I don't think I'm alone in reading "they ** up" as "they fucked up" in my head, without meaning to. So whoever would be offended, is still offended, only now they can't complain about it since the person technically didn't swear.
There's no stakes here (the internet) for it to matter if you swear or not.
Your attitude on the internet won't result in any meaningful feedback, by default.
Someone has to be watching from a more strict environment for it to matter what you say on the internet. It needs to affect your job, or your wife needs to read your posts, or a moderator needs to clamp down on you.
The community accepts swearing by default.
Soo people who are in professional environments are going to bring their communication norms with them when they post online.
An I over
-explaining an answer to a rhetorical 'why?' question. I think I am.
I can never tell online, if people are literally asking a question that requires explaining OR it is simply a rhetorical question.
This is a great diverging discussion about the "censorship" and the commenting style in public forums. Let me add something: when I was writing the original comment that started all this, I wanted it to be funny, catchy, snarky, and karma-point-worthy. So, I decided to put a swear word as a stylistic choice. Then, to add some extra to the short comment, I decided to poke fun at the whole FCC bleeping regulation. Here, I will warmly recommend a book dedicated to bleeping over the seven "unspeakable words": the famous Steven Pinker's famous book "The Stuff of Thought".
Now, about the number of asterisks: I really didn't think that much about this, I kind of think I counted the right number of letters, but then there is no caret overwrite mode in the bleeping browser, which is yet another story...