# Does civilized discourse entail tone policing?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [Setembro 12, 2016, 9:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039 "2016-09-12T21:22:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [Setembro 13, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-civilized-discourse-entail-tone-policing/50039/9 "2016-09-13T00:38:21Z")

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> [@EgoWumpus](#):
>
> All of this is to say that extreme cases of profanity are easy to adjudicate. The far more insidious - and far more important to marginalized groups - issue is when language is used that aggresses at the margins: just inside the line such that it is defensible under whatever standard is set, but that makes it very hard for the other side to respond without crossing the standard’s line.

Excellent points and specific examples.

I think the more a site exists to have these kinds of contentious, complex dicussions – race, gender, gun control, cars vs. bicycles, whatever you can think of tends to be a flash point online – the more sophisticated their ruleset needs to be to handle it.

It’s often easier to say “look, we only discuss X here, if you want to discuss Y _in depth_, please do that elsewhere” if your site can have a narrow enough focus.

(As for your specific examples, I’d say “SJW” is immediately a pejorative label that should be disavowed as a matter of policy, and “bless your heart” is clearly condescending… but mostly _not necessary_ to the discussion so it shouldn’t have been included. Stick to the already-quite-complex discussion without throwing in a bunch of extra language that can be “interpreted” differently. Stick to the facts, plain and simply as you can.)

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