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Post by Polaris Seltzeris on Jun 24, 2020 7:09:41 GMT
The Zero Tolerance Policy, which made it so that people are not permitted to use slurs such as "nigger" or "faggot," was removed and replaced with this provision to the Conduct Policy:
"a. Ethnic, racist, religious, sexual, sexual orientation type slurs, insults, and harassment that are obviously aimed to discriminate or belittle a person or group of people."
What this effectively means is that in order for the usage of a slur to fall under this offense, it would have to be proven that the usage was "obviously aimed to discriminate or belittle a person or group of people."
The issue: this is not objectively possible. Under the Zero Tolerance Policy, all slurs are not allowed. That is an objective standard which does not require subjective interpretation and opinion, which is what causes these systems to fail. Under this conduct policy rule, nobody can prove that the usage of a slur was aimed to discriminate or belittle a person or group of people, it just is not objectively possible unless the person accused of violating the rule basically admitted to it.
So what if somebody were to create a thread or post something on the Discord or Minecraft server which contained a slur? Who is the person who is capable of objectively proving the aim of somebody? Nobody can, it's up to subjective interpretation, and that isn't something that we want. This effectively makes all slurs allowed on Total Freedom platforms as long as nobody can prove that they were not aimed to discriminate, which is not objectively possible. This makes the community unwelcoming to other people, can cause us to lose players, and puts us in jeopardy if ProBoards or Discord were to go after us for violating their terms of service for allowing usage of slurs.
I suggest that the Zero Tolerance Policy be put back exactly the way it was. After all, many of us already voted that it should not be made "lenient," and we should never have to change this policy again. No, this does not mean we have to ban the word "nigga," it is not a slur and to assert that it is denies connotative, denotative, and historical meaning and is wholly uncharitable. It was reclaimed by the black community and is now slang.
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nick
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Post by nick on Jun 24, 2020 7:13:15 GMT
Something is causing a problem? Just remove it. That's annoying.
vouch.
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fionn
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Post by fionn on Jun 24, 2020 7:15:09 GMT
Only Wilee could suggest to readd something less then 5 minutes after it was removed
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Darth
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Post by Darth on Jun 24, 2020 7:15:28 GMT
Vouch. This type of ambiguity is just impossible to navigate. If you want to use slurs, go do it in private. Literally the only justification I’ve seen for not having the zero tolerance policy is “but I want to use the word” which is both unhelpful and insensitive, and also dodges acknowledgement of the reason the policy was implemented in the first place.
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Post by Polaris Seltzeris on Jun 24, 2020 7:20:42 GMT
It amazes me how many people will vote for not having this in place. What entitles you to use this community as a platform for being as hateful as possible to other groups of people? As the name of this platform suggests, we should strive for freedom, and enabling bigotry only succeeds in harming the freedom of others.
If you feel a compulsive need to use slurs, then do so privately.
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fionn
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Post by fionn on Jun 24, 2020 7:22:09 GMT
It amazes me how many people will vote for not having this in place. What entitles you to use this community as a platform for being as hateful as possible to other groups of people? As the name of this platform suggests, we should strive for freedom, and enabling bigotry only succeeds in harming the freedom of others. If you feel a compulsive need to use slurs, then do so privately. you are contradicting yourself, restricting word usage is striving for freedom? Mm |
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elmon
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Post by elmon on Jun 24, 2020 7:24:08 GMT
It was reclaimed by the black community and is now slang. Still, if a white person says it, it's deemed offensive, which means that all the derogatory meaning behind it is not gone. |
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Post by Polaris Seltzeris on Jun 24, 2020 7:25:11 GMT
It amazes me how many people will vote for not having this in place. What entitles you to use this community as a platform for being as hateful as possible to other groups of people? As the name of this platform suggests, we should strive for freedom, and enabling bigotry only succeeds in harming the freedom of others. If you feel a compulsive need to use slurs, then do so privately. you are contradicting yourself, restricting word usage is striving for freedom? Mm Enabling bigotry against other groups of people introduces an atmosphere of offense and hate, and the accomplishment of such is the reducing of their freedom. In accordance with the Harm Principle, you are taking away others' freedoms by using yours to attack other people. No, you are not entitled to be hateful against other groups of people on this platform, and multiple of the communication platforms which we use have it in their own Terms of Service that hate speech, including slurs, is not tolerated and puts this community in jeopardy to allow such. |
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tozzit
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Post by tozzit on Jun 24, 2020 7:29:45 GMT
You fail to recognize that the zero tolerance policy just moves the grey area to- what words are slurs? what IS a slur? because according to the cambridge dictionary a slur is a remark that criticizes someone and is likely to have a harmful effect on their reputation. This type of ambiguity is also 'impossible to navigate'. The big problem is that language is fluid and words have multiple meanings and sentences have context. This is essentially a word filter - and word filters always have problems. The good thing is we have human admins that can interpret sentences and context. But then we fall into the trap of bias of these human admins. So what can we do? Well in my opinion a zero tolerance policy is not and will never be satisfactory. We have a reporting system for this- that can be looked at by multiple admins although of course that could be tweaked. I've only ever seen people wrongly banned under this policy.
