Question For All of You: Is Preaching A Religion or a Political Viewpoint Allowed By The ToS?

[STIHL.2489]

@"Ardenwolfe.8590" said:It's simple. If someone asks you not to use certain words or language around them, civilized and respectful people will do so when politely asked. Disrespectful people will call entire groups names, and demand their right to say whatever they want, and then turn around and call others sensitive and snowflakes.

Please don't ask others to give you the right to say what you want and then ask them not to do the same for themselves.

I believe Voltaire said to best when he said. "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to my death, your right to say it" which is a very powerful quote, given he was a French Atheist.

In contrast that to modern times where people feel justified to say their words, no matter how crude and rude they may be, but feel that everyone else should be restrained for the sake of their feelings.

Again, it's a very insidious way to attack the freedom of speech, if you ask me.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

@STIHL.2489 As with all things, I will defend your right to say whatever you want within reason. And then, I will also allow society to punish you as consequence for those words. That's the real problem. People want to say whatever they want, but they don't want to suffer the outcome of those actions.

The sword called Freedom of Speech cuts both ways . . . as a certain lawyer in New York is now finding out.

[Westenev.5289]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

"While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated."

I think based on this, Politics and Religion should be valid topics so long as they aren't aimed as insults against an individual player. From what I can tell, the Terms of Service are more worried about players abusing the product itself.

[Holykitten.3064]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@"Ardenwolfe.8590" said:It's simple. If someone asks you not to use certain words or language around them, civilized and respectful people will do so when politely asked. Disrespectful people will call entire groups names, and demand their right to say whatever they want, and then turn around and call others sensitive and snowflakes.

Please don't ask others to give you the right to say what you want and then ask them not to do the same for themselves.

I believe Voltaire said to best when he said. "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to my death, your right to say it" which is a very powerful quote, given he was a French Atheist.

In contrast that to modern times where people feel justified to say their words, no matter how crude and rude they may be, but feel that everyone else should be restrained for the sake of their feelings.

Again, it's a very insidious way to attack the freedom of speech, if you ask me.

Yes, we are all free to say what we like but then it comes down to what lines should or shouldn’t be crossed and the consequences they will receive.Will you defend the KKK their right to hate speech or ISIS their right to hate speech? Britain First? Neo-Nazism? Free speech =/= hate speech.Socially unacceptable/questionable terminology, brainwashing, militant preaching, to me, is a line crossed. Especially in an all inclusive game.Like I said, there’s a big difference having a discussion to outright preaching your views, and most likely saying everyone is going to hell for choosing the “wrong god”. Very big difference.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"Haleydawn.3764" said:

Yes, we are all free to say what we like but then it comes down to what lines should or shouldn’t be crossed and the consequences they will receive.Will you defend the KKK their right to hate speech or ISIS their right to hate speech? Britain First? Neo-kitten? Free speech =/= hate speech.Socially unacceptable/questionable terminology, brainwashing, militant preaching, to me, is a line crossed. Especially in an all inclusive game.Like I said, there’s a big difference having a discussion to outright preaching your views, and most likely saying everyone is going to hell for choosing the “wrong god”. Very big difference.

I will defend every one of those. I can't remember exactly where he said it, but to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, hate is a legitimate human emotion that deserves expression. Censoring hatred does not make it cease to be, but instead censorship causes hatred to fester and grow worse. Instead of hiding our monsters away in the shadows, bring them out into the light and then show the world why the are monstrous.

If the devil himself wanted to give a speech, I'd give him his due. Because I am the devil. And you are the devil. STIHL is the devil, too. No matter who you are, there is another person who will consider you so vile as to be beyond consideration, solely for the views that you hold. You have to let people say anything, because any "within reason" limit you put on expression can be twisted and warped to force people to say nothing. To quote supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy:

"A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society."

