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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 …
2y ago
Caveat: This is from my personal perspective and should not be taken as the official Codidact stance on this. You …
2y ago
Regarding politics in user profiles: I think the contents of the user profile should be relevant: that is, describe w …
2y 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 …
2y ago
Important note: this is my personal perspective, but it is the basis for my moderation activity on Software Codidact …
2y ago
I agree with everyone else here. Moreover, I would advocate for a rather "powerful" moderation of this site (powerf …
2y ago
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Important note: this is my personal perspective, but it is the basis for my moderation activity on Software Codidact
Political content in posts
Unless we are talking about Politics Codidact or similar, I consider that political content is offtopic in posts.
Political content in the user profile
This is a more personal space and I think that users should have more freedom to post what they like provided they do not violate the Code of Conduct.
For the specific case of political content, I would not allow blatant symbols like [Nazi symbols] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_Nazi_symbols), Holocaust denial or communist symbols since they are illegal in quite a few countries.
For other content, I would judge on the individual level and most likely consult with fellow moderators or staff members, since what is OK and what is not might depend on a context that I do not understand.
Shortly put, except for blatant stuff mentioned above, I would favor "laissez-faire" + handle flags from the community.
Political content in the username / avatar
Unless using a userscript to block them, users are basically forced into reading/seeing other usernames and avatars. That means that I would be more restrictive about what one can write as a username or use as a picture.
Besides what violates the CoC, I would not allow the usage of highly controversial figure names like Hitler, Stalin and also non-English texts that can easily be translated to CoC violations.
Moderation actions
For moderation, if the content is not blatantly illegal or violates CoC, I would start with a warning to let the user fix the text and then proceed to fix a short ban.
Of course, flagging by the community should be an important driver in fixing profile texts.
As a side note, I would discourage political activism. For example, this user has a political message in their profile and this created an issue while standing in elections for being a moderator (see the first comment from here).
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