I believe as this community is essentially a parliamentary session, any vulgar or obscene commentary should be strongly discouraged. Much like the speaker of the house, moderators should consistently remind those who break the above guideline to refrain. Repeat offenders / extreme examples should be subject to a temporary ban.
Thoughts?
edit: I wonder what people think is the purpose of downvotes? Do you not want to have the discussion?
Yeah, I’m not sure I agree.
Definitely understand your point, but this is the internet after all. Will I be reprimanded if I use “fucking” or “shit” to really make a point I’m passionate about? Is it okay if the context is alright? Is it bad if I use 2 curse words but 1 is okay? Who’s to say?
Context will be big. Straight up vulgar, hateful speech is already not allowed, so I don’t think we need to add to it unnecessarily.
I disagree. Is your point that it’s “uncivilized”? Personally, I don’t mind whatever language anyone uses in this community, unless they’re verbally attacking another user which I think should be handled by mods like any other forum.
Edit: calls to violence and bigotry should be handled by mods too
Edit2: Also, the word shit, one most would consider “vulgar”, is in the instance name, so it’s kinda ridiculous to want to ban such words from this community
Also, the word shit, one most would consider “vulgar”, is in the instance name, so it’s kinda ridiculous to want to ban such words from this community
Yes, I don’t care about vulgarity (hell I’m a repeat offender myself), but I agree with OP that overly obscene comments don’t have their place in this kind of “serious” community.
Where do we draw the line for “overly obscene”? And is this even a problem? Can I see a link to an example?
Where do we draw the line for “overly obscene”?
When it gets to the point that it elicits a strong emotional response and it derails the conversation I guess? But then it would amount to trolling, which is already discouraged on this community?
And is this even a problem?
Don’t think so, I was speaking in the abstract, but I guess it could become one if the instance becomes more popular.
Whose strong emotional response? If it were a rule that users should be civil to each other, or that we need to stay on topic for the post, I’d agree since those are I think more easy to delineate. But if I just use a word you don’t like, and it’s not a slur or targetting hate at you or anyone else, I don’t think it should be against the rules.
Rule number 1 for the instance is “Be respectful…” which I think covers most cases here.
It’s possible to be respectful while using “vulgar” language and vice versa etc.
What the fuck?
😉
Nay, much too subjective
I think vulgarity / obscene language is a pretty objective category. As opposed to ‘keep things constructive’ which can be interpreted in a variety of ways.
The problem here, as many have already stated, is that this is a very subjective proposal. And it is very hard to codify a rule based on a subjective. What you consider vulgar or obscene my not be close to crossing the line for me. Rules need to be objective in nature. They need to have the ability to have clear set guidelines that mean the same thing to everyone.
It is similar to the old argument about porn. What is porn? I’ve seen artistic photographs of nudity and I have seen porn. But where is that line drawn? That line is going to be somewhere different depending on the person. There are those that would say any photograph or video where the subject is nude is pornographic. Some would say only if there is a depiction of a sexual act, it is pornographic. And there are a lot of people that fall between those two and go further to the extremes in either direction. In that case, you cannot easily write an objective rule that everyone will interpret the same way. You could, say, write a rule about not having any depictions of nudity. That is more objective. Still not perfect…because what if it’s just one breast but the subject is otherwise clothed?
Anyway, this is getting way more wordy than I intended. The TL;DR is that trying to codify a subjective rule is both difficult and a really bad idea because no two people will interpret the rule in the same way. We need to focus on objective rules that leave little-to-no room for misinterpretation and solve or prevent actual problems.
But this is a great discussion on civility guidelines and I do think we need some of those. Though, again, they will likely have to be somewhat vague because of the subjectiveness of it all.
