And yes, I know you'd like me to "contact the moderators if I have a concern." I have not utterly ignored that advice because I can't read and didn't see it any of the few dozen times it has been offered. This thread is an expression of sadness to a community I have long been part of, not a sign of any irrational hope that the powers that be give a flip.

Lol this forum is censored now?

What happened to it being a wretched hive of scum and villany?

I have to say I also am concerned. Yellowjacket's comments in threadID=1088864 were vulgar, crude and designed to provoke the proponents of that thread more than force these proponents to question their beliefs (there are more tactful ways to exploit the shock value of harsh words). But from what I understand of Hellenic Riot's comment in threadID=1249781, those posts were held to be inappropriate because they 'degraded religion', not for lack of tact. And indeed, thread=1249781, where Yellowjacket showed much more tact, has also been locked. Maybe I missed something, but right now I'm distressed and a bit frightened that our otherwise accepting community is meting punishment out for holding religion in disrepute.

semck83: You were doing so well! You looked like a reformed user until that last post.

It's not about censorship so much as it is about not abusing members. WebDiplomacy is (and I think probably diplomacy sites in general are) experiencing a strong growth period. Our forum is part of the front page of our site, seen by *every* single member. Right now, we have nearly 2000 members playing games. This is fantastic!

Remember that we are first and foremost a place where people come to have good, high quality games of Diplomacy.

In order to keep these new users (and to have the best, most varied games that we can) - and in order to have a happy membership, it's important for webDiplomacy to be a welcoming place. Having threads on the front page where members are abusing other members for religion (or whatever - it doesn't matter what the content is) does not move towards that goal. In this case, a member complained, the user was asked to tone it down, and instead, he took it to the forum. Having a discussion about censorship is all well and good, but I don't think it's censorship to be told "please keep your discussions respectful", nor do I think the posts in that thread were intended to start a respectful discussion about censorship.

The rules are available for everyone to read here: http://webdiplomacy.net/rules.php In particular, the common sense rule *literally* says please "use common sense and respect other players".

You mention that discussion can't be had without being allowed to say whatever you like - as an example, have a look at threadID=1249317. In this thread, Maniac says he's standing for a particular political party, and among the congratulations and good luck comments that Maniac receives, there follows some strong disagreement with the policies of the political party. Despite the disagreement, the discussion was generally respectful. It's clear that abusing members is not a requirement for lively and interesting forum discussion.

For the rules-lawyers amongst us - although I am a moderator, this isn't an official moderator response. For mod team responses on things like this, we typically have an internal debate first, but most of the mods are offline right now. This post represents my views as a member, not the views of the mod team.

We're all here to play Diplomacy. Surely we're able to be diplomatic - and respectful - on the forum.

Hey, I don't see why YJ's "Who to censor" thread was closed. He and others have said much worse things in the Bible Readings thread, including extremely offensive language and being extremely derogatory about Christianity. But that conduct was upheld by the mods while this much tamer complaint about Christianity--while still mildly offensive--caused his thread to be shut down. Oh, I'm glad a mod was watching and took note, but this was relatively minor and to my sensibilities not a censorable offense. I agree with Semck on the basic premise that this thread should not have been censored (but without his youthful sense of outrage). And yes, KC, YJ is eminently mutable.

@A_Tin_Can - it's interesting that you should hold my announcement thread up as being an example of how welcoming webDip can be. But is it? If you had a mental or psychiatric disability, would you be feel welcomed by a group of people that use ableist language like 'nuts' 'crazy' 'insane' in a thread started by someone called Maniac? Other threads are sprinkled with 'libtard', 'fucktard' 'idiot' 'stupid' 'daft' 'dumb' 'moron' 'moronic' etc.

Do we not care about the group of members who could be offended by such language?

Herein lies the problem with censorship, people can (and do) take offense at almost anything. If we set out to protect one group such as Christians from offense, then we must surely protect other groups and this will lead to no possibility of anyone being offended, but will also lead to a very sterile forum.

PS is there a way of changing my name - I chose it when I knew no better.

Maybe you could be "Brainiac." :-)

Religions have always (and imo unfairly) had an extra degree of protection from criticism than other things. I think it's silly, and irrational, because you can easily be equally/more offended for criticisms about other things. Whether it's your football team, ethical/political beliefs or anything. Still, this is a problem of general society, and I am not surprised that webdip is like the rest of society in this sense. Although I do think YJ's threat was more than legit, I think the 'censorship' was forseeable, and 'understandable' from the privileged position that religion generally holds.

I also consider there to be a distinct difference in having an anti-religion thread (fine IMO) that can be muted compared to going into a religion-based thread and posting all sorts of anti-religious rhetoric (not fine IMO). It's not that you can't disagree with people, but the Daily Bible Thread is not for discussing or arguing how terrible religion is. And I think it's an undue burden for people to have to mute entire users to self-moderate the interference and abuse in a thread they wish to contribute to, compared to muting a different thread.

IMO I think that we should simply mute anyone who disagrees with you, so that you never ever have to read anything that might upset you. Or even better hide behind the *rules* of the site to stop overt criticism and then snipe at other people's thoughts and opinions. That should solve the problem.

