Let's talk about "niggers." For real, though.

Still, it doesn't address the problem of potential members being turned away from WF, thinking that we tolerate such nonsense.

Fuck 'em. Wouldn't want anymore special snowflake types anyway.

Ride your Alt-Reich bike out of this thread, dude. You're embarrassing yourself.

He rode that shit right off the board.

It's not entirely about being offended, though. It's about not wanting your name associated with a place that arguably condones that sort of thing.

Bingo. Especially given the tendency of people to throw RL information around.

Why can't we just have a clearly defined "no persistent racism" rule?

I don't get this belligerent attitude that we must somehow bring this behaviour without the current rules when we can just have a new, clear cut rule that leaves no room for ambiguity and reduces the scope for any drama.

How fucking hard is it to just add a new paragraph to the rules that says something along the lines of "persistent racist trolling or content is a bannable offense" and just give people a short while to comply?

We've put up with Dinner's racist shit for over a year. So what now is the argument for not just getting the rules in order to an extent that leaves no room for no ambiguity and reduces the risk of drama?

The only reason I'm seeing is the stubbornness of one or more mods.

I've been saying this for six months. Everyone has ignored it every time I've said it. Had they not, by now a new racism rule could have been in place and either the racism would've been wiped out or those posting it would've been banned - and it all would've been dealt with before the recent drama. But no, people wait until it gets worse and then start crying, which generates more scattershot bans from the mods.

See, I think Dinner's racism is acceptable for the free discussion we have here. And I think the clear difference between our year's worth reactions to Dinner and the immediate reaction to Ramen's last thread showcases why. A 'no racism' rule wouldn't make that distinction.

I obviously find Dinner's racism despicable, but that is true for many stances I've encountered here, and the point of Wordforge, or at least its Red Room, is to see where debating that takes us. In fact, I think that Dinner's racism has been interesting in that sense.

In a more general sense, I think the "No Asshole" rule is very valuable, and valuable because of its deliberate vagueness. Dinner claims he isn't racist. You and I agree he is, but if we apply a no-racism rule to him, we have to have mods decide that difference of opinion, rather than making it an issue for debate.

Who says we aren't going to add that to the rules? There's actually a thread in the Shelter right now reviewing proposed changes. The objection is to the idea that we can't act until the rules are published.

[edit to add]
And I also share Packard's concern, which is part of the discussion. If we are to have an anti-racism rule, how stringently do we interpret the meaning of the word? Reasonable people may actually disagree on such points.

Speaking of the rules I don't actually see the no asshole clause in them. It might have been trimmed during a revision at some point because I recall seeing it in previous years.

If there is going to be a racism rule I'd prefer that it target hate speech only. A blanket racism rule leaves far to much open to interpretation.

Simple, you make sure it is explicitly defined. You then post a thread explaining at the time what it is intended to address. That the spirit of the rule is meant to address either (1) clear and persistent hate rhetoric, like Dinner's, or (2) repeated use of racist content to troll and cause outrage, like Ramen and Volpone's. Making a one off racial remark for an insincere joke with a smiley for instance is obviously not what the rule would be intended for.

What's more, the reason giving time is important is not just because it is the fairest way to operate, but because it allows you to warn members, clearly and explicitly, about their content before banning anyone and it at the same time affords you the benefit of illustrating to the membership what the rule is meant to get rid of. Dropping the banhammer as and when just robs offending members of a chance to comply.

No. That invites Enterprisering, and perhaps more importantly, it assumes WF is intended for the kinds of users that need to have a definition to learn by rote in order to understand why we don't like them lynching gorgeous ex-owners on a whim.

If you think that Ramen's post was a sincere wish to see Anna lynched and not an attempt to troll and shit stir then I think you can't see why I am talking about clearly defined rules. In fact, you just illustrate why they are needed because you can see right here that no everybody agrees with your interpretation.

Are you saying you'd leave? Oh, say it ain't so...

See, people like you never seem to get the Voltairian idea of disagreeing with what someone has to say while still defending their right to say it, thus, you think the presence of something on the board somehow signifies that we "condone" it.

Or we could go back to the way we used to do things, which was the old rep system. Seemed to work pretty well for the most part until some people started whining about it.

I also can't help but notice that you seem to have a real hard-on for getting Dinner banned now, and that makes pretty much any proposal you bring forward here suspect, IMO. Dinner is obviously a bigot, but nothing he posts here is something worth banning him over, and would smack of the same "because we don't like him" reasoning behind gturner's and Castle's bans. At least with Ramen it was pretty straight-forward, and as far as I know isn't permanent.

Of course not. That doesn't make it any more palatable.

