiding slang, etc. Those messages are vulgar. I don't report them. If the "manner" of the message is the point, those messages should be vulgar. But I don't think they are.
Or consider the equally obvious scenario. If I go into an extended clever discussion of sexual intercourse with a noble's sister, or mother, say (which in fact one of my characters has done, and sadly either nobody ruled it vulgar, or the people reading it were incapable of understanding basic metaphors), it is vulgar no matter how flowery the language. Why? Because some things are just ALWAYS vulgar.
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Someone asked if I reported the message after Athena's clarification; yes, I did. As far as I recall, her clarification came after her message had already been, apparently, ruled vulgar, but I might have my chronology slightly mixed up. Whatever the case, I did report it as vulgar before I saw any clarification, but after I had seen at least one other message interpreting her message similarly to my perception.
