Bone
November 14, 2017, 1:22am
18
John_Mace:
Would it have been acceptable, in that instance, to reply with:
“Which the Republicans aren’t?”
I’m thinking it would be, but I’m not at all sure I’m up on the latest consensus about that sort of thing.
x-ray_vision:
Shouldn’t it, though? If a poster said “Republicans are a basket of deplorables”, in a thread where others that labeled themselves as Republicans in that thread were posting, would that comment be a warnable offense? I recall instances where political groups that others were posting in were insulted, but no warnings given presumably because the insults weren’t specifically directed at individual posters.
Speaking generally for GD and Elections - I’m not personally a fan of group insults, however our approach in moderation has been that group insults are not typically moderated as a personal insult. This is very context dependent so it’s not something that can be applied across the board. In the past, I’ve described this as follows:
Group insults do [not] lend themselves to bright line rules. In discussions all across the Great Debates and Elections there are disparaging comments towards groups that it is clear from past posting history that some of our posters are members of. Insults towards Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians abound and while I personally am not a fan of sweeping generalizations, it’s not something that I’d prefer to moderate.
It is when the attack on a group is inseparable from an attack on a poster where a person can run afoul of the rules. This would be context dependent. …
On the other hand, we often have posts along the lines of ‘Democrats are thieves because they want to tax all our money away!’ , or ‘Republicans are racists who hate the poor!’ . Both of those are childish and add little to productive discussion, but probably not something I’d moderate for personal insults (withholding judgment for other potential violations). However, depending on the direction of the thread, if it’s clear that the intent is to disparage other posters by adding the veneer of the group insult, then that would be moderated. In general I’d avoid sweeping generalizations since they are often false.