Do staff overuse their DM fiat?

[Molten Heart]

.

[manipura]

Incidentally, "Sharp" can have some archaic connotations of swindler or cheat in English. I could buy that being the source of the word more than Elven physiology. It's also possible Sharp became attached to elves because Elves are about 1000% more common (virtually) than muls or dwarves. Or some combination of the two. (Also insulting either dwarves or muls is a kind of dumb idea.)

Well, except the fact that the helpfiles seem to imply that it comes from sharpear, not some other meaning.

[valeria]

Freedom of speech doesn't mean what you think it means.  -this lawyer I know

I'm not going to wander down that particular rabbithole in this thread.  I am going to ask that you pack up your antiSJW bag, because you're missing the point.  Your premise that 'necker' is the only word that is disallowed in the game is flawed.  Plenty of words are not allowed in the game:

AdamBlue specifically did not make a freedom of speech argument:

I do not deny that the creators of Armageddon have the right to censor words as they see fit within it, but I do think it is an incredibly foolish and reactionary measure that does not fully understand itself in it's meaning.

...so leading your post with a snarky aside insinuating that he probably doesn't understand what free speech means makes me suspect that you didn't read the rest of his post, or you were just a little too ready to produce a straw man once you read "freedom of speech."

My admittedly salty comment was referring to the paragraphs immediately before the one you quoted.

Also, anti-censorship and freedom of speech have nothing to do with the private sphere.

Also...listen...being anti-censorship in a private domain has absolutely nothing to do with being anti-SJW in general, except where the unreasonable aspects of each overlap...

Censorship is a government function. There is literally no such thing as private censorship.

... and it's a little condescending to libertarians, anarchists, et al. to imply that being against a particular implementation of censorship in a private domain that pertains to a RL term of racism entails being anti-SJW.  Maybe you're relying on a short-hand reference to the poster's prior history (I don't keep tabs on AdamBlue's post history, I admit) or something, but I'm not reading anything in particular in this thread that has anything to do with anti-SJWism.

Regardless of what you think it may have implied toward libertarians and anarchists, it was directed at this PARTICULAR person's statements. Ahem:

But when I heard that real world politics were leaking into a game about fucking cavemen elves, men, and dwarves, and that preceived IC racism was 'wah this word sounds too similar to another word', I was fucking shocked.
It may seem like a small thing, but the implications of it insist that even pretend racism against fucking elves using a word that is supposed to be in-characterly derogitory is not allowed because it sounds 'similar'?
You're seriously policing words?

***
Whoever thinks there's any link between 'necker' and 'n****r' (blocked to spare your compassionate eyes the strain of seeing an UGLY word that may hurt your fucking fee fees) is a god damn neanderthal subhuman, no matter your race, religion, creed, or culture, and should be fucking beaten over the head with hundreds of years of history and oppression that exists to give that word it's own offensive meaning.
Fuck.
Jesus christ.
God damn.
Stop bringing your politics into videogames, it's fucking stupid.

.
People have been involving 'personal politics' into things by getting rid of something that could remotely offend anyone because they live in an incredibly sterile environment. They're so focused on living in their own bubble and hitting anyone who has a different opinion as their own with labels, in an attempt to ostracize them from society for having a different mindset

That last statement in particular is like straight out of the antiSJW talking point handbook.

Clearly, he makes a strong anti-censorship point that touches on particular types of censorship, but to me it seems more like that's merely aforementioned overlap.

Clearly, I disagree, so I wouldn't say it's all that clear 

[valeria]

I think it's a two-part argumenet that Staff should be making.

1) "Necker" is a stupid insult because it makes little in-character sense for that trait to be used as its basis. At least 'that other word' can be etymologically traced back to a major identifying feature of its targets.
2) Because "Necker" is a nonsensical insult, it comes across as a forced attempt to get a close analogue to a real life pejorative word in to the game. This may well have had something to do with its popularity.

(I acknowledge that a lot of you didn't seem to realize any relationship, to which I can only assume I live a life cloaked more in hatred and malice as I picked up on the analogue almost immediately. Far quicker than I figured out what a Breed was.)

This post is why I'm pretty sure you're correct that was part of the actual rationale.

[Synthesis]

There's no such thing as private censorship?