First, the forum is absolutely the right place to talk about censorship. But I'd broaden that to include the balance with being a welcoming and play-oriented community. We've been attracting tons of players, and we want them all to feel welcome. What we don't want is to have the frontpage filled with threads that are degrading to particular groups. So where's the balance?

Second, one closing does not a censorship make. The forum is not the best place to discuss one particular mod decision, as there is always more than meets the eye. Please email the mods if you have a concern with a particular decision.

Third, also in this case there is more than meets the eye. OP had been having a heated discussion with one member, he was asked to stop it, and then he took it to the forum.

Fourth, YJ neglected to post in the DEMAND JUSTICE HERE thread.

Or just not reading what's written by others. That works too.

There's currently no way to mute a user being belligerent or abusive in a thread without muting their entire existence in *every* thread AND their PMs.

Speaking of which, bye. Best stay on the sister site; this sort of philosophy I'm sure is upheld over at Vdip, with it's raging non-gameplay-oriented forum and more lax rule structure.

Sorry TMOW, that's what you get for being a Ninja! I was responding to kaner.

I saw you were about to post through the modcam in your house. :-)

Sarcasm Valis, sarcasm - and I have lurked here longer than you have been a member, and was actively playing here longer still.

So I find this conversation interesting. Let me explain the problem I have with what happened today. YellowJacket was asked by another admin to tone down his rape rhetoric in a thread and in pm's to other members.

To anyone who hasn't seen the various posts or pm's the problem is simple. Yellowjacket has not finished a game on this site since mid 2013. In that time he's been silenced 4+ times for things like disgusting pm threats against other members family. So when we received more complaints against him, borderline acceptable, someone decided to send him a pretty friendly pm warning asking him to tone it down, mainly to help him avoid going over the line again.

Surprise, surprise, someone here simply to troll ignored the warning he got and decided to try and turn it into a big forum drama instead. The problem here is that we're a diplomacy site, not a playground for forum trolls. We'll tolerate the forum trolls, especially when they actually play the game, but that does not give someone on a last warning a free pass to ignore the appeal process, or to continue to send abusive pm's to other members.

So to cover the OP, the problem is in this circumstance the member being censored has a history not of mocking, but of disgusting threats regarding rape. So from here on out he is not allowed to talk about rape anymore, at all in any form. If there is another issue with him concerning rape I will silence him indefinitely until he can convince an owner he will behave. If someone who hasn't sent those type of disgusting pm's and hasn't had a massive history of fucking with the mods had made that thread then sure, I could see where your outrage. Since on it's own the thread wasn't all that terrible.

Normally we wouldn't explain all this on the forum, but for some reason YellowJacket wanted a public appeal, so here it is. And apologies for the confusing reasoning mentioned for the thread lock.

Any further concern needs to be taken up with a site owner. This will be the last statement regarding this issue posted by the mods. Any other issues with censorship can be addressed at the mod email where we are always more then willing to discuss and address any member concerns.

Thanks,
WebDip Admin

Have we really gotten to the point where being asked to "tone down the rape talk" is taken as a personal affront to freedom of speech?

Just out of curiosity, if we get like 2-3 neonazis can they have a thread "Daily Mein Kampf reading"?

jmo,

Thank you for the post. I was indeed reacting largely to the reasons given by Hellenic Riot for muting YJ's thread -- namely that that thread was an attack on a group. As I said above, I find the idea that merely disagreeing (even very strongly) with the belief system of another member or group could be an attack on them a very bad and worrisome position.

In the event, however, that wasn't the reason, and so my third post (counting the thread start) was flatly wrong: had I emailed the mods, in this case, I would have received a correction and (presumably) explanation. Sorry for assuming otherwise.

@semck: i suspect having this coversation be public is actually more beneficial to the fourm and community-mods relationship.

FYI does the bible glorify rape?

Jmo, thank you for the explanation about YJ's pm's. I didn't pick up on that part of the story. It all makes much more sense now.

No. It exists in the Bible but it is not glorified.

And Orathaic, FYI means "for your information." I think you may have wanted BTW, which means "by the way."

Nope, i did think about that, and couldn't change it after posting, but when i thought about it i created a great rationalisation... You could interpret the information i was providing as the fact that i wonder this.

But yeah, can't edit my posts now. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Now when you say 'it does exist': that could mean a lot of things.

Rape does exist in modern society, but our law and order forces forbid it, and officially sanction it. (Even if some women are ridiculed for reporting rape)

Does the bible show rape in the same light as a violation of a persons body, and thus inherently wrong and sinful?

I think the main point is that even if it did modern christians would say that you cannot take bible word for word, just as they do in case of so many other parts

Maybe if the forum wasn't displayed on the "Home" section and istead was accessible through the "Forum" tab, there would be less worry about frightening new users away because of the forum. I think one of the mods said that we have over 2000 users or something to that extent- clearly only a fraction of them use the forum, and those who do probably wouldn't stop using it because it's only available through the forum tab. Maybe there could be an option to display the forum on the home page?