Should We Ban Slurs?

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Should We Ban Slurs?

thedeadlymoose 08 Feb 2014 04:25

This is a spinoff of this thread. Please read the posts here notably those by Quik, Soulless, Sorts, and Tuomey (relaying from ghostchibi) so far.

The questions:

Should we ban, or further limit, the use of slurs?

If so, on the site, in chat, or both?

If so, which slurs should we ban, and where do we draw the line?

GENERAL CLARIFICATIONS:

Speaking personally I do not think it's tenable to ban all things considered slurs, because for instance common words like "stupid" and "crazy" are sometimes considered to be ableist slurs. That's not sustainable in this community so it's not what we're talking about. The least offensive word that's on the table is probably "retarded" (someone correct me if I'm wrong) and the rest would be stronger on the 'offensiveness scale' as understood by the general populace. IE we're talking about shit commonly assumed to be offensive.

We are also NOT talking about "dirty words" like "fuck" or whatnot. We are NOT talking about being politically correct either (banning slurs isn't PC, you have to go much much farther, and PC is often used as code for "shit only brown people and women and gays care about", rendering it meaningless and absurd). In case it has to be clarified.

Also "retarded" is the definition of gray area given how many older users use it (newer users tend not to), so addressing that specifically would be good. Same with "fag" given we came from 4chan.

I suspect it's also untenable to ban use of stuff like "retarded" in stories and whatnot. More generally speaking so long as the story isn't just a thinly veiled excuse to say the n-word or "faggot" over and over again I don't think we should ban it. I don't think anyone's suggested this, but it bears mentioning (and if you disagree, say so, and why, pls?).

NOTES FOR CHAT:

• Speaking as chat owner if we ban slurs in chat it's going to be based on consensus. And in the past consensus has been "no", so weigh the fuck in. Make arguments. I will go with my impression of consensus, but if we have to, we'll have a vote, as much as that usually turns into a clusterfuck.
  • Feel free to send me or any chatop a PM if you're a user not on O5. They will make sure I hear about it (right guys?)
  • If you PM me, do it on Wikidot because I can't sign into chat much while my laptop is broke. If you want your PM relayed in total, don't send it to me because I won't be able to easily copy/paste until, well, Monday or Wednesday earliest, and maybe not even then.
• Note that if we do ban slurs more extensively than we already do, for common internet phrases we won't insta-ban unless someone's intending to be an asshole about it, IE people must be asked to stop first. (This does not apply to, say, dropping the n-word in chat apropos of nothing, but we already ban for that.)

NOTES FOR CHATOPS:

• Please note that if you're an old-school chatop worried about retaining your ability to call people "retarded" or "sperg" or whatnot (okay "sperg" is mostly Echo but still), I am planning to disallow chatops from flaming (except in goofy harmless ways, see: Waxx regularly insulting all his friends), so you won't be able to do this so much anyway.

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So, Moose, why are you not just picking a side and enforcing it in chat?

Click to read.

I know there is precedent for doing this — Waxx did it a few years ago himself — but after a long, long, long period of thought, I do not feel right making a decision like this on behalf of the entire community.

Speaking personally, I have extremely strong feelings in both directions here.

I strongly oppose excessive censorship and policing of tone and words, and it's difficult for me to see any censorship as non-excessive. And I get really pissed at the specter of censorship.

I also strongly oppose the use of slurs; I feel most slur use is unconscionable and even when it's 'merely kinda shitty' (such as when people just say X more common word like "retarded" because they don't see why it's a big deal), I still feel it's a bad thing and won't allow it in most of the spaces I run here and elsewhere (notably #ethicscommitttee). I've been upset by slurs, including slurs about minority groups that I belong to, that the person saying didn't think were a problem, and the visceral feelings that those words can conjure up are very good ways to chase people out of a community even if they're not directed at anyone in particular.