Okay, then.

https://www.google.com/#q=censorship+in+the+private+sector

From your own profession:  https://www.americanbar.org/publications/insights_on_law_andsociety/15/winter-2015/chill-around-the-water-cooler.html

"In most circumstances, however, the average employee's speech poses little risk of harm to the employer. The harm to the employee created by an employer's ability to punish speech, by contrast, is significant. Particularly in times of economic insecurity, the threat of speech-related termination creates a powerful economic pressure for self-censorship. In the aggregate, this self-censorship compromises the free exchange of ideas necessary for a func­tional and inclusive democracy."

The idea that censorship is strictly a government function relies on a very particular strictly-legalastic definition that nobody here is using.  (And yes, I'm aware that almost the entire article explains how there is no -right- to free speech in the private sector.  The issue is not whether we have a strictly legal right to free speech in game or on the GDB [we don't], but whether perfectly legal restrictions are in fact a good idea or not.)

[Delirium]

[TheGoose]

Oh shit, this still a thing?

Hey, black guy here. I don't care. Use the word 'necker.' I probably will.

[Synthesis]

I think it's a two-part argumenet that Staff should be making.

1) "Necker" is a stupid insult because it makes little in-character sense for that trait to be used as its basis. At least 'that other word' can be etymologically traced back to a major identifying feature of its targets.
2) Because "Necker" is a nonsensical insult, it comes across as a forced attempt to get a close analogue to a real life pejorative word in to the game. This may well have had something to do with its popularity.

(I acknowledge that a lot of you didn't seem to realize any relationship, to which I can only assume I live a life cloaked more in hatred and malice as I picked up on the analogue almost immediately. Far quicker than I figured out what a Breed was.)

This post is why I'm pretty sure you're correct that was part of the actual rationale.

Longneck is clearly etymologically related to necker, and longneck has been in use on the GDB since at least 2003.  It is still in the help files.

Necker has been in use since at least 2004.

(I don't think the search function goes back into the great beyond that was before the current iteration of the GDB, which happened in what...2002?)

So...the idea that there's some sort of new cabal of secret RL racists trying to force in-game language for top keks isn't convincing at all, in the absence of other evidence.  I've used longneck and necker as derogatories for elves for as long as I can remember, and in 19 years, literally nobody has said anything about it until now.

[BadSkeelz]

I don't think there's some secret cabal of racists either. I think Staff perception is that necker has always been an allusion to that other word* for at least part of the playerbase. Don't know why it became an issue now, but it probably involved someone complaining.

The fact that anyone thought "longneck" was a good insult continues to baffle me.

[Molten Heart]

.

[WarriorPoet]

I am baffled as to why anyone gives a shit. Staff dedicating the time and energy to make this a rule seems assinine. Players debating it for weeks seems equally ridiculous.

Moving on.

[valeria]

That's a completely different context (and is pretty ironic because it's talking about workplace policies that prohibit people from participating in the political process).  Just because it has become in vogue to misuse phrases "freedom of speech" and "censorship" wrong doesn't mean that they don't have very specific meanings.  Censorship, in the sense of don't censor my freedom of speech bro, is a strictly governmental thing.  I can't censor you, I can tell you to take your shitty speech off my lawn.  The article recognizes that your employer can't censor you.  Staff isn't censoring you when they say 'necker' is no longer an accepted slur, they're saying the pros of removing it from the game world outweigh the cons.

What people really mean when they are broflaking about other people "censoring" them or having to engage in "self-censorship" is that they want to be free to hurt other people without consequences and furthermore how dare you make them think about how something they have probably done unintentionally might hurt other people.  People might think they're a bad dood.

Nobody's saying there are a bunch of intentional racists here.  But if you've literally never thought about thing X before, it happens to not affect you, so welcome to being privileged enough not to have to worry about thing X.  That you're not hurt by thing X doesn't make you morally superior.  It just means that it doesn't affect you.

Things are changed and removed from the game all the time.  Some words already aren't allowed and other words probably won't be allowed in the future.  Switching to one of the existing other slurs for elves might take exactly one second.  And it also might make the game world more welcoming to some players.  So... why do people care about it so much again?

Oh right.  That good ol' slippery slope of censorship, where you might have to actually think about the consequences to other people of the things you do without thinking about them.   

[Yam]

You could draw the line at necker with the argument that the word itself makes little sense as an insult. I find it questionable that the trait I would want to use as an insult towards elves would be their necks, however long they supposedly are.

I would be totally onboard with calling them Peggers except I wonder if clothes pins actually exist in Zalathans. Leggers would make the most sense to me as a replacement.

