inquiry, on 2013-December-05, 21:22, said:
an offensive post noting the passing of Nelson Mandela was deleted. A similar occurrence will get the poster banned from this site.
Just to have the discussion:
I agree that the post was offensive. But to be clear, was the post deleted / action taken:
- because of the offensive language?
- because the RIP thread is somehow sacred?
- because most of the world reveres Mandela?
If the first, then I'd say that:
- the rules regarding language use should be made clear, and
- we should have a profanity filter.
If the third, then I completely disagree with disciplinary action. While the post wasn't productive, the water cooler should be a place where we can discuss current events. Maybe it didn't belong in the RIP thread (which means it was case (2)), but I don't think that expressing a sentiment about a world leader (even an unpopular sentiment) should in any way affect one's standing in this community.
If the second, then we should make it clear that the RIP thread is only for happy remembrances / positive thoughts / etc, and we can extract off-topic or offensive posts (with a warning). But I don't see why the poster wouldn't be allowed to start a water cooler thread about how much he hates Mandela, so long as he's not here (for example) espousing all sorts of racist views and inciting the community.
In any case, I obviously agree with deleting the post from the RIP thread, and I think it was in poor taste. I wondered even whether it was worth writing this note. But when it comes to discussions of banning, I couldn't really articulate his major offense in a way that wouldn't allow me to cite several posts committing the same offense. Posts in poor taste and/or with foul language and/or with little or no content fly all the time on this site. So I thought it was worth bringing up.
"I think maybe so and so was caught cheating but maybe I don't have the names right". Sure, and I think maybe your mother .... Oh yeah, that was someone else maybe. -- kenberg
"...we live off being battle-scarred veterans who manage to hate our opponents slightly more than we hate each other. -- Hamman, re: Wolff