The reason why I don’t say “the n-word” as you did is because it can be misleading. I have seen people using it to quote somebody else who just said “negro”. So to me saying “the n-word” would violate another (to my mind much more important) norm:
“Be honest.
Don’t mislead or manipulate.”
I try to follow rules I disagree with. However if I violated any rules here then at least they should have been clearer, so I appreciate the ongoing effort.
I agree that the current norms are probably not clear enough to cover this situation, we are thinking about adding more specific ones.
As a non-american, I also initially found the lack of use-mention distinction to be very counterintuitive. But it’s culturally very important for a very large fraction of forum readers, so I would also ask you to edit your initial comment. If you don’t do that, we may just edit the comment for you.
Using “n-word” would definitely not count as “misleading or manipulating”. If you wanted to be absolutely precise I would recommend linking to the original source.
My initial comment seemed completely innocent to me. I didn’t expect the backlash and don’t want to clog this thread further with a discussion that isn’t really on topic, so this will be my last reply here. (DM me if you want)
thx @RAB for the reply
To all the people who downvoted. My comment was asking for clarification. If you then downvote it for presumably the same reason you took offense to the Bostrom comment without explaining why this isn’t very productive.
@moderators I edited my comment.
The effect that the rules will have won’t be that I(and I assume this is true for others as well) will act the way that you think is proper, instead I will just not engage at all. This isn’t just true for this instance (which would be trivial), but in general.
Thank you for editing the comment and really thank you for the feedback.
I agree, we will need to be very careful about striking a proper balance here, but I think we can find something that’s better than the status quo (which results in downvotes and off-topic discussions, and detracts from discussions on how to do the most good)
The reason why I don’t say “the n-word” as you did is because it can be misleading. I have seen people using it to quote somebody else who just said “negro”. So to me saying “the n-word” would violate another (to my mind much more important) norm:
“Be honest.
Don’t mislead or manipulate.”
I try to follow rules I disagree with. However if I violated any rules here then at least they should have been clearer, so I appreciate the ongoing effort.
I agree that the current norms are probably not clear enough to cover this situation, we are thinking about adding more specific ones.
As a non-american, I also initially found the lack of use-mention distinction to be very counterintuitive. But it’s culturally very important for a very large fraction of forum readers, so I would also ask you to edit your initial comment. If you don’t do that, we may just edit the comment for you.
Using “n-word” would definitely not count as “misleading or manipulating”. If you wanted to be absolutely precise I would recommend linking to the original source.
My initial comment seemed completely innocent to me. I didn’t expect the backlash and don’t want to clog this thread further with a discussion that isn’t really on topic, so this will be my last reply here. (DM me if you want)
thx @RAB for the reply
To all the people who downvoted. My comment was asking for clarification. If you then downvote it for presumably the same reason you took offense to the Bostrom comment without explaining why this isn’t very productive.
@moderators I edited my comment.
The effect that the rules will have won’t be that I(and I assume this is true for others as well) will act the way that you think is proper, instead I will just not engage at all. This isn’t just true for this instance (which would be trivial), but in general.
Thank you for editing the comment and really thank you for the feedback.
I agree, we will need to be very careful about striking a proper balance here, but I think we can find something that’s better than the status quo (which results in downvotes and off-topic discussions, and detracts from discussions on how to do the most good)