Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-1669199-20170416030900/@comment-1669199-20170416181334

Supermorff wrote: I think one reason the rule was defined so vaguely was partly so that people couldn't look for loopholes, like "Ah, you said I can't use this word but actually I've said this similar word and that's allowed", and partly to avoid giving people ideas. As soon as you tell people not to do something, they'll get it in their heads and want to do it. By keeping it vague, people feel they are transgressing the rule by using so-called "mild" profanity, and you can sort of let that slide. But by giving people a list of words that they can't say, you can bet some people will do their darndest to sort of say them without getting in trouble for it.

Perhaps rather than listing words, you could identify types of unwelcome language. For example, you could outright ban types such as: I can see your point on why the rule was likely, at least in part, defined so vaguely (and how persistent people can be in trying to find exploits in everything), but enforcing such a vague rule consistently across the board would require everyone to share the same basic interpretation on what sort of language should and shouldn't be expressed, an interpretation that isn't even written down in very much detail like in the Chat policy page, or simply not at all like on the main policy page. Like in my recent encounter with NotLessOrEqual, there's bound to be someone who would like full clarification on what is and isn't allowed, and would like to have it written down somewhere that they can easily look up and use for reference in case they ever feel the need to point out the specifics of the rule(s) to anyone for whatever reason, since in these instances they would prefer not to get in any trouble over accusations of violating the language policy. While it's true that we would need to think everything over carefully if we go with the more clear and defined route on rewriting the language policy, since we'd want to avoid inadvertently creating any loopholes that we don't want to be exploited, if we could find a way to make this work the way we want it to then I say that it'd likely be the best option for us in the long run, since everyone would have something that they can easily reference at any time if they ever feel that the rule is being violated in any way. Furthermore, if any incidents come up that make it difficult to determine right away whether or not certain kinds of language being used is in any way a violation of the language policy, we can always get together and determine whether or not the policy ultimately needs to be enforced in any way and make a note of the incident and use it as a precedent in case other incidents like it were to occur again in the future (one idea that comes to mind on how we can probably do this is by making a "Note(s):", or maybe a "policy amendments" section down at the very bottom of the policy page that lists the precedents set forth by any incidents that required the Admins/community to get together and determine whether or not the usage of certain words/phrases under specific contexts, if any exceptions are even allowed, have been either decided to either be allowed or forbidden from being used on the Wiki in any capacity we deemed fit. Or we can just make minor changes to the policy itself to incorporate the results of the precedent in some way if we can think of a way to make the changes brief but be clear and straight to the point.).
 * abusive profanity (directed at another person for the purposes of insult)
 * sexual profanity
 * slurs based on specific identities (racial, sexual, cultural, etc.)
 * profanity referencing specific religions or religious figures

The nice thing is that if we ever come across any problems with whatever we decide to change about the policy (if we do change anything at all by the end of this discussion) we can always either think of a solution to fix the problem while avoiding creating any other problems by accident, or if somehow we can't make this whole work the way we want it to we can always change the policy back to being more vague and being enforced at the Admins' discretion. However, if we do ultimately decide to keep things somewhat vague either now, or at a later date if we decide to revise the policy again, I admit that I like your suggestions on how we could go about clarifying the rule a little bit from how it's currently written, because even if it's not as specific as what I'm currently asking for I'd still consider an improvement over what we have right now.