[Oneira.7691]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Haleydawn.3764" said:

Yes, we are all free to say what we like but then it comes down to what lines should or shouldn’t be crossed and the consequences they will receive.Will you defend the KKK their right to hate speech or ISIS their right to hate speech? Britain First? Neo-kitten? Free speech =/= hate speech.Socially unacceptable/questionable terminology, brainwashing, militant preaching, to me, is a line crossed. Especially in an all inclusive game.Like I said, there’s a big difference having a discussion to outright preaching your views, and most likely saying everyone is going to hell for choosing the “wrong god”. Very big difference.

I will defend every one of those. I can't remember exactly where he said it, but to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, hate is a legitimate human emotion that deserves expression. Censoring hatred does not make it cease to be, but instead censorship causes hatred to fester and grow worse. Instead of hiding our monsters away in the shadows, bring them out into the light and then show the world why the are monstrous.

If the devil himself wanted to give a speech, I'd give him his due. Because

I am

the devil. And

you are

the devil. STIHL is the devil, too. No matter who you are, there is another person who will consider you so vile as to be beyond consideration, solely for the views that you hold. You have to let people say anything, because any "within reason" limit you put on expression can be twisted and warped to force people to say nothing. To

quote supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy:

"A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society."

You are 100% right that rage, hatred and anger are legitimate human emotions and when they are expressed in language, they have every right to be said. The KKK and ISIS supporters can say whatever they like. When they act on their hatred and commit a crime, they are punished. There is a world of difference between "hate speech" and a "hate crime". A lot of crimes involve hatred, and so the term "hate crime" is kind of a pleonasm.

You have the right to say what you wish, including wishing genocide on a whole group. This is particularly true in an academic setting. Institutions of higher education are the one place where anything can be heard, whether its a right-wing conspiracy theory or Leonard Jeffries claiming that all Egyptians were black Africans and therefore Western culture originated from and stole everything from black Africa. Calls for censorship in higher education is absolutely the worst thing one can do. The difference is that whatever you say, you had better be prepared to have it analysed, scrutinized, critiqued, and condemned in the most severe way if it is found to be unfounded and biased. That's the ethic of higher ed, which unfortunately most people on both sides of the divide no longer respect.

Whether one has the right to speak one's mind in this game, however, is another matter. Those who use GW2 chat to preach to others, to try and recruit others to their views, or to fill the airwaves with the same could be seen as misusing this platform for something it was not meant for. Does GW2 count as a public forum? I don't think so.

[Ashen.2907]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:The ToS itself takes a U.S. liberal + humanist standpoint. It is O.K. to talk about anything, so long as it fits within the acceptable range as deemed by that standpoint. Unfortunately, this means that there are a lot of conservative positions that are considered punishable on sight, as I and many others have learned the hard way.

A US liberal might be seen as conservative in European nations, which is always fun. Relative comparisons, woo!

And you struggle with a humanist standpoint? Wait, so treating everyone as equals is a bad thing? Cruuuuuuud.

I believe there is a strange irony to that one, as no one says "Happy Holidays" at Halloween.. which is a deeply pagan holiday, yet there is a move to remove the Christian aspect of the Christmas Holiday. To be fair, if there was any real motive to be respectful, all Holidays should be addressed simply as "Happy Holidays" not just the one during Christmas Time.. don't you think?

I tend to use Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas because of years spent in retail. The close proximity of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, and the general stress/fatigue level during those few hectic weeks make it easier to just use one phrase rather than three.

[MarshallLaw.9260]

@"Andrew Man.7239" said:This happens to me quite a lot...

How often is "a lot" and why is this thread pushing three pages without any evidence? For all we know it might have been 2 lines from the Bible, 40 pages from the Torah or anything in between. Perhaps people used it as a quote, maybe it's an individual with no motive and nothing better to do..People can say anything they like as long as it's not offensive or incites.... etc, etc (you've seen the TOS) and by now most people should recognize that - believe it or not - not everyone agrees on various topics. If you don't like talking to another player, block them. If you seriously think it breaks TOS, report them and ANet will make a decision (at some point).