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miwo
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Post by miwo on Jun 24, 2020 8:00:06 GMT
Oh ffs here we go again. The original poll was against leniency and then it got changed anyways.
Lmao
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2020 8:08:30 GMT
Zero tolerance wouldn't allow for the word "nigga" because people could interpret it as racist (and people do) so it wouldn't be allowed. Then now that I think about it and others said it, anyone could call anything racist. under this policy.
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Post by Polaris Seltzeris on Jun 24, 2020 8:11:48 GMT
Zero tolerance wouldn't allow for the word "nigga" because people could interpret it as racist (and people do) so it wouldn't be allowed. Then now that I think about it and others said it, anyone could call anything racist. under this policy. No? It's not about interpretation, it's about what society deems to be a slur or not which is beyond the scope of what anybody here can define. To operate under the idea that "nigga" is a slur ignores the current society convention on the existence of the word and its connotative/denotative/historic meaning, and to go under that idea could indeed mean that any word can be considered a slur. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2020 8:13:51 GMT
Zero tolerance wouldn't allow for the word "nigga" because people could interpret it as racist (and people do) so it wouldn't be allowed. Then now that I think about it and others said it, anyone could call anything racist. under this policy. No? It's not about interpretation, it's about what society deems to be a slur or not which is beyond the scope of what anybody here can define. To operate under the idea that "nigga" is a slur ignores the current society convention on the existence of the word and its connotative/denotative/historic meaning, and to go under that idea could indeed mean that any word can be considered a slur. Are you fucking kidding me? Go outside, call a black dude nigga, see how long it takes you to get your ass beat for saying it. |
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Post by Polaris Seltzeris on Jun 24, 2020 8:19:22 GMT
No? It's not about interpretation, it's about what society deems to be a slur or not which is beyond the scope of what anybody here can define. To operate under the idea that "nigga" is a slur ignores the current society convention on the existence of the word and its connotative/denotative/historic meaning, and to go under that idea could indeed mean that any word can be considered a slur. Are you fucking kidding me? Go outside, call a black dude nigga, see how long it takes you to get your ass beat for saying it. That isn't really an objective standard, and why would I get my ass beat for calling any black person nigga? I don't think all black people are hard wired to assault people, do you have any clue how many white people may grow up with black people and they use the word regularly just as much? It's a big world and you have to think about all of these circumstances and not the view of a person who watches a "pranks in the hood" video from 2014 and has a weird stereotypical view of how these communities work. What of black people on this community? We're kind of just assuming everyone here is white, and perhaps that is the case, but that's not really what we assume in policy. To treat the word like a slur would be us deviating from the standard of a lot of online communities and ignoring so much historical meaning and society conventions. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2020 8:20:52 GMT
Are you fucking kidding me? Go outside, call a black dude nigga, see how long it takes you to get your ass beat for saying it. That isn't really an objective standard, and why would I get my ass beat for calling any black person nigga? I don't think all black people are hard wired to assault people, do you have any clue how many white people may grow up with black people and they use the word regularly just as much? It's a big world and you have to think about all of these circumstances and not the view of a person who watches a "pranks in the hood" video from 2014 and has a weird stereotypical view of how these communities work. What of black people on this community? We're kind of just assuming everyone here is white, and perhaps that is the case, but that's not really what we assume in policy. To treat the word like a slur would be us deviating from the standard of a lot of online communities and ignoring so much historical meaning and society conventions. Ok, I'll take your word for it. But if it becomes problematic, I will ban it again. |
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