Subject: Re: bug#61325: 30.0.50; Jokes in GNUS manual

From: Po Lu <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2023 20:34:57 +0800

Ihor Radchenko <[email-masked]> writes:

> I agree with you that we cannot 100% guarantee that no single reader
> will be offended. However, it does not mean that we should have no
> boundaries whatsoever about what to talk about in the manual, especially
> in jokes, which do not carry essential information for understanding.
>
> On one hand, we don't want to cater every single possible offence (like
> text that offends a single person in the world, at extreme).
>
> On the other hand, we probably don't want to joke around universally
> disgusting/offending topics as, say, tortures described in details.

I am personally fine with such jokes.  That doesn't mean I approve of
torture, that just means I am not so offended by the mere existence of,
say, alt.torture, that I spend my time trying to erase it from the
internet.

What certain people are trying to do is to turn the world into their
personal echo chamber.  One person who works on GNU software is a
Buddhist.  I am jolly glad that I am not forced to be one as well;
similarly, he is glad that I do not try to impose my religious
viewpoints on to him.

Likewise, people should not force others to adopt their own lists of
offensive words.

> The above two are extreme boundaries.
>
> RMS suggested that we must avoid jokes that offends users of the
> software described in the manual.
>
> This is another boundary.

People who are easily offended will have no use for a newsreader.
Unless, of course, they get their internet service from Time
Warner Cable.

> I suggest avoiding topics __commonly__ known as sensitive at culture
> level.
>
> This is the boundary I propose here.
>
> You example with "blessed" is not something commonly known as offending,
> IMHO. "Sex" is.

Unlike certain self-righteous people who are offended by everything on
the internet, I recognize that ``blessed'' is used outside its religious
context, so if it was not clear from context, I don't actually find it
offensive, irrespective of what I think about religion.

What I do find offensive, as a person, is the implication that we as a
species are so sensitive to certain words that newsgroups must receive
the blessings of politically correct priests to continue to exist in a
manual.  Many people share this viewpoint, certainly more than those who
shout at a harmless joke in a newsreader's manual.