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I am sorry to say, I saw this coming.

To answer the actual question in the title: What should our policy on insults, vulgarity, profanity, and other possibly offensive material be?

The answer is, as has been demonstrated, we don't have the power to decide. I was tempted to cast a protest "close vote" on this very question because of this.

All the mods on Code Golf were letting this run, because the community here knows that this was just a bit of harmless fun, and if anyone had got out of hand their answer would have been deleted.

But we are on a site run by an organisation that has its own policy of zero tolerance on offensiveness and the finger of law has descended upon us. This is the typical policy of being "cleaner than clean" that large organisations have, because of the disproportionate amount of bad publicity that can result from one little infraction. The master mod who closed this question was just doing his job.

Where I think he was wrong, is that I think that posters should have been allowed to keep the reputation they accumulated on this question. I'm not saying this because I gained such a large amount of reputation myself (570, which is absurd for such a trivial and silly question) but because it is not the fault of any of the answerers that this has happened. That is the subject of another question: http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/1649/15599

I am sorry to say, I saw this coming.

To answer the actual question in the title: What should our policy on insults, vulgarity, profanity, and other possibly offensive material be?

The answer is, as has been demonstrated, we don't have the power to decide. I was tempted to cast a protest "close vote" on this very question because of this.

All the mods on Code Golf were letting this run, because the community here knows that this was just a bit of harmless fun, and if anyone had got out of hand their answer would have been deleted.

But we are on a site run by an organisation that has its own policy of zero tolerance on offensiveness and the finger of law has descended upon us. This is the typical policy of being "cleaner than clean" that large organisations have, because of the disproportionate amount of bad publicity that can result from one little infraction. The master mod who closed this question was just doing his job.

Where I think he was wrong, is that I think that posters should have been allowed to keep the reputation they accumulated on this question. I'm not saying this because I gained such a large amount of reputation myself (570, which is absurd for such a trivial and silly question) but because it is not the fault of any of the answerers that this has happened. That is the subject of another question: If a question is deleted, should posters keep reputation gained?

I am sorry to say, I saw this coming.

To answer the actual question in the title: What should our policy on insults, vulgarity, profanity, and other possibly offensive material be?

The answer is, as has been demonstrated, we don't have the power to decide. I was tempted to cast a protest "close vote" on this very question because of this.

All the mods on Code Golf were letting this run, because the community here knows that this was just a bit of harmless fun, and if anyone had got out of hand their answer would have been deleted.

But we are on a site run by an organisation that has its on policy of zero tolerance on offensiveness and the finger of law has descended upon us. This is the typical policy of being "cleaner than clean" that large organisations have, because of the disproportionate amount of bad publicity that can result from one little infraction. The master mod who closed this question was just doing his job.

Where I think he was wrong, is that I think that posters should have been allowed to keep the reputation they accumulated on this question. I'm not saying this because I gained such a large amount of reputation myself (570, which is absurd for such a trivial and silly question) but because it is not the fault of any of the answerers that this has happened. That is the subject of another question.

I am sorry to say, I saw this coming.

To answer the actual question in the title: What should our policy on insults, vulgarity, profanity, and other possibly offensive material be?

The answer is, as has been demonstrated, we don't have the power to decide. I was tempted to cast a protest "close vote" on this very question because of this.

All the mods on Code Golf were letting this run, because the community here knows that this was just a bit of harmless fun, and if anyone had got out of hand their answer would have been deleted.

But we are on a site run by an organisation that has its own policy of zero tolerance on offensiveness and the finger of law has descended upon us. This is the typical policy of being "cleaner than clean" that large organisations have, because of the disproportionate amount of bad publicity that can result from one little infraction. The master mod who closed this question was just doing his job.

Where I think he was wrong, is that I think that posters should have been allowed to keep the reputation they accumulated on this question. I'm not saying this because I gained such a large amount of reputation myself (570, which is absurd for such a trivial and silly question) but because it is not the fault of any of the answerers that this has happened. That is the subject of another question: http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/1649/15599