beats me wrote:I will say this though. They are a bit hypersensitive about females from over the top misogyny to less offensive stereotyping.
Well beats me, I will say this - sexism is a bit of a sensitive topic, wouldn't you agree? Anywhere in general, but certainly so on a tech-related forum, which as we all know are sadly notoriously known to be boys' clubs. We'd certainly like to see that change, and stereotyping language does not help.
Regarding the ban on political and religious topics, Tom (sorry, I was meaning to respond earlier), let me just say - yes, it's users who start flamewars, not topics. Yet for some reason it's almost invariably politics- and religion-related topics where flamewars get started.
On the flipside of the coin, we aren't exactly scanning the forum for politics and religion day and night deleting threads left and right - we
are trying to be as lenient as possible.
The most important rule of all is still being nice and respectful to each other, and not offensive. Yes, we do reserve the right to lock or delete an imploding thread at moderator discretion, and the politics & religion ban will be the foundation for that, but if a thread manages to stick to that most important rule, it probably won't get trashed just because a politician's name pops up somewhere in there. On the other hand, it is certainly a bit unclear what a communism vs. capitalism thread might be doing on a music software and production forum.
Another question often asked is "where do politics and religion begin" / "where is the border line". And as I already mentioned in a different context, that's certainly difficult to define. If we started to discuss this question, we could be here forever. But I'll say this again, too - while borders might be hard or even impossible to pinpoint with mathematical precision,
what is clearly beyond the border is not.
So in conclusion, the ban remains in place - but I personally often feel like it's made to look like a bigger deal than it is, really. You really don't have to weigh every word you write here, let me assure you that's not the situation at all. If you read the rule carefully, it doesn't say everything will immediately be deleted or locked - it says it will at moderation discretion. In other words, it's up to us. And I hope you trust us to not be some sort of draconic Big Brother here.
