What is too offensive?

If that was actually his original intention that might be true, but that's not the case here. Pretending he was baiting everyone is just his last ditch effort to save face. Just like his attempts to accuse people of overreacting and panicking when the truth is that people merely truthfully answered his question and calmly and politely explained the consequences.

It's the inverse of that; he's a terrorist first, and since there is a correlation between terrorists and the middle east, the association follows through. As to whether or not it is a bad idea, Achmed the dead terrorist and all of his popularity say no, it is not a bad idea. Especially when done comically.


You'd be amazed how much more useful this is than just saying "if you have to ask...". Thank you for posting this, and I do wish that the EULA had a search function. The question of course, was over the offensiveness of the name, and I have the information I came for.


It is a common approach to juxtaposing a sample against the population as a whole. The parameters of any particular sample need to be taken into consideration, and as it happens the forums are pivoted toward negativity. Therefore, the response on the forums will be more negative than the in-game response. This needs to be taken into consideration as well as anticipated. Of course, expected more negative responses than the standard gaming population isn't against the rules. Though so far the reaction has been a lot stronger than I expected. That I will admit. Even Forbin has to go all "He's just an idiot" on me. And seriously, how many times does someone have to say "You'll still get reported" before they realize it has already been said.


Of course, the thread is no longer about the name anymore. So now, since apparently everyone is "respectfully answering" my question, I'm going to have to prove that no, they are not.

Ah, so now you have yet another agenda.

Then Blood Red Arachnid went on to prove that black is white and got killed at the next zebra crossing.

Holding a terrible racial caricature up as an example of something that is okay to do is not the best way to bolster your argument.

That said, it honestly would not surprise me if you got generic'd for the Admiral Ackbar part over the terrorist part, just since that's a lot more clear-cut and people have been generic'd for less flagrant violations.

I've got to step in here.

Would it be any better if he named it Danny o'Mite? After all, the Irish had their fair share of terrorists. And I'd be willing to bet more than a few British families still think N. Ireland over Middle East when it comes to terrorism - even though that's been past for a while now.

Honestly, *EVERY* race/creed/color/religion has spawned terrorists (or "freedom fighters," I suppose, depending on what side of the equation you're on.) What if I made a white, late-1800s-ish US soldier, a Nec/Poison MM, and called him.... oh, Blanket Statement? Might take a bit for some people to catch on to the reference....

The OP, to me, is taking a concept (the terrorist - a concept, by the way, that isn't restricted to the middle east, even in comics/cartoons) and using one of the puns it opens up, name-wise - one that ties into (mostly by "homage" definition) another popular property.

And, quite honestly, I *don't* think it'd fall any more afoul of the quoted bit of the EULA than someone portrayed as some ultra-nationalist yelling "For king and country" as they shot people. It's the character. It's not aimed at a race or religion, etc. even as it uses a phrase associated with it - any more than saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes is invoking or intentionally referring to Christianity.

Frankly, I think the character - as described, once described fully - would be less offensive than many I see running around in the game.

This statement implies so many insulting things it is hard to explain them all. First, by stating that I am not using "common sense" it is accusing me of being an insincere idiot. By stating that I already know that the players will be upset about the character, it is assuming that I am trolling the forums and am going to troll the entire game in general. By having to elaborate over every single little step about how something gets reported and actioned, it assumes that I do not know how the report system works, he is implying that I am either ignorant of the entire system, or too stupid to figure it out. Tally up the marks, and see just how rude Snowglobe is being in just two sentences.

Of course, this doesn't answer my question. That whole "Ask = No" mentality doesn't fly because there are many instances in my life where I have asked, and it has been O.K.. Ergo, the whole point of asking.

Case 2

Missed the point, again reiterating that I somehow do not know what petitions are and am therefore stupid.

Case 3

Again, reiterating that I somehow do not know what petitions are and am therefore stupid.

Case 4

Ya think? Missed the point again about "rule of thumb", but this is the point where it becomes redundant to ridiculousness. I never asked how people get petitioned, I never asked why people get petitioned, and I never asked what happened when people get petitioned. I asked if the name and character concept is too much. So why, pray tell, and I hearing about the process so much? It certainly isn't because people have assumed I am an intelligent person who understands the system and am aware of it's inner workings.