But #site19 is different. It's the primary chat room and everyone has to use it if they wanna chat on IRC about the SCP Foundation. Someone's gonna be bothered by this, even alienated, no matter what decision is made, because people are being bothered and alienated right now (on both sides of the spectrum).

So I don't think I should make that decision for 19 by fiat, even if I am within my rights to do so. There are people on both sides of this question who I count as dear friends. To you, and to the rest of you who agree with my feelings on one side or another and feel it should be obvious that I should make a decision based on that side (and perhaps felt that I would), I can only apologize… and request that you make some good arguments.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

RJB_R 08 Feb 2014 04:36

2020 roget thinks 17 year old roget was dumb, of course slurs should be banned.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Last edited on 01 Mar 2020 04:39 by RJB_R Show more

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Pig_catapult 08 Feb 2014 05:02

I am absolutely 100% in favour of banning slurs.

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Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

SoullessSingularity 08 Feb 2014 05:41

Ok so gonna put another big wall here.

I agree that we should be intolerant towards slurs. However, I do not want this to be an immediate ban type of thing. I would instead they be called out by an op, preferably with a kick or so, to show that the person is being inappropriate in a given context in which a slur is used. If they wanna flip out about it, then can be banned for subsequent repeating of the slur in the most offensive way they can think of, because that's how people tend to react when told that they shouldn't be using the slur. However, if a given person is just confused, a given op (IF THEY HAVE THE TIME, IF THEY DON'T THAT'S FINE TOO) can explain to them what is wrong with their behavior. If a given op cannot spare the time, an op can tell the person looking it up on google.

What I mostly want to emphasize is that there is a difference between someone maliciously offending people after being told they are being offensive, and someone who is genuinely ignorant of their own behavior. Namely, only one of the two will actually improve the behavior. But if you make the slur bannable on sight, we won't get to know who would've just shapened up with a kick and some knowledge.

I also want, if an op wants to explain why shit is wrong, to be done in private or in site17 to avoid further site19 drama. Some people just won't get it, some people just won't want to get it, some people just want the excuse to be rude. A given op should be able to kick and then ban (or just let off with a warning) depending on how they view a person's subsequent reactions to indicate if they're the kind of asshole that wants to be offensive because it's funny to them or if they genuinely didn't think their shit was hurtful and, with the knowledge that it is in fact hurtful, stop.

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Living the dream, or dreaming the life?

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

AdminBright 08 Feb 2014 07:28

Seconding this…

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Admin, SCP Wiki

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Photosynthetic 08 Feb 2014 08:01

This. Education is as important as enforcement. We don't want to discipline people for innocent mistakes, not when an attention-grabbing kick and a quick lesson in tolerance can solve the problem to much more mutual satisfaction. That's one way to improve friendliness-to-group-B without trading away friendliness-to-group-A.

But continuing to dump out slurs after you've been asked to stop? Well, that's where we converge with Wheaton's Law and start pointedly polishing the banhammers.

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As for the more particular question of banning slurs… I'm actually going to argue that we shouldn't necessarily ban every conceivable instance of these specific words. If you're talking musical terminology or developmental animal biology, for example, the verb "retard" is both useful and arguably inoffensive. ("Exposure to X substance tends to retard Drosophila cell division.") Similarly, if you're discussing — say — censorship and inclusiveness, all manner of slurs can come up in conversation without much ill effect. ("Should we allow people to say 'fag' in Site19?")

In both of those cases, though, there's an important distinction to note: the words are not referring to a person. In the biology example, "retard" is a literal synonym for "slow down/hinder", not a reference to a developmentally-disabled person. In the Site19 example, "fag" is used to describe the word itself, not to invoke its meaning. If, instead, you're using "retard" as an insult or yelling "do it faggot"? Yeah, no. Those are references to classes of people, implicitly degrading the ones they refer to by using the comparison as an "obvious" insult. Those, I am all for banning.

(NB: I'm especially open to discussion on this one. If I find out, for instance, that actual autistic people are upset by use of "retard" even as evo-devo jargon, then I will find a better synonym. This inclusiveness thing doesn't work unless we listen to the people we're trying to include.)

