This is incredibly frustrating. I am not trying to play a game of "gotcha." I just want to know how the moderators of this forum are going to deal with people calling people of other races and ethnicities "chimps" or "animals" or "culturally inferior" or "savages," things they would not be allowed to call me or any other poster. I don't think that's an unreasonable question, and I think I deserve more than a glib one-sentence dismissal.
I realize that it sounds like a glib dismissal, and I apologize for the layer of bad will that covered it. But it really is what I mean.
If you wouldn't say it to your mom, or to your kindergarten teacher, or to Dr. Novella, or to a reporter from a well-respected media outlet, don't say it here. Where you draw that line is up to you. Where other people draw that line is up to them.
Where
I draw that line on the forum for potential sanctioning is best summed up by the old adage "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity." Stupidity has to be allowed; otherwise, there'd be no opportunity for educational growth. When I think someone's crossed the line from stupidity into malice, like Straws Pulled At Random did, then they get sanctioned. I don't think I can make it less subjective than that, but I hope that it at least doesn't sound glib any more.
