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Comments on Codidact's policy regarding posts, user names and profiles with political content
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Codidact's policy regarding posts, user names and profiles with political content
Does Codidact have any policy against using political content in posts, user names or user profiles?
I'm not talking about questions about political content, which should obviously be fine given that it's on-topic at the site where it's posted.
But I'm rather referring to the promotional kind, such as speaking for or against a certain candidate or party, or naming your user after a well-known politician, or posting political propaganda in your user profile.
This has been something of a hot potato Someplace Else, so it will eventually pop up here too. Some examples:
- There was an example of the CEO posting a long blong-like post on SO.meta propagating against Donald Trump.
- There are examples of users (and spammers) using their profile to express various political views, including criticism against dictatorships (possibly leading to a network ban of the site in that country).
- There is always the case where someone decides to pick a tasteless user name from some well-known dictator, past or present.
The current Code of Conduct and "be nice" doesn't seem very helpful here. Expressing political opinions isn't necessarily rude. Is there a policy for what user names or user profiles can contain and does it cover situations like these?
User names are less personal space than your profile description, and more in-your-face to other users. User names shou …
3y ago
Caveat: This is from my personal perspective and should not be taken as the official Codidact stance on this. You …
3y ago
Regarding politics in user profiles: I think the contents of the user profile should be relevant: that is, describe w …
3y ago
Users should be able to say what they want in their profile. I think of that as personal space. About the only thing t …
3y ago
Important note: this is my personal perspective, but it is the basis for my moderation activity on Software Codidact …
3y ago
I agree with everyone else here. Moreover, I would advocate for a rather "powerful" moderation of this site (powerf …
3y ago
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User names are less personal space than your profile description, and more in-your-face to other users. User names should therefore be more restricted than your personal profile description.
User names have a purpose, which is to be a short handle to identify you across Codidact. They are not there for you to make personal, political, religious, or other statements with. Using the name of a well known historical figure should not be allowed (unless it's really your name too), because this comes with inevitable political baggage.
A name that mocks another user's name should not be allowed.
User names that appear to be chosen only to make it difficult for others should also not be allowed. Examples might be all blanks, a bunch of blanks followed by a dot, special characters that cause the browser to display weird stuff, etc. Those are all you trying to be "special" somehow at the expense of everyone else here. That's not what user names are for.
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