If staff had come out and said "Necker is now banned because not all elves are going to have that particular trait (longnecks)" then your argument of the line being drawn there makes some sense.  However "it doesn't make sense" wasn't the reason given, the reason given was "it comes with negative real world connotations."

So...why is the line drawn at necker and not all words that have negative real world connotations?  That's my issue, if you're going to start policing one negative word for whatever reason, then you really should be policing all the words that fall under the same reason.

Edit: I always thought sharp was sort of stupid.  If sharp is a variation of 'sharpear', which I believe it is, why are dwarves and muls not called sharps?  They both have pointed ears.

I think it's a two-part argumenet that Staff should be making.

1) "Necker" is a stupid insult because it makes little in-character sense for that trait to be used as its basis. At least 'that other word' can be etymologically traced back to a major identifying feature of its targets.
2) Because "Necker" is a nonsensical insult, it comes across as a forced attempt to get a close analogue to a real life pejorative word in to the game. This may well have had something to do with its popularity.

(I acknowledge that a lot of you didn't seem to realize any relationship, to which I can only assume I live a life cloaked more in hatred and malice as I picked up on the analogue almost immediately. Far quicker than I figured out what a Breed was.)

Incidentally, "Sharp" can have some archaic connotations of swindler or cheat in English. I could buy that being the source of the word more than Elven physiology. It's also possible Sharp became attached to elves because Elves are about 1000% more common (virtually) than muls or dwarves. Or some combination of the two. (Also insulting either dwarves or muls is a kind of dumb idea.)

Agreed with this. Necker has a pretty suspect etymology and wasn't a very good Zalanthan slur in the first place. I'm fine with it being redacted just so that I wont have to run into another generic_rinthi_elf punctuating every sentence with necka like they just got off binge watching the Wire.

I think we can just draw the line there though.

[Refugee]

Whoever was using Necker that way should've been stomped on hard and taught how to play the game right.  Maybe they were, I dunno.

That's what I think should've happened and nothing else.  But now we have a whole new idea.  That what we say in game, in roleplay, means something in RL.  It means something about us, it means something to someone else.

I'm not very happy about that.  I'm not comfortable with it.  I can't remember now what I'm allowed to say to someone in game.  I was in a confrontational conversation with a woman, I couldn't remember if I was allowed to call her a bitch or not and I didn't have time to look it up.  I'm worried I'll say the wrong thing now.  It throws me off.  It knocks me out of immersion.

Bah.  I guess because I'm "privileged" I don't count.  But now something that was just RP has touched the real world, been touched by the real world, and it's tainted.  Maybe forever.

[Dar]

You could draw the line at necker with the argument that the word itself makes little sense as an insult. I find it questionable that the trait I would want to use as an insult towards elves would be their necks, however long they supposedly are.

I would be totally onboard with calling them Peggers except I wonder if clothes pins actually exist in Zalathans. Leggers would make the most sense to me as a replacement.

If staff had come out and said "Necker is now banned because not all elves are going to have that particular trait (longnecks)" then your argument of the line being drawn there makes some sense.  However "it doesn't make sense" wasn't the reason given, the reason given was "it comes with negative real world connotations."

So...why is the line drawn at necker and not all words that have negative real world connotations?  That's my issue, if you're going to start policing one negative word for whatever reason, then you really should be policing all the words that fall under the same reason.

Edit: I always thought sharp was sort of stupid.  If sharp is a variation of 'sharpear', which I believe it is, why are dwarves and muls not called sharps?  They both have pointed ears.

I think it's a two-part argumenet that Staff should be making.

1) "Necker" is a stupid insult because it makes little in-character sense for that trait to be used as its basis. At least 'that other word' can be etymologically traced back to a major identifying feature of its targets.
2) Because "Necker" is a nonsensical insult, it comes across as a forced attempt to get a close analogue to a real life pejorative word in to the game. This may well have had something to do with its popularity.

(I acknowledge that a lot of you didn't seem to realize any relationship, to which I can only assume I live a life cloaked more in hatred and malice as I picked up on the analogue almost immediately. Far quicker than I figured out what a Breed was.)

Incidentally, "Sharp" can have some archaic connotations of swindler or cheat in English. I could buy that being the source of the word more than Elven physiology. It's also possible Sharp became attached to elves because Elves are about 1000% more common (virtually) than muls or dwarves. Or some combination of the two. (Also insulting either dwarves or muls is a kind of dumb idea.)