Case 5

At this point he has moved from the idiocy angle and gone straight for maliciousness. By reiterating the same point... again... he is implying that I am stupid and have not heard it the past three times it was said. Also by assuming that I am attempting to justify breaking the rules, he has lumped me into some cartoonish version of a troll. It isn't even about the character concept at the end: it is about me now. He is attacking me, arguing about me, and this is as far as you can go in the opposite direction of respect.

Case 6

This is an implication that I am mentally immature enough to be incapable of hearing people say "No, the name will get generic'd". This is nothing short of being argumentive and being an insult, since the post prior to this one where I say I can just go for a namechange (which, obviously, is saying that I have heard enough and now know that the name won't fly). Morbid couldn't have missed it, since he was quoting the very message that contained it.


And this summarizes the dis-respect from the first page. Now, there were plenty of posts that weren't an attempt to debase me. There is no doubt about that. But of course, the issue here isn't about whether or not there respectful posts. The issue is whether or not there are disrespectful posts, which Forbin denies exists. Now, on to page two.

Case 7


I can assume that Morbid just didn't understand me when I mentioned the whole shifted demographic perception and gauging viable responses to extrapolate to the player base. I can also assume Mordid did understand and is just being malicious. That is a gray area.

Case 8

This one isn't as bad as the others, but this one is implying a high level of immaturity on my part.


And the implicit disrespect in Forbin's post makes my final case 9. Though since this is directed at Forbin, I'm not sure that I really need to prove how rude he has been. It should be implicit, since that post did nothing to contribute to the thread other than be a dig against me by setting up a false dilemma between troll and liar.







Now, since people have posted things while writing this, I will now get to those posts.

Pretty much, yeah. After post 15 this thread ceased being about a fishy mastermind.

The idea was a terrible racial caricature. This is assuming that terrible racial caricatures can be incredibly popular, since Achmed is quite popular.


Now to end it, the following posts prior to this rather ridiculous premise I have to dispel *were* respectable: #3, #5, #8, #13, #16, #19, and #22. The posts #12, #14, and #18 were funny. No comment on any posts not mentioned.

No, it wouldn't be better. What the hell is wrong with you that you think it is?

Blood, all I'm seeing from you is a lot of nitpicking over details and generally being argumentative (listing people whose responses you didn't like? seriously?), which is clearly what spawned this thread to begin with. You're obviously trying to justify this to somebody (GMs, yourself, I dunno).

Man, I should have just stuck with my original response because I don't even

Hey, I appreciate how you cut out most of my post (despite it already being quite short) to make it look more condescending. In case you've forgotten, here is your original post:
I didn't see any mention of how fun you find it in there, or whether it would be "worth it". The only question in the whole post is asking whether NCSoft is "cool with that". We answered: no, they are not (and we aren't, either). In fact, this is the same point I made in my previous post: that people were responding to the question you actually asked, instead of the question you then started claiming you'd asked. In short, you're hearing about the process so much because it answers the question you posed.

Lastly, the "if you have to ask, don't do it" rule of thumb applies specifically to this kind of problem: if you think the character might be offensive, somebody out there thinks the character is DEFINITELY offensive, and will report you for it if you ever meet. It's not a rule for life in general, and attempting to cite counterexamples from elsewhere is a bit silly.

This very thought was on my mind as well.
And... love the name of the last character!

Not that I am providing positive feedback toward the OP question(s), but just a simple pondering.
I imagine it is another matter of time. What is current and what is not. Different things of differing scales tend to last longer for the average masses to feel offended by.
Whether or not any of us agree with someone getting offended... it doesn't make those offended less valid (offended is offended... Yes, there are always two sides of extreme, but hey, that's the way it is). That becomes the tricky bit... 'what's too extreme and who decides?'.
In the end, I suppose it just comes down to whether or not you want to be that guy (regardless of what criteria and equations you use to work it out).

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I suppose I could list all of the posts that I thought were cool, while listing all of the reasons why they were cool. However, last I checked, no one is contesting that (stay with me now), and also I did give a nod to the posts that I liked. I could also suppose that GMs aren't influenced by the posts of people in the thread when they review it, but many past experiences has taught me that they are.

