Rule #0 Policy Refinement Feedback Thread

@PurpleSmart2  
Yeah, but to me it seems essentially as much of a gassing joke as the dabbing one and >>457970 (deleted), so those being not okay but Jargon’s doodle even having the lowest score seems weird to me. Although obviously I’d rather have them all be allowed.  
The masturbating Aryanne and the Appletwi are quite decent art-wise.
 
I think the Aryanne comic should also be discussed in terms of how much the artist matters, since it is part of a series by an artist whose entire body of work is heavily satirical, so even if this one is borderline, the intent can easily be inferred from the artist’s other work.

@Background Pony #5C8B  
I mean, I don’t want to assume their political stances, but… fucking yikes.

Please remember to stay on-topic and not vent frustrations about one group of people or another.

@Background Pony #25FA  
Except murder is illegal. This drawing is not.

@Background Pony #25FA  

 
Um, no. That would not be shock humor. Humor has to have a joke in it. Killing a person isn’t a joke or humorous. Juxtaposition of a dabbing pony and a violent act is humorous. Juxtaposition is one of the tenets of humor.

This proposal seems more reasonable than all others I’ve seen. It’s also good to finally see a discussion of possible changes instead of changes that seem to come as a surprise to even most of the staff.

A lot of those 50% drawings are not racist in my opinion.
 
I feel like you need to increase the voting to ban art from 51% to something like 75% or more. All it takes is for a group of easily offended mods to come on board and now we have a ban crazy environment for content that is barely if at all racist.

@Yumenmita  
This. While I’m not fond of the premise of image deletion to begin with, the rules need to be more clear in their intention so that rulings on them don’t come across as arbitrary.  
>>693704 (deleted) Being deleted but not >>1075425 (deleted) seems ridiculous. Either keep both or delete both.
 
Frankly, any moderative policy that requires such extensive internal polling and deliberation to implement individual rulings seems, to me, to be a broken policy and needs to be redone.

@Background Pony #FF20  
Griffon’s are being used in place to Jews in a few images. I can’t find the images again, but there were a few here depicting them as such (they may have been removed, except this one [like the jew nose head meme]).

@Princess Luna  

Eh, OK.
 
@Princess Luna  

I hope the selection of images was chosen broadly, eg. I hope that things such as “country’s independence day”, “country flag clothing”, “black lives matter”, “make america/equestria great again”, “brexit”, “don’t tread on me”/libertarianism and so forth, since those all can be considered propaganda (to varying degrees of endorsement).
 
If polls only cover images pertaining to a targeted hot issue, there will be selection bias.

@Yumenmita  

 
No, humor does not require a joke. People can take humor in anything that they see at any moment in the world around them. Some people take humor simply in watching others suffer unspeakable horrors. These are highly unstable individuals, but it happens. That’s why “humor” is not a good word to use for creating a standard.

@Yumenmita  
You do raise an interesting point. Personally I think the “masturbating to gassing” picture goes too far, it does have a pretty high score. I assume humans aren’t masturbating to the people in the gas chamber dying, they’re masturbating to Aryanne masturbating (but she’s masturbating to the gas chamber). That one is a bit more complex than I initially thought.

These still seem a bit arbitrary but it’s a start at least. Additionally I think these votes should be moved to the community themselves: What little is still gonna be around and aren’t already fucked off to Twitter/Rainbooru.

@Background Pony #197B  

 
I didn’t say that the word joke always has the exact same definition, what I said is that it can be readily defined to an objective standard. There is a craft to comedy that has been studied and perfected. You can map out the structure of a joke in a way that you can’t map out a purely abstract term like “humor.”

If the goal is to eliminate propaganda promoting racist (or otherwise) views, it might be worthwhile to examine what makes propaganda effective. Aryanne holding up a sign that says “kill the Jews” or whathaveyou is absolutely hate speech, and the staff clearly recognized it as such. However, I would not consider something like that to be effective propaganda (aside from it making the anti-Nazi crowd uncomfortable).
 
Effective propaganda, I would think, are images like the last one in the second poll (the piper perri one). It’s effectively cruelty as humor. The target audience is not intended to view it with disgust. Rather, it takes a scenario one should reasonably view with disgust (a Nazi murdering a group of minorities), and turns it into a fun and quirky joke. And therein lies the propagandistic element - it takes the thing that Nazis want to do, and makes it a lighthearted punchline.
 
Likewise, I remember seeing a few pictures of Aryanne about to commit suicide while saying “Follow your leader!” This, I’d say is effective anti-Nazi propaganda. It’s, once again, cruelty as humor. The target of the cruelty is the Nazi. The audience is not meant to sympathize with her. We’re meant to laugh at her killing herself, because that’s what Hitler did.
 
The key to figuring out what is propaganda lies in asking a number of questions. How are we supposed to feel about what we are being shown? What is being shown? Are we meant to sympathize with any of the characters? Are there any characters we should sympathize with, but don’t? In the former example, I’d wager the intention isn’t for the viewer to sympathize with the Zebras. In the latter, we’re not meant to sympathize with Aryanne.
 
Though, I also believe a discussion needs to be had over what kind of propaganda is acceptable. Is anti-Nazi propaganda the same as pro-Nazi propaganda? If I’m to be open with my personal position, no. One position advocates for harming vulnerable groups, the other advocates for harming the people who wish to do harm.
 
Long post is long, but I guess what I’m asking for moving forward is not an attack on all edgy jokes, but rather, for a critical eye to be turned towards humor as it’s used to forward a certain position.
 
(And of course, little disclaimer, I’m not attempting to ascribe a position to the persons who created the images I mentioned. I’m not saying that they’re Nazis or anti-Nazis. I’m simply describing the propagandistic effectiveness of the images).

The semantics debate about what humor is is definitely not good for this thread. The Rule #0 stuff we’re looking at could certainly consider humor, but I don’t think whether something is humor really plays a big part. Remember, discuss the policy and such, not each other’s views and semantics.

@Yumenmita  
Yeah now that I think about it more the #3 image really should be allowed to stay up. It does not breach rule #0 in any way, who does it target? Ugly Rarity? What kind of hate does it preach?

@Aponty  
Hm. Yes. This is certainly a case of two very broadly labelled groups clashing over a single issue. “Us” the righteous and pure anti-nazis, and “”“them””” the unequivocally evil and irredeemable 4chan.  
It must be only these two and nobody else. It cannot possibly be that a collective hundreds of people from various lifestyles could have a variety of opinions for or against several aspects of the situation.
 
Don’t simplify this situation. It’s disingenuous and trivialises everyone across the board.