What a bountiful can of worms to stumble upon, huh. I get why this is a policy, and I respect it, but if the most viable method of clarification to the topic is effectively making an official blacklist methinks the policy ought to be reworked a tad. I like @/Reanmagpie's idea of rewording it to something like "discussion of franchises whose authors or text perpetuate hateful topics", but I can also see that being a bit troublesome, as a lot of older works in every form of media is bound to be created by people who we consider to be Pretty Bad nowadays. Maybe specifying creators who are currently living could help? Unsure.

I don't think this is sustainable. This would require the mods to keep up and know about all divisive topics, current events, and controversies going on across the entire world, which... no one can actually do. It's also a ton of emotional energy for them to actually keep up with these things. As a moderator on an unrelated server, this would be completely unreasonable to ask of our team of volunteers who are donating our time for free because we love the community. As far as I'm aware, the mod situation on Lorwolf is the same. They are not paid employees.

We cannot keep up with everything in the world and every piece of media and we also have to look after our own mental health. You say that users don't all have the time, energy, access, etc. to research these issues, but the same goes for moderators. Moderating a server, especially a big, official one like Lorwolf's, is a really big time and energy commitment as is.

I don't know what happened in the Discord, but I think it's important to note that a moderator stepping in to say "we've decided this is not allowed to be discussed" does not automatically mean everyone involved is in trouble (and if it does, then that moderator needs to be re-trained). It sucks, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person, it doesn't mean you're in trouble, it just means "please do not discuss this in the future".

I’m reading through the comments, and the core of the issue might be that a little more clarification might be useful. I'll return to the fact that fan wolves named after divisive characters are permitted, but having them in bios is not.

Wouldn’t that be constituted as a mention, or are indirect mentions fine? This would be helpful to know as a general rule. I’m actually shifting my opinion towards @/Reanimagpie’s idea, which might be better, as people are right in that it would probably be a huge time sink. A general set of criteria would be a lot easier.

I also think it's rough having to keep repeating this fandom / topic isn't allowed to different sets of users as it happens. The fandom in question is a current / former juggernaut, so I can imagine it coming up again.

It's a complicated issue, so I can see why there are a lot of different opinions.

Removed since while checking over ToS I noticed discussion of moderation is not allowed.

Oh man. I feel like this is a MASSIVE slippery slope and the exact reason I try to stay out of large public Discords in general personally. I do agree with Reanimagpie's suggestion to a point that it would help to clarify wording in policies to help alleviate some userbase anxieties but I realize even that exact suggestion to the letter can be EXTREMELY and almost dangerously vague in my experience working with moderating online communities in general for the same points VNX already brought up. Telling people to "do their research" can come across very condescending, and like I just mentioned, not everyone who may use a specific server may be familiar with regional topics and political topics of certain countries, or just specific topics of discourse in general. Nor should they be forced to as this can get very mentally taxing after a while for anyone to keep up with on everything.

Let me just play the devil's advocate to the thread here as well and also agree with Tserin. Trying to keep "list" of undesirable topics is not only extremely subjective and downright exclusionary in some specific cases.. but just, a LOT to ask of a moderation team considering how many global cultures and topics you'd need to track, and what is considered offensive in one may not be in another. I agree it should be on the user to be responsible for their own mental health, and I say this personally as someone with some very serious mental health conditions.

It's a bitter pill at the end of the day and while I think online communities have a duty to try to be as inclusive as possible, there's always going to be points of contention and I think blanket bans on politically charged, explicit, or extremely sensitive/hot button topics is always going to be the best move to make imo. It should be the duty of moderators to steer users away from these topics when needed and not to expect users, imo, to memorize a list. Discord has built in auto-moderation tools to also help filter out certain words and if needed, especially charged topics can be added to these tools if they become a regular issue.

Personally I don't think making people walk on eggshells day in and day out and expecting them to dodge topics is a healthy way to manage a community as everyone has their own opinions and sometimes people make mistakes or get a little too in the moment with certain topics, but users should still be incentivized to be as respectful to other users of the community as possible.

So, no support in regards to exact lists of banned topics, but I think rule clarifications can only help.

I can understand banning a contentious topic that you expect to just cause a big fight, especially if it's not relevant or essential to the purpose of the server. Here's my question though:

Why does Lorwolf even have a Discord server?

Let folks enjoy their fandoms and just ban those that decide to cross the poop list. If folks can't tell when someone is innocently enjoying content vs being a poo about it then we're going to have a hostile community going forward as more people try adding things to the list.

As someone who has had to moderate a large discord server, where these exact issues popped up, naw this is unreasonable. It's incredibly difficult to moderate large communities, especially on discord where things move so quickly. Simply discussing a fandom should not be prohibited, it's just too much labor to expect from anyone in order to keep track of what can or cannot be discussed. Someone will always have an issue with certain fandoms or topics. At the end of the day, discussion that actually moves into the typical prohibited topics like homophobia, transphobia, racism, ect. is the only thing that should be prohibited and cracked down on. Asking people to avoid bring decisive topics onto discord or the forums is also fair, imo, as a pet sim community is not the place to be bringing those topics. But banning discussion or mention of certain fandoms? Insanely difficult to do and a very slippery slope.