Case 1 was the first reply to this topic, and continually set the tone. But wait, you're convinced I'm trolling. Do you think I am simply lying when I say that I haven't made the toon? Because there is, like, no good that can come from that. What am I supposed to say? "No"? You have to understand that just sitting around accusing someone of endlessly lying does nothing more than aggravate the situation and insult the accused.


If you end the post on that note, it is rude and disrespectful, despite the content of the rest of the post. I would cut parts out of posts to save space, and to deal with the important part without having to constantly reference its location within the text. There is nothing to gain in doing otherwise.

Second, I never "claimed" to have asked a different question. That second post is a little more background information as to why I had wanted to make the toon. Hence, why I opened up with "The reason why I asked is..." on my second post in the thread. Allow me to reiterate all of the subsequent posts that occurred prior to this thread becoming "argumentative":

Does not replace the initial question, merely explains the motive by adding non-essential information.


Does not replace the question. It explains the flaw in the "rule of thumb" reasoning, as denoted by the opening statement about the rule of thumb.

Explaining the process for how petitions are filed and run does nothing to answer the question. If you view them standalone, they contribute nothing to the process of affirming or denying. I don't need to know exactly how food is digested to know if it is healthy, I don't need to know exactly how a car runs in order to be old enough to drive one, I don't need to know how to run a typerwriter to know whether or not a book is good, I don't need to know how a house is built to buy one, I don't need to know M-theory to know that a stone falls when I drop it, and likewise I don't need to know how a petition is filed and actioned to know whether or not a particular concept will be petitioned. How anyone would think otherwise baffles me, and how anyone would assume I don't know what happens baffles me more so since it is the first sentence of the original post in this thread.

The rule of thumb here doesn't apply, because there have been multiple cases in my life where, after being unsure and asking, that something was O.K. The whole point of asking is when things fall into a gray area and you want to know which side of the gray line it falls. Another "rule of thumb" is that out there somewhere in this game is going to be a player who will take offense to something that isn't really offensive and will petition it, and it will not be acted upon because the GM will see that there isn't a problem there. So to that end, the fact that a question is asked does not answer the question.

Right, that's exactly the kind of counterexample I was saying is totally irrelevant, because the rule of thumb is for this specific situation. If you're creating a character that you think might be offensive (terrorists are funny!), somebody out there will probably think it is definitely offensive (thanks for that reminder of deep personal real-world loss while playing a video game!).
Sure, but that doesn't particularly contradict the first rule of thumb, which is that if you're worried about it, someone else will probably be legitimately offended. If it isn't offensive at all, you wouldn't be worried about it.

Or you could assume that I was advising you that making a thread specifically to 'draw ire' (which IS what you said you were doing) might, in fact, violate the forum rules. The rules don't make exceptions for doing so as a demographic study. You weren't going to get a meaningful sample size anyway.

There was no malice intended on my part. I didn't actually report the post and I wouldn't have reported that name if I saw it in game (a name has to be REALLY bad before I do that.)

This is the last post I will be making in this thread. My honest advice to you is to not post further either and just let the thread die.

1. I believe that you have made or intend/intended to make this character, what I'm suggesting is that you know full well that it will offend people and most likely get genericed, but you're asking anyway because you need to justify it, possibly in order to dodge genericing (my goodness that's an awkward gerund), or just to set yourself up as a victim.

2. I'm really done with this thread. I'll be over in General Discussion, since you're already up on the cross.

Explaining the purpose of questions is not a counter-example. If you take the rule of thumb for this situation and continually apply it over and over again you end up with a ridiculous outcome. The issue then becomes about whether or not you should ask the question about whether or not an idea is O.K., and this continually pushes the line further. No, what is important is the threshold for when something is actionable and something isn't in respect to the GMs of CoH. There must be a debatable line where the threshold can be crossed, and if this line exists then it must be possible for someone to be uncertain of this line, and finally it must be possible for someone to ask a question about the location of this line. The rule of thumb then forms a conundrum: it applies except when it doesn't. That is no help.

