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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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Caveat: This is from my personal perspective and should not be taken as the official Codidact stance on this.
Your profile is your personal space: You get to decorate it how you like, more or less. If you want to put up posters of your favorite band, or your preferred political candidate... that reflects on you, for the most part, and not anyone else.
There are some things, though, that we shouldn't be hosting here on Codidact at all, even in someone's personal profile.
These include outright bigotry, personal attacks against other people / groups of people, and inappropriate content (nudity etc.).
What does this mean when it comes to declaring your political views? IMO, "vote for Joe McSmiley" should be fine, but "Candidate Furhead Brainrot is a mule head" isn't - it's a personal attack against someone.
However... when something is too close to the line, or deemed by mods / staff to be liable to stir up extensive debate, I think there are sufficient grounds for removing it. Codidact isn't required to host everything on our instance; if someone wants to host their own version of our sites with whatever content they want, they're welcome to (provided, of course, they make it clear they're not affiliated with the Codidact Foundation).
As a general rule, though, you should be allowed to put any non-offensive statement you want in your own profile.
Usernames and avatars are held to a slightly higher standard than profiles, since they show up everywhere you post. I'd advise against too much politics in those, since they're liable to simply cause unrelated discussion on random posts - and, of course, anything that crosses the "offensive" line should be removed.
Anything that could be dangerous should be immediately removed. This could include some types of misinformation, such as about various drug usage; this could be seen as political, but I think it's a moral responsibility to remove any content that could lead to serious harm or death. It's not about politics at that point.
I find it unlikely that anyone will ever be making political statements on behalf of Codidact the site or the Codidact Foundation. (We'd probably need entirely unanimous support from the entire Board of Directors before doing such a thing, and that's extremely unlikely to happen.) I don't think that's something we need to be concerned about at the moment.
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