Hate speech rule

Quote:

3. You are prohibited from transmitting through the forums and services any hateful or racially, sexually or ethnically objectionable material. This includes (but is not limited to) Holocaust Denial. As a guide: You should not attack groups or individuals on the basis of prejudices or stereotypes but only on the basis of their demonstrated actions or beliefs.

In light of recent events and earlier comments made by a member who has just been shipped off to Perma, Banistan should there be a need to elaborate on what constitutes hate speech? For example, more details on what is meant by "sexually objectionable" and possibly expanding the definition in the rule to include misogyny and homophobia?

While the recent offense was related to Holocaust denial, I am of course referring to the aforementioned user's comments on homosexuals and women -- of which we have both on this site, including women who are homosexual or bisexual, so not only was it hate speech, but also personal attacks against our members -- which were what led to his first infraction. If perhaps we expand the meaning of what constitutes hate speech, we can keep despicable bigots like this fake progressive from even joining our site in the first place.

The rule is good as it is, in my opinion, but these are just some suggestions on how to make it clearer. I obviously wouldn't be hurt if they were not implemented.

Edit: Er, never mind about the whole thing regarding pre-filtering and all that. Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. That would be pretty impractical and difficult.

I would still like to ask re: expanding hate speech rule, in order to cement this precedent so as to expedite the disciplinary process in the future, and further clarify that we will not tolerate this sort of behavior on our site.

I don't know how we can prevent such members from joining in the first place. Until they open their mouths and confirm that they hold these views, we're compelled by general principles to welcome them as members in good standing. I'm not really sure how we could pre-filter them.

However, I do agree that we should probably spell out the letter of the law and expand "hate speech" to specifically include comments of a racist, sexist, and homophobic nature, as well as personally motivated attacks/slurs/insinuations, attacks against a person's religious creed, etc. Holocaust Denial should be kept as a specific example of "hate speech" that cuts across several of the above categories, and is especially heinous and offensive because of its continuing relevance in the present century.