There are quotes from the thread itself that could work. These are all Elena's summaries of votes:

Creepy Warren wins
The mummy hand lives!
Owww moves on.
Everyone loves a baby-eating Troll.

But more seriously:

I'm always just a wee bit uneasy when a bunch of litterate, compassionate, caring indivuduals come together and mutually agree to censor one another's dialogue

Are you saying we can use any language I want, then, in thread titles and the like? Because anything else is editing. We don't. We know we don't. I can't imagine a thread title yelling "retard!" or "crip!" Is it a majority thing, then?

I'm always just a wee bit uneasy when a bunch of litterate, compassionate, caring indivuduals come together and mutually agree to censor one another's dialogue

Also known as mutual respect and caring. Everyone self-censors, and each group has their version of a Hayes Code. It's part of society, of getting along with the Humans and not killing each other over (comparatively) low-stakes issues.

Are you suggesting that Buffy contains something akin to the problematic race language of Huckleberry Finn?

Nope. You said that the Jossverse shows are this board's "universal text," and as such, we should use the language in that text, no matter what connotations that language has outside the text.

If this were a board about Mark Twain, and we used that logic, we'd be using racial terms that are well-nigh universally accepted to be offensive, *even though they're in the text.*

Just because "spaz" is in BTVS doesn't mean it isn't offensive outside of BTVS.

I'm always just a wee bit uneasy when a bunch of litterate, compassionate, caring indivuduals come together and mutually agree to censor one another's dialogue.

Wow. Okay, you're new, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

This isn't a posting board where we only know each other as "BuffyFan168" and "XanderROOLZ", etc. A good deal of the active posters have met each other, many times, and have become friends. Hell, a marriage has arisen out of this community.

And that's what it is -- a community. Declining to use a word that others find offensive isn't censorship; it's politeness in response to others' wishes. And perhaps those wishes carry some weight, given the community this is.

Everyone loves a baby-eating Troll.

Good one.

I'm always just a wee bit uneasy when a bunch of litterate, compassionate, caring indivuduals come together and mutually agree to censor one another's dialogue

I don't think that censoring thread titles is the same thing as censoring dialogue. A suggestion was made (um, by me I think), some people said, "Hey you know what? Where we live, that's pretty offensive." Other people took that into consideration, and we can figure something else out. I don't think anyone's going to ban the word "spaz" from the board.

(FYI, Rafmun is my husband.)

Are you saying we can use any language I want, then, in thread titles and the like? Because anything else is editing. We don't. We know we don't. I can't imagine a thread title yelling "retard!" or "crip!" Is it a majority thing, then?

Actually, I was saying I was a wee bit uneasy.

And no, not a marjority thing, but not a minority thing either. More of a common sense thing. We all have to deal with less-than-perfect situations in life, and I guess I would just sooner see people deal with the fringe things on their own terms, than to try to compell the group to bend to their viewpoints.

So it's a universalist thing. I really am indifferent to which way it goes, save for the road of individual selection seems destined to create more angst than the simple effort of not taking offense to something grossly out of the offensive-context.

My point about witchcraft, and my problem with the use of the word 'Bitches' are just two examples. Should the Bitches thread be renamed now that someone on the board is actually offended by that word in some contexts? Or should I accept that the word is used in a non-aggressive, non-hurtful, non-offensive manner by a group of intelligent and good hearted people who are more adept at playing with language than using it as a tool of hate?

I'm leaning towards the latter, if indeed it becomes a majority thing - or a 'long term poster' thing - then the fact that I'm offended by 'bitches' won't be given the same weight and grave concern as the fact that you are offended by the word 'spaz'. I don't know, and I am pretty spanky new here, but rumour has it that the folks in these parts are uber-fair, so I doubt that kind of distinction will be made.

Maybe we could both put our faith in the board's intelligent posters, and accept that most words are contextularized by their usage, and here, words like 'Bitches' and 'Spaz' are in a context of fun and goofyness, where as words like 'Retard' and 'crip' would be single-meaning, universally acknowledged hurtful words, and not used in light conversation here.

I am eager to see.

There are quotes from the thread itself that could work.

Couple of my favorite Elena gems:

Torturing Spike wins out over Tortured Spike. Advance does Yoda. Taciturn man goes down without a whimper...

But...isn't comparing words now universally accepted as degreding to a word with a secondary regional meaning a wee bit of an overstatement of the situation?

Um, regional? You do realize we're talking about the entire United Kingdom here, yes?

And What Everyone Else Said about this being a community where people try to act respectfully towards one another. We realize that most of the internet does not operate this way, but we like it here, and we're very protective of it.

words like 'Bitches' and 'Spaz' are in a context of fun and goofyness, where as words like 'Retard' and 'crip' would be single-meaning, universally acknowledged hurtful words, and not used in light conversation here.

That's demonstrably not true -- I know I've seen "crip" used in jest here. Not in a thread title, but in conversation.

(And I hope I'm not cross-posting again, because this is how people feel ganged-up on, and I'm not meaning to do that.)