No, I disagree. With gturner and Castle you had shitspamming and dumb posting. But with Dinner it is clear hate speech. It's goes further that than him simply being an annoying troll...and your "defend the right to say it post" doesn't fly because this is a private board, not a public domain. There is no "right" to say anything here in particular. This is why I have been so vocal about fair rules, because there are ultimately no final protections for members here. So I try to encourage the moderators to be as fair as possible. But that must be balance against the concerns of the owners. When hate speech of Dinner's kind is literally prosecutable in some of our countries, then surely the question of how much a private board owner should be willing to tolerate it or otherwise be associated with it must be asked. It's not just a free speech issue. It's about being seen to encourage through tolerance what in some countries is a criminal offence. Now you and other Americans (or non-Americans) can debate the validity of such laws all you like, but people like me are placed in a position where we cannot open WF at work or in public because of the content. Whether they like it or not, those practical considerations are out there and the owners have to balance them against the question of unlimited free speech. When it comes to this sort of thing it isn't just about "we don't like X poster".

We really must get away from this idea that WF is a public domain forum and carries some sort of legally protected, unqualified right to free speech. It doesn't. All considerations must be balanced.

Seriously? How?

No, but it illustrates that the more ambiguous a rule is, and the more interpretations arise out of situations, the more it is open to both question and abuse.

People are too impatient and too ready to rely on spinning vague rules to justify scattershot decisions. What I am talking about is bringing more structure and less room for argument.

The issue of persistent racism should be relatively clear cut, but there will always be those, just as Captain X has just done above, who will call it free speech and therefore tolerable pursuant to Red Room rules. Once there is a clearly defined rule, and one that is explained in terms of it's intended use, then those people can no longer bang on about lack of rule breaches.

In the UK it is a criminal offence to promote racial and religious hatred, including online, in the manner Dinner does.

A rough, but easy to read summary is here.

It's not unlike your approach to the use of a swastika.

I'm afraid we are just going to disagree on what I've bolded. There will always be arguments on what constitutes racism, just as there will always be disagreements on anything else considered profane. You can't codify it, much as we might wish it otherwise.

Permit is not the same as condone.

I wouldn't be a member if I thought the board condoned racism, but it doesn't. The membership is pretty united in condemning such behaviour, and every owner has been clear at their dislike of it, tolerating it when it's an amusing troll, but we've lines that, when crossed, will unit the majority of the board in condemning it.

Maybe we need a new response emoji, a little Hitler with "I'm a cunt", to adequately express dislike?

Thanks.

I disagree with such a law, just as I disagree with our laws against glorifying Nazism, as much as I abhor both Nazism and the kind of hate speech proscribed by your laws. Obviously, the owners have to know how to safeguard themselves and the board with regard to their own country's laws. But if we could avoid censoring debate in accordance with rules such as those in these bad laws, I would welcome that. At the same time, Ramen's thread was unacceptable no matter whether there is any law against it.

An explicit rule would never work, Twitter is learning this the hard way. You'd get Dinner banned, he's really not as smart as the trolls who'd skirt the rule, or use it to kick off a fuss.

The problem is words can never adequately cover the spirit of a rule, you're in an industry that thrives off that, and the trolls, in their own rather sad way, are in the business of doing similar for rather lesser ends.

It is not about agreeing with the law, as I said above. I don't actually agree with the law myself. It's about the practical impact of it. If someone like me, who has a diverse client base and lives in a diverse city, were to become associated with actions that are currently regarded as criminal offences then it might cause problems. So it makes my methods of accessing WF more restricted aqnd I have to be careful as and when I view the content, which is mostly out of hours or when I am working from home....and given my client and friendship bases I would have that concern even if it were not about what is and isn't legal. I don't see that a member should have to be concerned about how to access the website because another wants to go around posting racist hate speech.

I disagree. My industry may "thrive off of it" in terms of litigation. But more often then not the courts interpret the law correctly, and frequently analysis will be employed as to what Parliament intended at the time legislation was introduced and passed. The idea that quibbling over technicalities means the end result may not reflect the overall law is something of a myth.

I also don't agree with the Twitter comparison, where messages are limited and context is often difficult. My rule would be cleared defined as to stop persistent, repeated racism and hate speech, not one off remarks. When Dinner describes Muslims or refugees as animals in three hundred posts over a period of a year, I don't see how someone can then dispute that it is a case of persistent and repeatedly hate speech.

While I get where you're coming from, obviously German members -- well, I think it's only me now, as Cass is Austrian -- have had to deal with that for many, many years on WF. It's a question of weighing free speech against ease of use.

Censorship is censorship, regardless of who does it. That quote is all about the attitude and not about enforcing the First Amendment on this board. No one si at risk of getting fined or thrown in jail over violating someone's civil rights by banning them for saying something they don't like. When you say shit like "because it's a private board" you completely miss the point, which boils down to supporting free speech, which doesn't require a government mandate.

Gee, I sure which I could fart around on the internet at my work.

Which is also stupid and makes me glad that I live where I do, even with its faults.

As we've seen, that isn't what's under discussion in any case.

I did say "arguably." IMHO, it's hard to justify to a newcomer that we allow racist garbage because of our deep and abiding commitment to free speech while still banning porn. Unless we're allowing a Wild West/Anything Goes atmosphere in the Red Room, what we choose to allow and disallow does start to resemble a tacit form of approval, no matter how much we might claim to condemn it.