Many people are talking about a clear definition.
You're wrong. It's not clear. You are living in an imaginary world of your own delusion if you think it is. 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.
I am aware that it's not clear enough and have pointed that out using essentially your reasoning. Help us make it more clear. Unless you simply don't understand it at all, which seems within the realm of possibility.
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.
If this is your belief then I think you've missed the point entirely. This isn't about literal definitions and the use of synonyms. It's about how you express ideas at a very basic level. It's about a rhetorical standard. This game is about medieval nobles, and accordingly, people should try to communicate like them (or at least adhere to some relatively strong rhetorical standard), which precludes the use of obvious profanity, for example. As I pointed out to Perth, you can be offensive without resorting to profanity. No, I would not literally be telling someone to %&@# off, but I can communicate exactly the same idea using completely different words and phrasing. For the record, it's entirely in keeping with the standards of medieval nobility to discuss intercourse using clever metaphors. That's exactly how they did it, when they did it, at least when they were trying to maintain any pretense of good breeding in the process. I would never consider a conversation such as you have roughly described as being vulgar unless you got a little too blunt or specific.
Reread the posted guidelines and ask yourself which of them justifies reporting a comment about religion simply because it is a comment about religion. Again, it's not about the idea being expressed, it's about
how it is expressed. And yes, I recognize that this could be construed as unfair to our non-native English speakers. I believe the entire point of this feature however is to rely on the community to regulate itself, and there is a line somewhere about respecting the fact that not everyone has perfect English. You are and have been exactly in the right to cut non-native English speakers a break. Ultimately, the entire system relies on the judgment of players to make the right choice and
be fair and considerate to each other. In my experience, very few messages I've seen should truly be considered vulgar, and I do not hesitate to say that if you find yourself using this feature a lot that you are probably not playing this game as you would a board game with friends. Do you constantly call your friends out on every little mistake they make and hold them rigidly to the letter of the rules in a game? Are you that guy who is always out to win no matter what and can't cut your friends any slack at all? Then you're a guy I don't really want to play games with, frankly. I strongly suspect that this is why you have encountered such negative reactions to your behavior in this area, as your attitude about it is quite merciless if not downright cynical. No one likes to play games with a guy who's going to be a jerk about every little thing.
I do not believe that this case justifies a guilty verdict, but I will say that I believe that you misused the feature. Which leads me to ask you, what do you believe the intent of this feature is? How do you think it is supposed to be used?