There's room for discretion, of course. I think we can all usually tell the difference, for example, between a legitimate conversation on inclusiveness issues and a mere excuse to vomit slurs. Intent isn't magic — you can hurt people without meaning to — but it should definitely be the difference between a "carry on then", a kick plus possible explanation, and a warning or outright ban.

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SCP Wiki Administrator | Earth: We're all in this together.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2014 08:04 by Photosynthetic Show more

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Tuomey Tombstone 08 Feb 2014 12:37

I agree with Soul.
If someone fucks up or they're used to different rules, that's fine every once in a while.
But not repeatedly or constantly.
It's not that hard to not use slurs; you probably don't use them when talking to your mother or boss or teacher or whoever.
It builds a better environment if they're not allowed.
People can yell about censorship but they'll still be allowed in our fiction and so we lose nothing.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Dexanote 08 Feb 2014 09:56

Please note that if you're an old-school chatop worried about retaining your ability to call people "retarded" or "sperg" or whatnot (okay "sperg" is mostly Echo but still), I am planning to disallow chatops from flaming (except in goofy harmless ways, see: Waxx regularly insulting all his friends), so you won't be able to do this so much anyway.

I don't know what this means. As I make efforts to not publicly 'flame' people, I don't know what this actually applies to, or if it even applies to me, because I can be an ignorant and oblivious person.
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Now, regarding the actual point of this thread, my thoughts are simply put, and largely echo Photosynthetic's/Roget's/Soulless's:

If the words are being used as a weapon, we don't need to tolerate them.

I know I'm all for kicking someone who throws out a particularly ugly slur in the middle of conversation, and am more than happy to kick someone who slurs at someone. Then we explain what the issue is, and if they continue, we get remove them for however long seems appropriate. Make it sharp, make it blunt, make it frank, and move on. If they ignore us and continue, they cross over into asshole territory, and we have every right as OPs and decent people to remove them. This is unfortunately a case-by-case basis type of thing, but I'm alright with that. Our actions with these kinds of things don't need to be utterly consistent, nor do they need to be one-rule-clumsily-fits-all. Just effective.

I'm fine with keeping slurs in our fiction, so long as they make sense. I know several authors (possibly Clef and Mann included among them?) have included less than civilized language in their fiction. So long as it's appropriately placed (like in dialogue or whatever), and not unrealistically excessive, I have no issues with it. Again, a case-by-case basis type thing. I do know for a fact that people will downvote if the language is unnecessarily ugly, so we have that going for us to help out with drawing attention to problem cases.

Good god this is meandering. Apologies if this is particularly terrible to read, I tried to touch all points and edit out superfluous bullshit.

Last edited on 09 Feb 2014 05:39 by Dexanote Show more

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

thedeadlymoose 11 Feb 2014 01:15

I don't think I've ever seen you flame someone, Dex. I think yer good.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Dexanote 08 Feb 2014 09:59

From RANDOMINI in Site17

Randomini : http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-773630/should-we-ban-slurs
Randomini : I'd like to weigh in on this, just to say a small thing
Randomini : I'm 100% behind banning slurs in chat, no problems there, similarly on forums
Randomini : just want to say that I'm against having a no-slur rule in terms of the actual fiction submitted to the site
Randomini : I know that's not really the focus of the thread but I just wanted to put that out there
Randomini : considering the conversations that have been going on after the posting of "NSFW" and its resulting thread
Dexanote : May I add that to the page
Randomini : sure

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Eskobar 08 Feb 2014 14:09

As with the last thread or two on the topic, I still don't know what the fuck to do about the problem. A couple of points:

"We are also NOT talking about "dirty words" like "fuck" or whatnot."

