Forum:Clarifying/amending general policies

I don't intend for this thread to be a rehash of a recent incident that I feel we should now all move on from but some of the controversies surrounding it have led me to bringing this up.

Recently an incident occurred on IRC where two users had said a word that's widely considered as a homophobic slur, despite not being used with the intention of homophobia but is still inappropriate regardless, which resulted in both users receiving a temporary ban from the channel. The bans had received voiced opposition from several users despite the fact that our general policies state: Inappropriate words, such as cuss words and other profanity, are strictly forbidden on articles, userpages, usernames, discussion pages, and in the Forums. This wiki caters to a general audience!
 * If an inappropriate word is used it will result in a block time of one (1) day. The corresponding policy for IRC, and by extension Chat, doesn't state anything about terms that are inappropriate other than that enforcement against profanity is much more lenient so given that Chat and IRC are technically an extension of the wiki, the same polcies apply more or less as far as I'm concerned. This isn't the first time that this type of issue has come up but if there's opposition to bans that are justified according to policies then maybe we need to reconsider what policies we're enforcing.

Now to leave that particular matter in the past and move on to the matter at hand which is the subject of this thread. I don't disagree with the thought that some of our policies are either outdated, confusing or sparse but I feel as a wiki it is very important that we make things like this clear for the sake of all users, administrators included.

With that said, I think these proposed polcies from a little while back are a good jumping off point. For the IRC and Chat rules, I'm thinking we state something like "All users are bound by the general policies" then state the corresponding guidelines on profanity, bots and whatever else.

If anybody wants to suggest any amendments to the proposed policies then feel free to do so in this thread. 14:22, November 20, 2013 (UTC)