I really like what I'm seeing with lucid (admin) being more active again. He brings with him the opportunity to make changes, as he owns the website and does all the coding. But before making big changes to the website and to rules, it's important to discuss the changes properly. Now I'm in no way implying that this doesn't get done or hasn't been done recently, but there are just a couple of things which I feel might have been overlooked amongst the changes. I feel like the ideas and progression have the right mindset, but that they've been just a little misplaced/misguided.

I'm talking about the new 'Racial Slurs' rule. The idea behind its creation, I'll infer, is to punish racial slurs heavily. There's no problem with that idea at all, it's great. But consider for a moment the 'Hateful Comments' rule:

Hateful Comments

Any form of severe or excessive hate speech or hateful language based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, mental capabilities, and other personal circumstances.

Expires in 3 months

1. Warning
2. 12 Hour Suspension and 24 Hour Forum Suspension
3. 24 Hour Suspension and Forum, Comment, and Chat Ban
4. Site Ban

This rule seems to already encompass the idea of the 'Racial Slurs' rule. It says "based on race" among other things in the rule already.

Creating a new rule dedicated solely to racial slurs raises the question: "Why not create a separate rule for homophobic slurs? And one for religious hate? And for mental capabilities?" These questions are completely valid on the premise that only one form of hateful language, that being towards race, just had a separate rule created for it.

Now let's have a look at the new 'Racial Slurs' rule:

Racial Slurs

Malicious use of slurs against players that are based on race and/or ethnicity. We will show absolutely no tolerance towards racist and xenophobic ideals.

Expires in 6 months

1. Warning
2. Site Ban

It's clear that the idea behind the violation structure is to have low tolerance for these type of slurs. I completely agree with the notion that slurs need to have low tolerance. However, this idea being limited to racial slurs alone makes it seem as though the potential behind this good idea of low tolerance is being placed improperly. I feel like this idea would be better applied simply to the 'Hateful Comments' rule itself, which would help to mitigate all types of hateful comments and language, not just racial slurs. This would include having a 6 month violation expiry for all hateful comments and in the 'Hateful Comments' rule, not just for racial slurs and in the 'Racial Slurs' rule.

I argue that instead of creating a new rule dedicated solely to racial slurs, simply modify the 'Hateful Comments' rule into something such as:

Hateful Comments

Any form of hate speech or hateful language based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, ableism, mental capabilities, as well as other personal circumstances.

Expires in 6 months

1. 24 Hour Suspension
2. 24 Hour Huspension AND Forum, Comment, and Chat Ban
3. Site Ban

OR

1. Warning OR 24 Hour Suspension AND Forum, Comment, and Chat Ban
2. Site Ban.

Whichever the moderator staff & lucid wish to implement.

In this way, the idea of having very low tolerance on all types of slurs is better justified. Note also that "severe or excessive" is removed, and "ableism" is added in. I admit that I am not the greatest writer, so if there are ideas in regards to this I think I speak for everybody when I say that we would be more than happy to entertain them. Also the second violation structure option may seem harsh, but at the same time, we do not want people who are going to break this rule more than twice on this website at all. The moderator staff can implement whichever of the two violation structures they see fit in accordance with lucid and his ideas for the website; but the idea here remains the same regardless of whichever violation structure is ultimately chosen.

The other option is to have 'Racial Slurs' violations count towards your number of 'Hateful Comments' violations. For example, Player1 has 1 'Racial Slurs' violation, and 1 'Hateful Comments' violation. A 2nd 'Hateful Comments' violation would lead to a site ban, because they already have 1 'Racial Slurs' violation which counts towards that total as well (or they would already be banned if the second violation structure in the revised 'Hateful Comments' rule was implemented). If this were not to be implemented, it would be possible for a user to have 2 'Hateful Comments' violations, 1 'Racial Slurs' violation, and still be unbanned. This doesn't seem to make sense, since 3 'Hateful Comments' violations would lead to a Site Ban... This is how we should structure these rules, as right now, we have a 1 violation maximum for 'Racial Slurs' before a ban, and a 3 violation maximum for 'Hateful Comments' before a ban. Racial slurs are hateful comments, so this simply doesn't make any sense.

The problem with this however is that it still doesn't implement an equal violation counter type of structure in regards to other types of hateful language or comments involving sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, mental capabilities, and other personal circumstances. For example, using hateful language/comments or a slur towards any of the domains I just mentioned would still currently be a 2 violation maximum before a ban, while using hateful language/comments or a slur towards race is at a 1 violation maximum. Hateful language/comments towards all of the domains in the 'Hateful Comments' rule should be equal, and they should all count towards each others' maximum (i.e. So you don't have a user with 1 'Racial Slurs' violation, 1 'Sexist Slurs' violation, 1 'Ableist Slurs' violation, etc., if each domain hypothetically had a separate rule). But the idea of having a separate rule for all of these different domains seems a bit silly, when we could have one rule that incorporates them all with the same low-tolerance that they all would and should have if they were separate. And guess what? We already do, and it's the 'Hateful Comments' rule. It seems easier to just implement the 2nd violation structure for the revised 'Hateful Comments' rule above rather than deal with all of this and rather than creating a new rule ('Racial Slurs'), especially when the idea here is the same and is shared by (or should be shared by) everybody: There must be a lower tolerance towards all hateful comments and language.

P.S. The "No" option in the poll should say "No, I am not for this." instead of "No, I do not like this.". I'd want the Yes and No options to have equivalent wording if I could edit the options over.

tl;dr: There is no need for the 'Racial Slurs' rule. Revising the 'Hateful Comments' rule & its violation structure is better implementation for mods/lucid wanting to lower tolerance on hateful comments in general.