Here's the thing. We seem to be taking the attitude that our intent is to make a safe space for X, Y, and Z groups, at least some of which we're doing for people who we've been told stay away from the wiki or from SCP-related spaces because they know we use this language (like the autistic friend of ghostchibi's). We are being told that our community is not considered safe or appropriate for people of these groups, some of whom we might want to include in our community for the benefit of the work they can do for us. Sure, fine, and great. I'm all aboard for getting good new writers.

But do we really think we've never scared off writers with the cussin'? Fundamentalist Christians? Any sect of any religion that supports moderation in language? Conservatives/Republicans in general? In the thread Moose linked, Yoric personally mentions being frequently offended by our language at times on religious grounds (before dismissing both the idea of banning curse words and banning slurs). We're already okay with allowing slurs in our fiction so long as it's logically placed and not being done for shock value, so we're not talking about restricting in-universe swearing. If we want to make the community more comfortable for groups by banning slurs that make them uncomfortable when they hear them being used, why are we drawing the line before banning other words that make (or potentially make) users uncomfortable when they hear them being used? I'm refraining from taking a stance on the banning-slurs thing because there aren't any slurs that actually offend me and so my position is pretty useless, but I would like clarification.

2. With ghostchibi's friend in mind, do we perhaps want to take a literal stock of what slurs specifically are bothering people? Again, I'm pretty much in all of the relevant in-groups on all of the topics. I am the fucking Privilegezilla in a Tokyo of minority groups.¹ You guys apparently have conversations with people all the time who are put-off, uncomfortable, and do not feel safe in the spaces we have direct control over, so you guys have at least some idea of what actual groups we're talking about. As it stands, it is literally impossible to consider everybody's feelings all the time. That would go reductio ad absurdum so quickly our heads would spin. We would be banning standard gender-based pronouns, the act of correcting people's spelling and grammar, and I don't know what other ridiculous (to us!) examples. If we're changing our programming rules, I'd like to have an idea of what groups we're programming for specifically.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm completely sympathetic here. These are good-faith requests for clarification.

Footnotes

1. guys i love metaphors okay

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Drewbear 08 Feb 2014 18:11

In reference to "dirty words" and religiosity, we already have at least one member like this. I remember his intro thread where he stated that he uses a content filter that ***'s out words that he's flagged as objectionable on the wiki, but that he had problems with chat because people were so inventive in their cussing/misspelling of cussing. Now, in this case he also said that he wasn't asking anyone to change their writing in their articles, but was asking that they try to refrain when speaking directly to him.

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Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Quikngruvn 08 Feb 2014 14:49

If you've read the other thread, you pretty much know my position here, and I'm pretty much seconding Soulless, Photo, and Dex. But to make it official here, let's answer the questions in order:

1. Yes, absolutely, though not totally.

2. The proposed limits on the use of slurs should apply to all official SCP chat channels, as well as the fora on the main site. But, it should not apply to articles, tales, or other literary works on the site. We're talking about communication between users, not from author to reader.

3. …there is no way to answer this that doesn't turn into a George Carlin routine. Interestingly¹, only two of Carlin's original seven words made it onto my list of "Words You Can't Say In Chat". So what's on that list? Pretty much every last racial or ethnic slur, slurs against women (with one possible exception), slurs against the LGBT community (fag and faggot included), at least two ableist slurs (retarded and sperging have to go, probably others), some religious slurs (including bible-thumper), and whatever other terms that (a member of) a marginalized community finds offensive (n.b. straight white guys are not a marginalized community²).

What aren't included are words that were once slurs, but that have been (a) embraced by the community the slur applied to and (b) have been allowed by that community to be used by the world at large as a neutral or positive term. I'm pretty sure queer falls in this category (correct me if my perception is wrong, please), as well as nerd. It's important to note, too, that there are several slurs (particularly some ethnic/racial slurs) that have been embraced by the community in question, but have not been granted free use to everyone else (such as the n-word³), that would still be included in the restricted list.

