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hamstar / legislat0r

An open source system for crowdsourcing creation and analysis of legislature
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Non-discriminatory/inciting policy #68

Open OLawD opened 12 years ago

OLawD commented 12 years ago

We need a solid policy towards any user starting hate-based or discriminatory laws. We will have to toe that line between allowing the issues that need to be discussed and that do get discussed in the real world to do so but at the same time not promoting clearly inciting language.

A transparent, prominent policy that tells users what they can get flagged for and why - perhaps with some overall community review process for changes to the policy.

fierce-bad-squirrel commented 12 years ago

Agreed. I listed some Wikipedia resources in #62 that might have some good reference material.

jonlaing commented 12 years ago

This is very interesting topic. At first I'm inclined to agree, but if I may play devil's advocate for a second: For us to take an explicit policy against discrimination, that forces us to take a political stance to an extent. For instance, LGBTQ rights. Currently in the United States, several laws are cropping up both for and against their rights. By taking a stance against discrimination, we have immediately aligned ourselves with one side of that argument, and thus have prevented the platform for being used to discuss the other side of the argument.

Now, I'm a person who would like to see everyone have equal rights and all that jazz. However, I'm wondering whether taking a specific stance like this defeats the purpose of crowd sourcing legislation. Shouldn't it be up to the community to decide what is an acceptable piece of legislation and what is not?

So, my suggestion would be that we don't censor what types of laws can be created, but we can take a stance against hate-speech. Of course where to draw the line on that is equally precarious as well.

Thoughts?

OLawD commented 12 years ago

Well after I wrote about that I reflected on it and thought it's much more important that we develop a way for people to flag "questionable" content that isn't clearly spam (which I assume gets deleted asap).
even if the questionable content doesn't get deleted and goes to an area devoted to divisive topics where discussion can still occur, i agree it should be the community who labels it as such, not us.

Jon Laing mailto:reply@reply.github.com Friday, May 04, 2012 12:42 PM This is very interesting topic. At first I'm inclined to agree, but if I may play devil's advocate for a second: For us to take an explicit policy against discrimination, that forces us to take a political stance to an extent. For instance, LGBTQ rights. Currently in the United States, several laws are cropping up both for and against their rights. By taking a stance against discrimination, we have immediately aligned ourselves with one side of that argument, and thus have prevented the platform for being used to discuss the other side of the argument.

Now, I'm a person who would like to see everyone have equal rights and all that jazz. However, I'm wondering whether taking a specific stance like this defeats the purpose of crowd sourcing legislation. Shouldn't it be up to the community to decide what is an acceptable piece of legislation and what is not?

So, my suggestion would be that we don't censor what types of laws can be created, but we can take a stance against hate-speech. Of course where to draw the line on that is equally precarious as well.

Thoughts?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/hamstar/legislat0r/issues/68#issuecomment-5514657

fierce-bad-squirrel commented 12 years ago

It makes sense to have a "controversial" section for bills, and possibly "controversial" discussions in bill comments/suggestions. I'm wondering if we need a "troll bill" section for troll and joke bill submissions, e.g., "Act for Newfag Execution" and "Act for the Mandatory Viewing of Nyan Cat".

As far as comments and suggestions go, community rules should be clearly posted on registration outlining :

We should have the rules clearly linked on every page, probably in the sidebar or footer.

we can take a stance against hate-speech. Of course where to draw the line on that is equally precarious as well.

I don't think it's as precarious as all that if the general rules are laid out well. A comment using hate speech could be flagged using the above examples as personal insult" and *harassing. A user who racks up x number of such flags from different users, or who gets x flags and an investigated request for action (by moderators and/or admins) from another user, could have warnings, etc. sent and penalties applied if the warnings are ignored.

Hate speech has implications down the road for internationalization. The U.S. holds hate speech as constitutionally protected free speech, but many countries have laws against hate speech - and each defines it differently.