A Pragmatic Policy on Dealing With Gratuitous Political Insults
How do you like it when a writer disparages groups of people? I hope this policy will help me respond without getting angry
After I wrote a story about writers who repeatedly violate Medium’s rules against hateful and harassing content, commenters left probing questions. Assuming goodwill by the great majority of people here, we’re just trying to figure out where the lines are and what we can legitimately write about.
In response to a helpful exchange with Roz Warren, Writing Coach, I wrote that I was “thinking about taking a small stand against gratuitous political swipes.” I told her that “casual insults about people’s politics is going to be a hard line for me.”
To which Roz sensibly asked how I would practically implement this policy. My first thought was to create a simple scoring system, depending on how often an author injects needless political swipes into a story.
James’s Political Insult Policy (v1, beta version)
How many times does the author violate Medium Rules on hateful or harassing language? (See details about the Rules below.)
- 1–2 times, I will give the writer a free pass. We all…
