Make rude talk impossible with scripted artificial intelligence and whole rude talk will disappear from internet mostly. "Mostly", because we can never make perfect world. ;)

They just should have added the names of the goldspam websites to their word filter.

Wanting people to stop saying things like they should be raped is "Special treatment"?

not at all, nobody wants to hear things like that online

by "Special treatment" I mean reactions from different people and genders when they are said things like that

[sarcasm]
Bitches gotta know their place: barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen cookin' my dinner, while rackin' up gamerscore on Xbox!
[/sarcasm]

But, seriously, is it that much of a problem? This isn't a question with an agenda, I am truly ignorant of this type of stuff. The only voice chat I am ever involved in is clan/guild chat for MMOs, I don't do chat for PS3 (heck, I don't even know if it is possible for PS3, never checked).

If it is truly that bad, then something should be done, but I am not sure that what Extra Credits lists as solutions would actually work. If someone realizes they are auto-muted, what stops them from just making a new account? Also, once this auto-muting system is figured out, I figure that some bad eggs will figure out how to abuse it (through multiple accounts or friends muting that person over and over, for instance) and make the victims be auto-muted. Something similar happened here with the rampant down-voting last year, after all (edit: although, calling them true 'victims' I suppose might be a stretch).

Apart from making those trouble-maker's home addresses public and allowing folks to give them a personal beat down (only half joking here), I am not sure what can be done to fix the problem.

Congratulations. You are part of the problem.

Honestly, one of the things I liked about KoL was that you can ignore people and then it was as if they didn't exist in the game. They couldn't PM you, you wouldn't even see what they were typing in chat.

Their forums also had something similar where you could add people to the list to be automatically collapsed anywhere you saw them. It wasn't perfect, but unless somebody else quoted them you'd never know what they were saying.

I'd love to see them implement something like that on all fora as often times it's easier to just ignore the person that's being a dick rather than avoid the topic completely.

Really? So asking for equality is "part of the problem"?

You sound like those people that say that gay marriage is giving homosexuals "extra rights" and that they have the right to marry people of the opposite gender any time they want.

I generally don't agree with you much, but you're right on here.

There should be measures in place to deal with harrassment and bullying regardless of who is involved, but it does get distorted into something which is only for whatever minority group. From personal experience that's usually not correct.

Okay, I'll bite. I totally agree with you that giving any group of people special treatment over the greater majority is a dangerous road. This applies (at least for me) government regulation as well as corporate behavior.

However, where I grew up, calling a woman a c*** (or whatever, but that is the worst for me) was grounds to beat their face into spaghetti, no matter WHAT the reason. There were just things that were neither done nor said. Ever.

So, on the one hand, I see where you are coming from: females need to grow some balls and learn to deal with it. When guys of a certain age and mindset see weakness (in EITHER sex) they jump at it and bully, bully, bully. The only way out is to tell them to screw off then ignore them. However, on the other hand, I instinctively want to deck anyone that says such things, or abides such things being said, about a woman.

The social norms do depend upon where you're living and how your raised. I was doing a lesson today where people had to choose which person wouldn't be saved and the only female in the scenario got tossed. The only explanation I got was that she's a woman. After trying to get a better one, I just removed her from the scenario and replaced her with a man.

It's one thing to deal with these situations online or in ones own culture, but trying to deal with them in somebody elses culture is kind of tricky. Especially since I'm not allowed to meddle in Chinese internal affairs.

Back home, I'd say that women need absolutely no more protection than what's afforded to men. I remember a girl in my middle school trying to mug me and being very surprised that I was willing to hit her back. She had at least a year and 8 inches on me, I suppose she assumed that I was just going to accept that she was stealing my lunch money.

It's gone beyond demanding that whatever harassed group "grow some balls", most of them already have big brass ones to chat on voice anyway, or give away their gender in whatever fashion. Also, it's not just thirteen year old boys that game, it's thirteen year old girls (and younger, of both genders), I don't really think we have the right to tell a 10 year old "grow some balls" over some of the stuff that gets said online; and it gets said very frequently.

This isn't about the occasional troll, this is about a significant minority causing serious problems and many of the rest of us uncomfortably looking the other way. Here's a website that lists some of the more "outstanding" entries: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/

Really, it's just time to quit uncomfortably looking the other way and it would help if all we had as tools wasn't just yelling into the mic. As said in the EC episode, MS and the rest already know exactly how often you get muted and by whom, is it too much to ask that this gargantuan amount of data gets put to a use beyond selling us more stuff?

Yeah, I totally admit my bias in the matter. I grew up the South of the US... 'nuff said. Your response was the right one, given the situation, but it is still sad. Reminds me of the story a year or s back of that Chinese couple that was having babies and selling them on the black market. When the women (not the man) was asks if she regretted it, she merely said that she regretted not having all boys to sell, since they were worth more money. If a woman attacks me (mugging counts) all bets are off for me. I am not going to go after a woman, but I am certainly going to defend myself. I have had a girl come at me with a kitchen knife before, and I didn't hesitate to disarm her, forcefully, with a frying pan (in was in a kitchen). When she ran off, I didn't give chase, but, dang, nobody pulls a knife on me... yeesh.