Open Discussion The Political Nature of Avatars

that's a pretty serious allegation. i invite you to escalate it through the appropriate formal channel, with examples, or else withdraw it.

alasdair

It's not an allegation. I'm not accusing anybody. That's what the situation (one explanation of the situation) looks like to me as a 3rd party. This especially in light of Rach's explanation of that satirical political cartoon. Not only that, but i've read enough of his threads to know that he wouldn't make a veiled dig at someone through an avatar. When he has a problem with somebody, he confronts that person openly and leaves no room for doubt or mis-interpretation.
 
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If it is an issue with "gray areas", why not outline Political Avatars unacceptable?

Ergo:
Politicians
Party Affiliation
Anti-anythings
and so on.

It's a thought.

Classic oppressive/progressive mentality. If you dont like it or agree with it ban it.Expand your horizons and open your mind my friend! Things get boring when people like you are humored imo.
 
socko said:
I believe that you believe [your stated rationales for warning Rachamim]. No offense intended. I just think the issue is very subtle.

Hmmm. But you said that I did the following:

socko said:
Don't use the Warning system as a weapon to vent frustrations left over from CEP threads.

I don't see how I can reconcile both claims. What motivated me? Were my motivations illegitimate?
 
I personally love the the innocent academic- idealist majority of this site and the opinions they have to offer. If I post my opinions within reason they are accepted and discussed/critiqued in a entertaining and cordial manner. Nobody likes a circle jerk, it would cause CE&P to stale and boring imo. 99.9% of the time my political jabs are in good faith and jest. The OP is a modern day e-nazi, and I suspect his opinions will be treated as such
 
Hmmm. But you said that I did the following:



I don't see how I can reconcile both claims. What motivated me? Were my motivations illegitimate?
I'm not accusing. I am saying what it looks like, and it did look like you (or whoever it was who issued the warning) did it for the reasons as explained above.

Edit, like I said, whatever is going on (and all the history and baggage that goes with it) could be subtle. I don't know your motivations. But censoring avatars (in cases like this) is lame.
 
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I remember a couple previous Support threads with members offended by other member's avatars, that have been lost to pruning. In those threads the suggestion was that offended members shut off avatars in their userCP settings and thereby put an end to their being offended that way.

The times there have been avatar changes pushed that I am aware of its because an avatar was about denigrating a race, religion, sexual preference, etc or creating hostility about such a group. Avatars are regarded as the personal expression of a member except when a BLUA issue becomes involved. I really doubt that many members would want anymore reasons other than BLUA issues in play about avatars.

I had thought there would be much more contempt about even considering widening the criteria for intervening on avatars. If we want to be really safe about everything we could have like 30 preset avatars and not allow any other than the pre-approved cookie cutter avatars. Since colors can seem political I think it would be best to have any pre-approved avatars gray scaled.
 
even when they are racist? because it's racist, not anti Muslim. Put the glove on the other hand and people would scream anti Semitic bastard mods for allowing this! Nevermind that the explanation doesn't make any sense, but that's another matter for another time. The point is -- when something crosses the line from "political speech" to "hate speech", it needs to be addressed.
 
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I personally love the the innocent academic- idealist majority of this site and the opinions they have to offer. If I post my opinions within reason they are accepted and discussed/critiqued in a entertaining and cordial manner. Nobody likes a circle jerk, it would cause CE&P to stale and boring imo. 99.9% of the time my political jabs are in good faith and jest. The OP is a modern day e-nazi, and I suspect his opinions will be treated as such

Off topic and irrelevant to the subject, and obviously your taking my jab too seriously by making ridiculous commentary on how I am apparently an "e-nazi (absolutely ignorant). I don't actually believe all such things should be impermissible. I am actually vehemently looking at tolerance.

Kenickie: A .gif bashing Hezbollah is not racist. They are a group comprised of murderous minds that send suicide bombers into schools and so on.

-----

Supposing a good rule of thumb, if you have explain the context of the avatar, you probably shouldn't use it.

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Pander: Offending a person, can be any one of the subjects mentioned in the BLUA. The idea I was trying to poke at was, anything can offend anyone. How is it that we draw the line? No human is perfect, nor omnipotent. It is apparent, that Staff isn't perfect and may just have a bad day, or a poster may rub them the wrong way. Said offensive material, is it based on the mode of "times"/current ideals, what?

Enki: I hear what you are saying, and respect it; however, it's apparent your jargon is riddled with overtones behind over-generalizations. My thoughts are this, is there a better way we can handle this that avoids cookie-cutter bs but still allows people to have an opinion?:)
 
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Winding Vines said:
It is apparent, that Staff isn't perfect and may just have a bad day, or a poster may rub them the wrong way.
Yes. This is very true. Did you know that if I warn or infract a member, or any staff warns or infracts , the whole transaction is visible to the whole BL staff. Warnings are challenged or probed for clarification, context, motive, etc on a regular basis by multiple persons. I'm not saying every warning is directly challenged but all the staff knows that warnings and infractions are scrutinized by their peers, Sr Staff, etc.

Even though the autonomy of running individual forums is respected to a large degree there are many checks against warnings and infractions being arbitrary or personally motivated. Through member feedback, peer feedback, and supervisor feedback some mod calls get reversed in any given month. BL staff are well aware that we are a pretty fallible bunch. Just as member errors aren't often publicized in any official way, mod mistakes are not publicized either.

