A very popular challenge was recently deleted due to attracting material that could possibly be considered hate speech or offensive to some people.
We probably need an official policy on how much profanity/vulgarity we want to tolerate. Therefore, how far do we want to go? On the one hand, generic insults like "you're an idiot" are clearly harmless and can be amusing in context, but we really want to avoid hate speech and/or direct insults that may be offensive to some users on the site.
No, that's not why I deleted it. That's why a particular answer was flagged, but one answer with possibly-offensive verbiage was the least of the problems here. I'll let the question speak for itself:
Shortest, simplest code that prints an unexpected obscenity
I thought this would be fun;
Try to come up with some simple code that when run, prints an obscenity or insult to the user in an unusual and unexpected way. When looking at the source code, it should be very difficult to predict that the output is so offensive.
Winner will be decided by votes, which should be given based on the following criteria, in order of importance:
- Unexpectedness (how well it is hidden in the code)
- Creativity of Obscenity (i.e. "F!#% You" is not so original)
- Simplicity
- Shortness
The question literally asked for answers that were offensive and disgusting. And that's why I ignored the flag and went straight for the question: the flagged answer was doing nothing more than providing the asker with exactly what was requested.
I don't think it makes sense to try and draw a line here. There's no acceptable level of intentional offensiveness; do you really want this to be the site that's ok with intentionally hurting some people but not others? There were a number of other answers providing similar results (all attempted to mask them via the ineffectual spoiler markup), and any attempt to moderate them individually would be in effect saying "these people are ok to go after, these others are off-limits". WTF?
As usual, it was the question that was the root of the problem. So the question was removed. Think of it as a challenge... Come up with a puzzle that inspires the generation of witty insults that aren't required to actually shock the conscience.
"I obviously didn't call for "real" offensive remarks i.e. racism, hate, etc - and there wasn't any. There were; that's a fact. (Not saying you intended for there to be.) I flagged the answer, not the question, and I think a non-offensive version of the Q would be interesting. And that's about where my opinions on the topic end.
\$\endgroup\$
Commented
May 30, 2014 at 1:42
Oh, that's where my 300 points went...
I think the question shouldn't have been deleted, but just modified to ask for creative insults instead of obscenities.
My answer was barely an insult btw, and was not obscene at all.
As for the policy, I don't really mind either way. If it really bothers people, then we can ban outright profanities ("brainfuck" not included because it's not meant to offend), but as the OP says, I would be against banning generic insults given in context.
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?
When we flag an answer as "very low quality", we are saying that:
This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.
(Emphasis mine)
I think the same principle should apply to questions. Instead of deleting the post, we should try to edit it to make it fit the site better.
Update: I edited the question to change "obscenity" into "insult", and explicitly stated that no offensive answers should be given. I also edited all answers containing potentially offensive output, replacing the output with:
Warning: The output of this program may be considered too offensive by some, and is therefore removed. If you really want to, you can see it by checking the revision history of this post.
From the moderator tools privilege page:
When should I delete questions?
Closed questions that are of no lasting value whatsoever should be flagged and deleted.
(Emphasis mine)
Do we really think that a post with 101 upvotes and 26 stars have no lasting value whatsoever? Personally, I don't think so. I understand that mods may have a different standard than we mortals, but is it so different that the opinion of 101 users is negligible?
Finally, I would like to draw your attention on the intention of that question (and the answers to that question).
In Shog9's post above he said,
do you really want this to be the site that's ok with intentionally hurting some people but not others?
I agree that posts that use strong languages to offend people should be deleted. But none of the answers are really there to offend anyone. A piece of interesting code is provided by the answerer, then a factual and objective description of what the code performs is included. The posts are not targeted to anyone. No-one is being intentionally hurt.
There's completely no reason to delete the entire thread.
P.S. In the duplicate post, @Chris Jester-Young said
Your question was popular, for sure, but popularity does not make a post "fantastic" or otherwise a good fit for the site
He mentioned programmer cartoons on SO as an example. However it is worth noting that the linked post was locked, not deleted. Can't we do the same?
In my opinion the deletion of this post was not in the best interest of the site. Based on the number of votes and answers it received the community was eager to participate. The person who submitted the question had a great marketing idea.
I am not exactly sure what the mission statement of the community reads but I would image that encourage people to creatively address interesting problems is part of it. The key word there is creatively. Once you impose limits on the way people behave some of their creativity is lost.
The posting of this question was not malevolent. None of the answers could be used to hurt or harm anyone in any way. Quite frankly the heart converting to a middle finger made me laugh and brightened my day. Keep brightening my day by keeping people creative. If someone acts in a way that is hateful or harmful come down on it as you will.
The name of the programming language "Brainfuck" contains the obscene word "fuck", which has a dictionary definition that is too vulgar to quote here. People who program in BF are using this as an excuse to post the obscene word on this website. I don't like this, but I understand the need to identify BF by its name.
The deleted question asked for programs that print an unexpected obscenity. I had more interest in the programming techniques than in the insults, but the question would have continued to accumulate more answers with all flavors of obscene language. Therefore, the best option was to delete the question to prevent any answers.
codegolf.stackexchange.com should not gather obscene language that would scare away me or other contributors.
The question BrainFuckedBotsForBattling - A Brainfuck Tournament has appeared a few times in the Hot Network Questions feed.
To the uninitiated observer from another SE site, what could "Brainfuck" possibly mean? Most people who see the Hot Network Questions feed will not know that Brainfuck is a programming language, and may take this as an insult or some devious scheme.
Perhaps we should block or censor "brainfuck" in question titles to avoid this? (EDIT: It's been confirmed that titles with "fuck" will no longer show up in the HNQ list.)