The rule when combined with the first creates a very big problem: You have to be worried about all of your toons, since being generic'd by an easily offended individual is an inevitability under that standard. The inverse is also true: It is possible to be generic'd and not be worried about your toon. So again, this is no help. What really contributes to the thread are things like these:

Anyway

Ah, so it is a misunderstanding. To explain a bit more then: the ire was directed particularly at those individuals who were going to be unreasonable about it. There are plenty of people who will say that it will be reported and the concept won't work without believing I'm a horrible person for the idea, and that is the most important part. The question is ultimately yes/no, and these results are shifted toward yes automatically since it is on the forums. "Yes" being the negative. It's really simple in practice. It boils down to "Post this question, keep in mind that people are more likely to be negative on the forums than the actual playerbase". I'm fairly certain I won't have to go through some lengthy argument with multiple people over unrelated facets if I just put this into the help chat. But I also won't get more detailed feedback.

The easily offended are also kind of gauged to see the likelyhood of a toon getting petitioned. If all I got in responses was "Yeah, it might get petitioned, but I wouldn't petition you", then I probably would've made the toon anyway since no one would have had a problem with it. As for the forum rules, I haven't seen anything in this forum to show that Moderators cater heavily to the easily offended. This is also the reason why I am not going all "tattle tail" every time someone says something condescending.

1. So asking about it on the forums = not suddenly actioned by a GM in game? I don't get where that line of reasoning comes from. My concern was about how NC would react to the concept should it be petitioned (because I am paranoid and assume it will happen to all my toons at one point or another), and that question has been answered in that no, a clever mixing of modern culture to a turn of phrase will probably still be actionable despite there being no profound statement in the idea. From there, it just became a numbers game where I wait for that 1% of people who might do something about it to show up. There is enough evidence here to show that the 1% exists.

2. Because no one on the internet has ever been wronged. Ever. And people have never been rude to someone in a matter that was not a direct insult. Never.





Well, Tenzhi, I asked about it because right now my account has itself a "perfect record" regarding these thing. Though I don't think there is anything bad that happens if you get a toon generic'd, I haven't heard anyone explicitly say that there wasn't anything else that could happen from it, so I err on the side of caution.

I've not had anything bad come from it. Though in my case it was a costume that got nixed... twice. The costume still exists after the second time, though with slightly modified colours as discussed between me and support. I imagine that if one makes a true nuisance of one's self one might end up suspended or banned, but that would be related to one's ongoing conduct rather than an instance of debatable indiscretion. Of course, this, too, probably comes back around to that 'sole discretion' thing.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Let's look at what the rule actually is, as Snow Globe stated in the first reply:
Do you feel the need to ask if it will be OK to use the Witch top with skin? Or whether your red-colored slime aura will be too disgusting to behold? Or whether the Valkyrie boots will offend someone who holds a family grudge against Vikings for raiding their farm a few score generations ago? I doubt it. Thus, the rule doesn't apply to them. Of course, it's only a rule of thumb, so it's not perfect: a character that you weren't worried about can get reported and that report acted upon, or one that you were worried about might turn out OK. That's why we call it a rule of thumb, because it isn't perfect, and doesn't tell the whole story. I mean, it has "probably" right there in the rule itself. Still, it's generally a good rule, which is why it's become the rule of thumb (you know we didn't just make it up for this thread, right?). It certainly applies in this specific case.

I find it odd that you've become so defensive over some people saying vaguely disrespectful things to you on a message board, yet have even entertained the idea that it's OK to drag modern mass murder into a game of escapist fantasy, as long as you have enough fun with it, and anybody who gets upset at you dredging up memories of their murdered relative, or vaguely implying their race/religion makes them a terrorist, is just too easily offended.

By the way, you might try totally avoiding the issue by making your character part of a fictional terrorist group, rather than a real one? Crusader Resistance, maybe.

Well said.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I'm offended that the NDT gif about badassery is in this thread.

But I mean what I said. It's quite obvious that you're going to disregard what we say and create your possibly offensive character anyway. I'm just saying if it does get generic'd, don't complain about it since you knew what you were getting into when you go make it.