Agreed with this. Necker has a pretty suspect etymology and wasn't a very good Zalanthan slur in the first place. I'm fine with it being redacted just so that I wont have to run into another generic_rinthi_elf punctuating every sentence with necka like they just got off binge watching the Wire.

I think we can just draw the line there though.

Yam. Does that truly happen?

This whole thread and the general concept is ridiculous. I've used long necks since the very first day of playing Arm. I believe 'sharp-ear/knife-ear/sharp' came much later then longneck and necker. But I'm not a native English speaker. Nor do I live in USA. I fail to see how not giving a shit about American History and it's heritage makes be privileged, or special. I dont need to be aware of any Political correctness rules that Americans invented, to be respectful to another human being.

While I dont really care. But I truly feel my immersion broken by having the word 'necker' removed from available names. I never even considered necker an actual insult if addressed to an elf. It's like calling gypsies a gyppo, or telling someone they've got gypped. It's also very racist, but ... we've got gypsies that tend to be thieves and swindlers by the very theme! (Used to, before we blew them up).

Removal of the word 'necker' IS bringing personal politics into the game. It simply is. Now am I really miffed about this to be outraged? Not really. I find it hilarious and a little weird. But I tend to find most people hilarious and a little weird anyway.  I agree that there is a strata of people in American society that can see a similarity of Necker to some other word (I never EVER did until this issue first came up) and their heritage was indeed deeply wounded by this word and it's connotations. If even a single individual of that strata is offended by this word, then by all means we should stop using it. Whether it's jarring, or not. Whether it makes sense, or not. Whether it breaks immersion down, or not. The idea that a real life human is somehow injured in real life due to some simple singular word in a game is unpleasant to me. But if the people who are being offended by this, never have been really injured by that word at all, and are doing this on an upswing of some personal political belief ...  well, fine. But dont say you're not bringing personal politics into a roleplaying game, because you 'are'.

[gotdamnmiracle]

How many elves have you met with exceptionally long necks? It just doesn't make sense and frankly it's not a big deal we can no longer use the word Necker in the game. As Adhira said, it's also the only word you cannot use. Everything else is still fair game. Enjoy.

Is it cool to call them Leggers? They DO have long legs, right?

[Jihelu]

How many elves have you met with exceptionally long necks? It just doesn't make sense and frankly it's not a big deal we can no longer use the word Necker in the game. As Adhira said, it's also the only word you cannot use. Everything else is still fair game. Enjoy.

Is it cool to call them Leggers? The DO have long legs, right?

Nope it's racist and you're a bad player for suggesting such /s

[gotdamnmiracle]

How many elves have you met with exceptionally long necks? It just doesn't make sense and frankly it's not a big deal we can no longer use the word Necker in the game. As Adhira said, it's also the only word you cannot use. Everything else is still fair game. Enjoy.

Is it cool to call them Leggers? The DO have long legs, right?

Nope it's racist and you're a bad player for suggesting such /s

Fuck. You know, we won't have to deal with this when Tektolnes builds the wall and makes the elves pay for it.

Man, oh man. Just like when the public school system tried to turn the word retard into a bad word I can't wait to see what comes in to replace Necker. A lot of smart people play this game. I hope whatever it is puts a tear to my eye and makes my heart hurt.

[James de Monet]

Wikipedia disagrees that individuals can't engage in censorship.  But, for the sake of common language, how about we call it censureship (i.e. Official disapproval, not authoritative behavioral modification)?

The word "necker" doesn't bother me, but I'm not broken up about the loss of it.  I am likewise wary of changes that affect everyone to please the few, but in this case, I think A) the few are not being unreasonable in their request.  The words ARE similar.  The detriment of the word being used IC could be great to those few, and the loss of it does nothing more than inconvenience a few people who like to use it.  B) Removing this word from the game does nothing to change the actual game or its themes.  People could object to the violent themes in the game for a variety of totally reasonable reasons, but taking those out the game isn't really possible without changing the game itself.  But the game doesn't revolve around the word "necker".  It revolves around strife, both interpersonal, environmental, and internal.  None of that has changed.  C) I think we can do better in terms of insults.  We could use all this latent intelligence to generate some. I've proposed a few.

I think it's hard to separate the unfortunate way this discussion began from how it has progressed, but I imagine the outcome is not necessarily a product of the path.  I censored a few of my own ideas in that list, not for comparability to real life prejudice, but because they were...visceral.  A little too vivid for my taste.  You want the person on the receiving end of the epithet to be able to shake their head and grin at the end of the day, after all.