There are at least a couple others I'm not so sure about. First is bitch, which kind of falls in the "the world can use it" category but not really, mainly because of its use as a verb (to bitch about), so I'll wait to hear what women have to say. The other is lame, which I admit to using and thought was innocuous, but now I need to hear from the physically disabled what they think about calling something lame. And there are I'm sure plenty of other slurs and marginalized communities that I can't think of now that would also need to be considered (where consideration can simply be adding the slur to the restricted list).

[added:] Esk has a valid point, and I can't reconcile it any other way than to add cussing to the restricted list. Gotta ponder where that line will be, but now it looks like all seven of Carlin's words are on the list. And I'm not going to be upset about this— I think consciously raising the level of our discourse is an overall good thing.

Footnotes

1. To me, anyway.

2. This from a straight white guy, by the way.

3. No, I cannot bring myself to type it out, even as just an example.

Last edited on 08 Feb 2014 15:12 by Quikngruvn Show more

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

Wogglebug 08 Feb 2014 15:56

To my understanding, it is already against the rules to use the majority of words that would be considered slurs in reference to individuals, groups, or persons. 'Cause somebody being a racist/homophobic/whatever is just that person being a dick, and that's against the rules. The only real change in policy that I can see here is that it would allow/require staff and chat ops to further moderate language (not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly something to be cautious about), while opening the door to further such moderation. The way I see it, our current policy, both official and applied, already covers the use of such language, on account of if someone's calling someone else something derogatory, they're already breaking the rules. I say let the rules stand as they are, and if we want to be less lenient in the way we moderate things, that's fine. All I see that could come from this is a nice little symbolic gesture, that would have no real affect on chat or site moderation.

PS: The same goes for the use of slurs in tales and articles. If someone's being a dick, deal with it as such. As a group we're smart enough that we can moderate something without the need for ctrl+f for a list of terms.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

pxdnbluesoul 09 Feb 2014 05:11

I've gone back and forth on this argument and this:

To my understanding, it is already against the rules to use the majority of words that would be considered slurs in reference to individuals, groups, or persons. 'Cause somebody being a racist/homophobic/whatever is just that person being a dick, and that's against the rules.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts on it. I agree with Esko in that trying to offend literally nobody is probably a futile gesture, because humans are finicky creatures and everyone probably has something that sets them off. But you can determine when someone says something offensive intended to get a reaction, and it's done the same way you determine art versus porn: You know it when you see it.

Now, we have a new tool at our disposal for dealing with this, if Nala is going to be an op. Rather than potentially clog the chat users forum with one-off kicks, Nala can log/count the number of times a user has been booted for a given reason. Just something to consider.

Re: Should We Ban Slurs?

azzleflux 08 Feb 2014 19:21

First, I really think that it should not be an immediate bannable offense to use a slur. I also think these rules should only apply to user-to-user communiciation (i.e. chat and forum posts) rather than articles or tales. If someone, say, casually calls someone else a retard, I think they should be warned heavily and told not to do it again, and if it continues then we ban. I'm fairly against "retard," even if other people only consider it to be a minor slur, as well as "faggot" and all variations there of as, even if they are not being used to a offend a person of disability or LGBT, they still imply being a person of those groups is negative and helps to associate negative stigmas against them.

Second, I think it should be at least somewhat dependent on the context. For example, I think that we, as mature individuals, can pretty easily tell when "retard" is being used as a slur and being used as a word that means "to slow/hinder." If someone is clearly is using a word to insult someone else, then they should be warned and told in no unclear terms to not do it again. If, on the other hand, a word is being used in a more casual context (e.g. "God, some newbie cold posted a retarded article"), then that person should still be warned and told not to do it again, albeit possibly in a more lenient way.

Another problem is education. For example, I only recently learned that the word "gyp" is actually a term stemming from negative stereotypes of Romani people, and if I had known that I would have never used it. I feel like a lot of users might be the same way about various terms. Now, there might be some people trying to bullshit out of this (e.g. "I didn't know 'faggot' was offensive!"), but either way we need to work to educate and make the wiki/chat a more comfortable place, in my opinion.

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