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Solution can be censoring specific words on both sides that way (by censoring i mean mute) if you cant write the words you cant start an argue

[I Love Root Beer.1872]

It is allowed. I mean I’m a Christian but at the same time, just like you I like to just play the game without bringing up politics or religion to people. I guess I could say I’m one of those Christians you could actually tolerate. But to be fair, and please don’t take this the wrong way or take offense from it, but you could just ignore the map chat. I created a tab specifically for “map” and “say” chat and don’t often use either one unless I actually need to. Maybe you could try something like this? Hope it helps.

[Westenev.5289]

@"Laila Lightness.8742" said:Solution can be censoring specific words on both sides that way (by censoring i mean mute) if you cant write the words you cant start an argue

The game already has an optional censor. If other people don't want to hear bad words, they have the option of turning it on too.

Enforcing the censor would lead to stupid censoring, since a lot of "rude" words have duel meanings with otherwise clean and common household terms.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:

@"Malediktus.9250" said:You are correct about this, Anet is a very "liberal" company with strong virtue signalling

Whatever that means, anti-discrimination clauses are a necessity if you want your playerbase to be as large as possible.

To help translate for you:

Virtue Signalling

is the current term in vogue for declaring that some actions are motivated explicitly by the desire to be

seen

to be good, in order to improve your social standing. It is the same basic tactic as the "white knight" declarations that proceeded it: declare that an action is taken with the intent of being seen as good, thus rendering it ... tainted, somehow.

I'm going to put on my Captain Explainer costume, and explain this one, too. Or rather, Jules Feifer is going to explain it:

"I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.”

To be virtuous is an act, not a phrase. The people who really care about the poor are the ones who serve in soup kitchens and apprentice troubled individuals in their businesses, or donate to charities. The people who say they care but do nothing, they're just saying things to reap the accolades and make themselves feel like they're a super duper individual... with a super-duper undeserved ego to match. Implicit in their signals is the call to arms, that other people

do not

share this view and should be shamed and ashamed. This ultimately has the reverse effect, as people come to resent these virtues because they can't stand all of the people signalling.

This discussion is about which concrete actions ANet should be taking on these issues, and which concrete issues ANet should be taking action on.

I do agree with you, though, that the argument that ANet is "virtue signalling" here is, indeed, completely wrong and an inappropriate use of the term.

[TexZero.7910]

Look if praising Joko is wrong, then i don't want to be right.

Joko did nothing wrong.

[perilisk.1874]

@"Charrbeque.8729" said:https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/the-forums-code-of-conduct/

Major Religions / Religious or Political Figures

negatively portray major religions or religious figures / negatively portray major political figures or national or world leaders

Nationalism

promote national hatred / use slurs or terms intended to insult people from a specific country / allude to symbols of national hatred

At face value, it seems like it's OK to discuss religion/politics on the forums as long as we don't say anything negative, insult others, or promote hatred. But generally they don't allow it because such conversations always end up in heated arguments.

Technically, isn't annoying people on behalf of a religion negatively portraying that religion?

[ArchonWing.9480]

But the real question is, were they holding a staff?

Any time I hear of people trying to convert others I'm thinking about those Monks from Age of Empires. I hear they're weak against mounts.

But yea, please keep that kind of stuff out of the game. It leads to nothing good.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

@perilisk.1874 You would think, wouldn't you? ;)

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@perilisk.1874 said:

@"Charrbeque.8729" said:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/the-forums-code-of-conduct/

Major Religions / Religious or Political Figures

negatively portray major religions or religious figures / negatively portray major political figures or national or world leaders

Nationalism

promote national hatred / use slurs or terms intended to insult people from a specific country / allude to symbols of national hatred

At face value, it seems like it's OK to discuss religion/politics on the forums as long as we don't say anything negative, insult others, or promote hatred. But generally they don't allow it because such conversations always end up in heated arguments.

Technically, isn't annoying people on behalf of a religion negatively portraying that religion?

Thankfully, ANet are not obliged to program a computer, or to present a "legal" case, with perfect accuracy, to enforce this policy. They are able to use human judgment and discretion in their execution of the policy. So, while you are technically correct -- the very best kind of correct -- that is also an irrelevant point to the underlying system being discussed.