[Armaddict]

That's a completely different context (and is pretty ironic because it's talking about workplace policies that prohibit people from participating in the political process).  Just because it has become in vogue to misuse phrases "freedom of speech" and "censorship" wrong doesn't mean that they don't have very specific meanings.  Censorship, in the sense of don't censor my freedom of speech bro, is a strictly governmental thing.  I can't censor you, I can tell you to take your shitty speech off my lawn.  The article recognizes that your employer can't censor you.  Staff isn't censoring you when they say 'necker' is no longer an accepted slur, they're saying the pros of removing it from the game world outweigh the cons.

What people really mean when they are broflaking about other people "censoring" them or having to engage in "self-censorship" is that they want to be free to hurt other people without consequences and furthermore how dare you make them think about how something they have probably done unintentionally might hurt other people.  People might think they're a bad dood.

Nobody's saying there are a bunch of intentional racists here.  But if you've literally never thought about thing X before, it happens to not affect you, so welcome to being privileged enough not to have to worry about thing X.  That you're not hurt by thing X doesn't make you morally superior.  It just means that it doesn't affect you.

This is pretty much a fine example of what has been discussed, which is bringing real world politics into the fantasy game waving a banner of how harsh of injustice people who used this word in game were causing.  It's entirely tangential and relative, and forcefully inserted into a place where it doesn't exist, with plenty of gross mischaracterization of the opposing argument, to boot.  The difference is that the opposing argument is responding to an outright explanation of why, where you seem to be asserting that this is the only way someone could possibly be saying that censoring words for little to no game benefit is bad.

I'm curious to see how many players, long-term and short-term, have left because in-game language hits too close to home.  I'm also curious whether the response to that has ever been anything other than 'It's just a game, and if its contents are hitting you personally it may not be the best fit for you.'  Then lets compare that to how many players, long-term and short-term, have left because of feeling that situations were handled poorly when it comes to management of the game or its direction.  I think one warrants a lot more caution than the other, because you're addressing a very liberal, as a whole, group of players, who as you noted, are not racist; hence the attachment of real life racism to their role-playing habits and vision of the game and how it should be addressed is not only a stretch, but it's also kind of an 'injustice' of your own.

Things are changed and removed from the game all the time.  Some words already aren't allowed and other words probably won't be allowed in the future.  Switching to one of the existing other slurs for elves might take exactly one second.  And it also might make the game world more welcoming to some players.  So... why do people care about it so much again?

That's been outlined for the entirety of multiple threads.  Read them.

For emphasis:

Oh right.  That good ol' slippery slope of censorship, where you might have to actually think about the consequences to other people of the things you do without thinking about them.   

If behaving in the exact way that the game outlines in ways that have been in common practice for over a decade is something that we just now have to stop and give pause about and feel obligated to say 'Oh wait, some people said that hurts their RL sensibilities'...then I don't think you have a malicious growth in the playerbase filled with people who just don't care about other players.  I think you have some players who are taking some things in RL so seriously that it's now filtered into a game, where fantasy insults about a fantasy race in a fantasy world are suddenly abhorrent despite being in keeping with the themes that drew people into that game in the first place.  Not because they're racist, but because that world makes excellent stories.  And sometimes in those stories, people lose characters, or get ostracized from a place where they were really happy to play, or have their plans utterly smacked down.  None of those feel good.  There are feel goods and feel bads all over in this game, both for characters and players, and -that- is non-discriminatory.  Just because a feel-bad triggers someone on the social justice front doesn't warrant immediate and decisive action, because this place has nothing to do with real life social justice.

The word "necker" doesn't bother me, but I'm not broken up about the loss of it.  I am likewise wary of changes that affect everyone to please the few, but in this case, I think A) the few are not being unreasonable in their request.  The words ARE similar.  The detriment of the word being used IC could be great to those few, and the loss of it does nothing more than inconvenience a few people who like to use it.  B) Removing this word from the game does nothing to change the actual game or its themes.  People could object to the violent themes in the game for a variety of totally reasonable reasons, but taking those out the game isn't really possible without changing the game itself.  But the game doesn't revolve around the word "necker".  It revolves around strife, both interpersonal, environmental, and internal.  None of that has changed.  C) I think we can do better in terms of insults.  We could use all this latent intelligence to generate some. I've proposed a few.

