We're not looking to be the word police, but more just keep up with not allowing completely unacceptable terms while also being lenient enough to what is generally accepted on the internet. This is not some safe haven for everyone to feel warm and fuzzy with no harmful or hateful words ever, but we are at least striving for some decency. I'll clarify below why this matters.
No, we do not allow racial slurs. We briefly allowed for the use of the word 'nigga'...call it a social experiment, call it influence from a particular man in red...whatever. That era is now over. As for any other racial slur, 100% of them are used, in essence, a derogatory fashion falling under disrespect, harassment, racism, etc. Now we could come out and write a rule that says 'no racial slurs' if that would satisfy you and others who are trying to break this down a bit too much, but we have always and will always punish for the use of racial slurs.
To the point above, we have a list (which I will post below) of words that are quite simply hard banned racial slurs, i.e. if these words are uttered out of your mouth you are likely going to get punished very quickly, particularly with repeated use post warning. Now of course, comes the question of why isn't every known racial slur ever in all of mankind's history in the list. Fuck off. Okay so obviously listing every word is just nonsense (90-95% of listed slurs are rarely if ever used), so our approach is to more address the *most common use words* as to help really emphasize the environment we are trying to create without getting ridiculous as well as staying up with the times. There are words like 'chink' that you don't really hear much at all on the internet anymore, but it was more prevalent maybe 10 years ago, it is on the list. There are words like 'Barbarian' which is a term(slur) from Greece to describe Non-greek people, which would never make it on the list or really be applied in a harassment/discrimination type setting. Then we get down to a word like @daftybrought up, 'zipperhead', which some kid could say in a way that they are unaware of it being a slur, but also could be put under harassment or could even make it onto our list down the line if it became prevalent.
Hopefully with the examples above, you and others can see how applying a healthy combination of a 'do not use these words ever' list along with addressing other varying harassment and disrespect cases gives us the most amount of free movement within our own rules to make the best decisions as these things come up. Adding 'faggot' to the list is our way of addressing a word that is becoming problematic in societal use and therefore was deemed as something we didn't think any of our player base really wanted to be hearing or seeing.
(Nigga)
(Faggot, Fag, Faggy, etc.)
This list has changed several times over there years, for example there used to be a time nigga was on there (previously) and there was a time when the term 'Spear Chucker' wasn't a problem. This list can be added onto as necessary and has always been listed at least at an admin level, but is currently listed here:
If for some crazy reason the usage of slurs gets out of hand (which is highly unlikely) then we can look to add on more words or make a rule that says 'no racial slurs', but again...the waters get dicey when you make blanket statements like that, and overall it doesn't seem like it would come down to that. Most of the arguments in thread are really based in semantics and fail to account for the obvious human factor of rule enforcement and punishment.
To clarify our previous stance was in fact what people had argued with you, however we're tired of the debates and the squabbling over it so we've decided to move to more of a: you dig your own grave if you decide to do it and get caught / reported.
