I just got off work. I apologize if I seem at all short; it's unintentional.
I will start by saying that i am agnostic, but i see a lot of people mock religious people here. Hell, even Hitokage called someone a bible thumper, which i thought extremely distasteful and down right offensive. If an administrator disrespect an individual on this forum, how are we expect posters to respect each other? People here mock people who have faith in a condescending matter all the time here on Gaf without any repercussion.
I will try to remind people that engaging others in a dialog have more chance of persuading them into seeing it from their own point of view since mocking them does not do any good and might reinforce someone´s belief even more. I see the discrepancy in moderation in religious threads quite repulsive honestly
To be honest, I see a lot of oversensitivity from the religious on this issue. For instance, sometime in the last month I made a post about the moral turpitude of the same people who were preaching "love the sinner, hate the sin" today had been the same Christians who for the last six decades have been engaged in all manner of immoral, vicious, and dishonest attacks against gay and transgender people that they continue making to this day.
This obviously does not apply to more liberal or progressive Christians, it does not apply to Christians in those churches who do not themselves support or believe in these things, it does not apply to Christians who do not go to churches but still think of themselves as such, etc. It is a criticism of a fringe within a fringe, but my comment - without even having mentioned Christians or Christianity - was misunderstood by several posters to have been on attack on all of Christendom.
In spite of this oversensitivity, you should know that it is not true that people are never moderated for malicious attacks against the religious, especially as a group. I am admittedly biased in these discussions - though I avoid them like the plague - but I do not have a problem moderating such malicious attacks against religious people and I know the same is true of other moderators. If you think that we're ignoring something - even if we're posting in the same thread and want to know why something is not being addressed -
PM. It may be the case that it is not something we moderate for, but it may also be the case that it is something that we needed to have brought to our attention.
I can't find the post now with the links but in the football thread someone posted a few links with mods using the word in other threads, mainly sports ones. Strange behaviour if the word has been banned for years.
Do as I say not as I do scenario?
WoodenLung made the post you are thinking of - I read the threads - and he found precisely one moderator (EatChildren) who had done so. Or at least that is all he posted; I have not searched myself.
And my understanding is that the word has been a bannable offense for the entire time I have been here. When I spoke to EviLore about the first post I made, because I was understandably nervous about making an 'official warning' to a community I had not before participated in and so soon after I had become a moderator, he signed off on the post that I made. If this were a new rule, I expect he would have said that what I was doing was creating a change. In retrospect perhaps having another more established moderator be the bearer of bad news would have been more ideal, but
c'est la vie at this point.
I suspect that the misunderstanding that the word was acceptable came from the fact that the topics in which it took place most commonly were very lightly moderated (certain sports threads, UK-GAF, and (sigh) PopGAF), and its usage outside of topics like that was highly sporadic so that people who did not consider it an offensive term did not think that it might be banned.
I hope the word 'cock' is banned then, I find it highly sexist and derogatory.
The problem with this argument is that there is no place in the world where "cock" is a slur. If "cunt" were a similarly low level insult the world over, or at least in the communities with meaningful representation on GAF, we would not be having this discussion and I wouldn't even care. This goes as well for other mild gendered insults like dick, prick, or twat, where in 9/10 cases we simply don't care about their usage because they are not slurs.
I don't much like the blanket banning of words. But I guess context banning is more troublesome. I mean, if there's an OP with a story of a guy feeling hard done by a girl, the next ten replies might be 'bitch' 'cunt' 'fucking bitch cunt'. I'm totally with that being bannable. But these words can also be used to pretty amusing effect sometimes, and I miss that.
You know, I don't like blanket banning either. That's why we don't do it:
There is not a blanket ban on the word "bitch." There are, however, ways you can use "bitch" which could get you banned. Opiate recently addressed questions about this in another thread:
Is it contextual or zero-tolerance?
It's going to be hard not saying the b-word.
Definitely contextual, always. For example, I just said all four of those words, and you'll notice I'm not banned! Generally speaking, regarding the word "bitch," if the word is clearly not intended to apply in a gender sensitive way -- if you use it as a synonym for "asshole" or "jerk" -- it will be fine.
But other uses are not fine. If you are applying it to a woman in a situation that might be even remotely gender-specific, be careful. Also, applying it to a man in such a way that you intend to emasculate them, or imply they are weak or pathetic, is also not appropriate. So, "stop being a bitch" is not appropriate, for example.
Context will always matter. While sometimes people are not moderated simply because we don't see the post (it happens), many times people complain that [Poster X] was banned for saying a bad word, but [Poster Y] was not, and people think this is unfair. As you say, however, context matters -- the same exact words can mean very different things coming from different people at different times.
This makes the rules harder to follow, I realize this. They are not hard, fast, simple rules. We are relying on your ability to be reasonable and mature, and in almost all cases you'll be fine if you do.
Again, feel free to send me PMs if you need. Thanks.
I want to be clear, however, in stating that using it as a synonym for "asshole" or "jerk" is still unacceptable when used towards another poster; it is something in practice that is available more for self-deprecation or towards a task (e.g. "This level was a bitch to get through") that is not directed towards another person.
Nearly all rules about language here are contextual. There is no list of words that you are not allowed to post; any word in the right context or in the right discussion can be acceptable. But there are words that have a heightened scrutiny around their usage, such as gendered or racist or homophobic slurs.
And I have even let posts with cunt pass depending on context (the limericks thread, one insulting usage towards a corporation that was so abstracted that after discussing it with another moderator decided to let it pass, and several others), though this happens far less often.
Also, one thing GAF was good for was the totally out-there points of view, and nowadays it seems fewer people feel able to express these. I miss that too.
I honestly have not noticed this, or maybe you aren't talking about what I am. Most people I have had discussions in the past with tend to have what I think of as "out there" views and that has not changed for me since becoming a moderator either.