Winding Vines said:
A .gif bashing Hezbollah is not racist. They are a group comprised of murderous minds that send suicide bombers into schools and so on.
The nature of Hezbollah is a good CE&P topic, a 50x50 gif isn't a really good venue for a debate on Hezbollah and can easily seem to be a a characterization of an entire ethnic group or religion, thereby being a problem under #4 in BLUA's prohibited use section. If a commentary on a culture, ethnicity, religion, etc is easily expressed in a 50x50 gif its probably unsubtle enough to come across as provocation rather than a good faith expression of one's opinions in my estimation.
 
Kenickie: A .gif bashing Hezbollah is not racist. They are a group comprised of murderous minds that send suicide bombers into schools and so on.

What's the logic in that?

If I take an image that shows racial stereotypes, as long as I label it as a specific group that does bad things, does it make it less racist?

I don't think so.
 
Alas the avatar itself merely addressed Hezbollah's antiquated arsenal. How it could be construed as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab is truly beyond me. It is truly a reach to even suggest it. More to the point the Mod in question and I have previously discussed my outlook and I repeated to him, as I have umpteenth times in the forum publicly, that I have absolutely no problem with Muslims or Arabs but rather my problem is with Islam. Muslims and Arabs are people and have the ability to change or moderate their behavior where as Islam is a Belief System that is, due to inherent features, extremely rigid. One can criticise a belief in general without demeaning anyone. In light of that previous clarification the prudent thing to do would be to communicate concerns to me at which point I would have gladly explained both provenance and meaning.

As has been noted, Warnings aren't serious in and of themselves but they can certainly be used as a pretext for more serious steps. Another perspective is that they can be used to harass posters though I am not saying that 2 Warnings in 6 months even comes close to "harassment."

I think what Winding did in initiating the thread can only be viewed as positive in that obviously there is a disconnect in the process. If there is no concrete policy and the only rationale is a poster's history, i.e. the outlook they espouse over the course of time, it comes down to subjectivity (interpretation). The Mod obviously feels that I am racist. OK, I would ask that Mod why they feel that way when I have been more than clear about my views, and they do not involve denigration of anyone. In fact, the Mod in question acknowledged this in a previous exchange. So what then is the criteria being used?

Perhaps it has to do with "kindness to camels" or "kindness to camel testicles."
To me those make as much sense as the allegation. This is such a non-subject and yet because of this undefined area (nature of avatars) it is taking up time and energy.

Here is a different angle: Perhaps the policy that needs to be examined is the Warning System and not avatars per se. Perhaps, at least so far as undefined areas are concerned, it may be beneficial to have a concerned Mod simply communicate their views to the poster in question and THEN decide if a Warning is in line or not.

As for Socko's "allegation" and Alasdair's response, Socko isn't too far off the mark though if it was something worth discussing one can rest assure I would already be harping about it. I think it much more beneficial to discuss issues that concern the entire site than to latch onto more narrow concerns.

Escher: As to your last post, if a poster had an avatar that demeaned Louis Farrakhan would that translate into racism against all blacks in and of itself? Hezbollah is a well defined entity and yet the avatar did not even demean Hezbollah! As for "other than Hezbollah," the caption did not read, "Arab Rocket Launcher" though to be frank, given the context of Arab authorship and the subject matter having been the folly of the 2006 War I wouldn't see that caption as problematic either.

Political Correctness is a cancer and yet, I don't think the cartoon crossed any lines what-so-ever. As I offered earlier, the Mod more than likely perceives me a certain way and jumped the gun.
 
I never knew so many people could care so much about having to see 50x50 pixel images for a couple of minutes a day (if you're even a daily browser that is).

You have the option to turn em off. If you can't take the heat, get off the internet.
 
If a person is a racist (or whatever-ist)asshole, and that's apparent from his/her choice of avatar, at least you already know that going into a conversation with him/her, and don't have to waste any time being upset if s/he says something shitty, b/c you already KNOW it's not personal; s/he's just an asshole. How much emotion am I gonna invest in someone who brandishes a swastika?
 
Rach' said:
How it could be construed as anti-Muslim or anti-Arab is truly beyond me.

Really, Rachamim? Really? Even if I assume innocuous intent, is it not apparent how someone could have misunderstood the meaning, particularly when set in CEP's general context, or even the context of your posts taken in sum? Your occasional caveats, set in relation with convoluted rhetorical acrobatics apparently designed to temper rote anger at ascribed identity, make your overall view quite ambiguous.

For example (to make an analogy):

As for Socko's "allegation" and Alasdair's response, Socko isn't too far off the mark though if it was something worth discussing one can rest assure I would already be harping about it. I think it much more beneficial to discuss issues that concern the entire site than to latch onto more narrow concerns.

are you accusing me of using "warnings" to "take out frustrations on you" or not?

As has been noted, Warnings aren't serious in and of themselves but they can certainly be used as a pretext for more serious steps.

I wouldn't have warned you this often if you would respond to PMs within 2 week windows (whereas you respond to warnings, typically, within 2 hours).
...
I agree with you, however, in that we'd be better off using this thread to discuss the more general issues of the scope of utility of warnings and window for what types of avatars are acceptable on here (as I think (and hope) is closest to WindingVines' intent).

ebola
 
It's not an allegation. I'm not accusing anybody. That's what the situation (one explanation of the situation) looks like to me as a 3rd party.
if that's what the situation looks like to you then we agree that you believe somebody is using "...the Warning system as a weapon to vent frustrations left over from CEP threads." it's not an abstract thing - you believe somebody is doing it...

if you believe somebody is doing that, then we - the community - can address it but if it's a vague allegation which you won't substatiate, then it's hard to take it seriously or reasonably do anything about it.

alasdair
 
Theres no need to be putting extra restrictions on avitars. There are already rules for this site in place (BLUA), dont break those rules and your good to go. Censorship is fucked up,bluelight doesnt need it.
 
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