no no, i still think it's good to bring an open topic to the forum for people to express themselves towards it. like i said... there's no such as stupid questions.
I knew what you had meant, but some others were not so clear. This thread has been a helpful exercise so far to get BCers to put forth some ideas: whether the uses of certain offensive words should be banned in BC forum discussions. It will be up to mods to decide if they want to do that or not. In my opinion, mods at least need to take a stand on (1) what words constitute insults and should not be used and (2) BCers using them face the risk to be banned from the forum. The many great principles of this forum were laid down by mods or someone before me joining, one of which is 'No insults and personal attacks based on race, nationality, gender, etc.' In the past, 'fights' broke out and BCers got banned for insulting others. It seems to me logical at least to let BCers know what are the insults and to prevent the use of offensive and derogatory words and racial slurs in the first place. An analogy here: a traffic judge holding a law book tells the defendant that he's guilty of making illegal turn, but in the book, the law was never spelled out on what constitutes illegal turns. If the law is not clear, how do you expect (1) BCers to follow the rules and know right from wrong? and (2) to enforce it? Then BCers will go on 'fighting' for what each of them believes until mods step in to stop the 'fight' each time. Again the discussion here has been great, but ultimately it's mods' decision what they want for the forum since they are the ones who have to do the moderating and decide: (1) whether there have been insults made and (2) who had been insulting whom so as to ban the violator(s) if necessary.
I totally agree with you on your view. Let's see what mods will say and whether they are going to take a clear and unified stand on using offensive words, like "Chinaman", 'Evil', and 'pest' in calling baddy person(s) in the forum so to prevent future fights and insults to be made
I don't think Words are going to be officially banned (as in a rule). The rules of the forum have been stated generally in this thread and a number of other sticky threads in the general forum. Threads are read by mods, and if they deem them offensive, they will be deleted and (sometimes) the poster warned or informed. If you are unhappy about someones thread or post which has remoained undeleted then you can use the "report this post" function just below the posters' name in a red triangle with an exclamation mark. When you report this post it gets sent to all the mods, emailm at which point action may (or may not) be taken. I Agree with ctjcad that this thread has pretty much run its course now, and there will never be a total solution to this problem, but greater awareness should enable people to be more tolerant of posts, and soften (better eradicate) the potentially offensive remarks in their own posts.
I have no problem with what you stated. Thanks for reminding us the function for "report this post". I thought something else was there before, maybe that third button was removed.
I'm not sure if you're trying to reach a consensus, or just collecting opinions, Birdwood, as you're debating with some, and agreable to others. Specific-word lists to label something as offensive is too broad, and suggests the mods are not discerning enough, or able enough, for your taste, to judge posts in context. One word do not an insult make. "Ha-ha, you're such a chinaman. Let's have satay next we meet." "Shut up, la, you chinaman." Are both are insults, since the "master list" condemn "chinaman?" -dave
