How does everyone feel about free speech?
Are there things that you should not be allowed to say?Where would we draw the line, and who would decide it?
I understand a lot of you live in countries where free speech is actually illegal.
I specifically invite mzungu Jim to debate on this topic
I think that topic would make for an interesting discussion. However, out of respect for the nature of this particular forum, I believe we are bound to keep our discussions here relevant to Memoir’44. So thanks for the invite. If you would like to Skype call me sometime I think that would be appropriate. I will PM you my Skype address.
2 Likes
I have very strong feelings about free speech too, but yeah I don’t think this is the place
2 Likes
To address your question I guess it depends on the culture more so than law, but indeed, free speech is not available everywhere. In Germany for example it is still illegal to publish anything that can be considered to fit with nazi ideals. Just to give you a sense of the extension of this speech prohibition, all social media platforms must filter out content that could come from other countries and that is considered nazi speech.
Free speech, although great in theory is not what governs our day to day interactions because we don’t always say what we think, we account for other’s feelings. Total free speech is certainly not available here, mainly because free speech includes, among other things, being hurtful, which is not ok.
To add some context, there are no shortages of comments and memes regarding French and their formal surrender in WWII, which despite being true overshadows lots of historic documentation of just how fiercely the French people opposed German occupation and how effective the French Resistance was able to be. I believe that these comments for example can be considered offensive by anyone with French family that fought in the war.
I hope to add some people to the moderation team this year, and this is a good topic because it sets one important guideline: “How far will we go to moderate our content outside obvious spam?”. I had not considered this beforehand but my answer is in line with my previous comment: the line is drawn where people get offended.
War is a sensitive topic to some, and in our interactions in this space we should make an attempt to discuss WWII and other related content and account for people’s nationalities and culture. If I am writing a comment and I plan to add sarcasm or snark to it, I can, but I should first consider whether someone is going to be offended reading it.
This website is little else than a community of players, and the only way to grow a community properly is to make sure that people, especially long time users, can keep coming back without risk of being offended or otherwise targeted by bad comments. It doesn’t take much bad behavior to make good people leave, so we just can’t have it.
PS: I’m writing this as a guideline post to make my point clear, I am not accusing anyone in this topic of wrongdoing. If you see bad content, please flag it and the moderation team (just me for now) will check it as soon as possible.