While this is true, it's also sidestepping the main reason people are against it; no one (or very few) are claiming that 'necker' is integral to the game.  But they are objecting to heavy handed policies based around controlling roleplay on fronts that are next-to-worthless to control.  The same as 'Mister' and 'Miss', removing 'Necker' from a vocabulary does nothing but move further into creation of a roleplaying game where OOC sensibilities control the IC world.  It doesn't remove the fact that you're going to get insulted.  It doesn't remove that people are going to say mean things.  It doesn't remove that people are going to use the next 'slang' word with the exact same context and usage.  And you'll be stuck, fighting this pointless little war against what words are and aren't appropriate in a fantasy setting...even if they evolved within that setting over time in the first place.

I'd rather staff involvement come in the form of consistent facilitation of roleplay rather than the constant regulation of it.  Regulation will push people away, and facilitation will bring people in.  We don't need an approval board.  We don't need all-seeing-all-watching eyes on players, making sure they conform to everyone's feel goods and never slip up and say something like 'goddamn' in game, breaking random person's immersion.  We don't need pointless rules that form divisions for no real game benefit. -That- is why I agree that this is silly, but from the other side of the debate.

[ghanima]

I agree with pretty much everything Armaddict stated above. Too many policies doesn't help anyone. And constantly bending over backwards to be accommodating of minorities is actually condescending to the minorities you purport to be defending in the first place. I see this kind of virtue signalling from Americans a lot. There's like this obsessive need to crap on your own whiteness in order to show that you're a sympathetic ally or something. But the real irony to this is that most minorities could give a shit about any of that. The ban on the word necker literally helps no one. Not a single possible individual, no matter their genetic make up. I could be white saying this, I could be black saying this, I could be Asian, or whatever else, and the point still stands.

FYI I still see Miss and Mister used sometimes. Doesn't bother me in the least. Neither does/did necker. There are words in the English language which sound a million times more like what necker supposedly sounds like (even though that similarity is so off base it's like saying the words white and whale sound alike). I wonder how long before the words which truly sound similar are banned too. Whatever the case, there will be no backtracking on this particular policy. It's here to stay, sadly. That's just human nature and human pride at play right there. But I wonder if in the distant future players in support of this ban will look back on their lives and say "Okay, yeah I guess I was being a bit overly dramatic back then." Time has a way of allowing for better self-reflection.

[Vox]

So, here's my unsolicited two 'sid:
This rather uncreative slang for longneck caught on years ago and became habitual. (Personally I use skinny and sharp, or just say longneck, but more so because I found 'necker' to be boring and awkward as a term.) A small group of players began using the slang with the exact same connotation, intention and phrasing as the real-life racist term it phonetically resembles. There's no question that using it like that has no place in the game world, BUT the majority of players were certainly NOT using it like that. It was just habitual and a 'low-hanging fruit' derogatory slang for elves.

I think the current issue at hand comes from individuals who feel unjustly accused of an rl racist intention because their use of the word was simply habitual and the subtle accusation that if you didn't even realize the racist connection there is something wrong with you. So this discussion goes around in circles and becomes conceptual rather than practical. Are we being censored? No, we're being 'guided', just like the rest of the documentation attempts to do. The delivery of this guidance may have lacked a gentle hand but the necessity of it and the right of the Staff to implement it really aren't arguable.

Let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt, staff and players alike: those that used the word regularly didn't have a racist rl intention and the staff who want it removed do not intend to blindly censor the game world. Let's just not say it anymore and move the fuck on.

[nessalin]

Split & moderated the thread.  One topic per thread.

I get it that that things don't always turn out as we'd like - sometimes there's no purely 'good' solution on our side of things, either, and we have to go with least harm.  It's no excuse to derail other threads.

[Rogerthat]

I don't want people using -Roundear- in game anymore. I'm round-earred in rl and this offends me. 

[Melkor]

Split & moderated the thread.  One topic per thread.

I get it that that things don't always turn out as we'd like - sometimes there's no purely 'good' solution on our side of things, either, and we have to go with least harm.  It's no excuse to derail other threads.

Considering the thread is about staff's actions, I maintain that it was on-topic. In fact, i would wager that if i were to post that again in its own thread, it would be moderated as well. Even if this thread is only about profanity IG, the first part of my post was regarding the word bitch. It doesn't seem to be off topic, merely inconvenient. Seems like more dishonesty, to me.