Java Removing the Homophobia

99/100 times this word is being meant in an offensive way. I don't think it's smart to allow using it. Besides from that, it's a block game ~ you don't really need to express your sexuality in a game of eggwars with quite a few young children who just wanna play. There are plenty of other ways to tell your friends, Discord being one of them.

iLuvQwls said:

Well yes but blocking the words still gives (mature) people the impression that cubecraft thinks gay is bad.

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every decision we make is being disliked by at least some people. blocking gay might be weird to them, but from a community safety point of view it's a smart thing to do. this greatly reduces the amount of toxicity, plus young children aren't randomly confronted with this.

Keanu said:

every decision we make is being disliked by at least some people. blocking gay might be weird to them, but from a community safety point of view it's a smart thing to do. this greatly reduces the amount of toxicity, plus young children aren't randomly confronted with this.

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Other servers have faced massive controversy, for banning the discussion of LGBTQ+. It's actually a lot safer to have them be allowed.

Keanu said:

99/100 times this word is being meant in an offensive way. I don't think it's smart to allow using it. Besides from that, it's a block game ~ you don't really need to express your sexuality in a game of eggwars with quite a few young children who just wanna play. There are plenty of other ways to tell your friends, Discord being one of them.

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Keanu said:

every decision we make is being disliked by at least some people. blocking gay might be weird to them, but from a community safety point of view it's a smart thing to do. this greatly reduces the amount of toxicity, plus young children aren't randomly confronted with this.

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^ Bingo!

Keanu pretty much nailed it, but I thought I'd leave my opinion as well...

iLuvQwls said:

Hello, so I was at school and I was just browsing the forums. I was looking at camzondas thread about the chat filter. I learned that the words "gay" and "lesbian" are blocked. In testing this with a friend, I have confirmed that they are still blocked.

Please remove these words from the chat filter

There is literally nothing wrong with being gay and banning the word just kinda gives off the sense that cubecraft is homophobic.

If people are indeed using the word offensivly, then just report them. It's why we have the report system and the moderators.

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Think of it this way: Why would you need to use the words "gay" or "lesbian" in the context of an Egg Wars game? Or in a lobby? In most cases of the word being used, it's for malicious intent, and having it blocked is honestly for the best. I could never think of a time where I would need to say or explain anything regarding sexuality, especially to a game targeted to a younger audience. If this is a discussion you want to have with friends, it's best it takes place elsewhere.

Dualninja said:

Other servers have faced massive controversy, for banning the discussion of LGBTQ+. It's actually a lot safer to have them be allowed.

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There is a difference in disallowing the discussion and blocking words resulting in major toxicity. Yesterday alone, there have been 2506 messages blocked with the word ''gay''. I've checked the newest 100 messages, only 6 were meant in a non offensive way. 0,94x2506=2356 (Not the exact number, but a pretty accurate guess) messages were meant in an offensive or otherwise belittling way. If blocking gay saves our users from 2356 offensive messages every day, then I'm all in for blocking it.

Man this thread title is something else. I'll always be confused on what gives people the notion that banning those words equates to the server being homophobic.

People already said this while I was typing, but I think the word 'gay' and 'lesbian' being in the filter has to do less with oppressing sexual orientations than the fact that the words are used more often than not to insult someone. Because if anything, the last thing the team is, it's being anti-LGBTQ+.

I disagree. I just looked through the blocked messages that had “gay” in them and all of them were homophobic, insulting and deserve to be blocked. It’s not homophobic to block these words, we’re actually preventing these communities from being attacked and offended. I hope you understand.

If they remove the words from the chat filter and people start using them as swearwords ingame, I think that people who are actually part of the LGBTQ+ community would be more offended by someone calling them that than when the words are blocked.

iLuvQwls said:

Again, from the perspective of a normal player who is actually mature, I can tell you that banning the words just kinda sends the message that cubecraft is homophobic

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Again, the majority of our player base are younger children who just want to play a game off eggwars, not be confronted with terms regarding sexuality ~ especially not hatred towards the LGBTQIA+ community.

iLuvQwls said:

As I said, the report system and moderation team exist for a reason. If someone uses it offensively, just give them a 2 week mute for hate speech or something.

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And how many of them are going to be reported?

Just to follow up on what @Keanu has said:

We do not mute people for saying "I'm gay". This statement has no malice attached to it, and as a server, we're aware that we are reaching all places of the globe, and all groups of all different backgrounds, sexual orientations, genders, etc, and we are entirely inclusive of these players. As a result, it is a part of our duty of care to the community to protect these groups and ensure that the experience they have on our server is not one that has any potential to target and harm these groups.

iLuvQwls said:

As I said, the report system and moderation team exist for a reason. If someone uses it offensively, just give them a 2 week mute for hate speech or something.

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It's entirely possible that these players who see someone call them these insults will not report the player as they aren't aware that this exists, so expecting every player who uses "gay" as an insult to be muted or punished by our moderation system is unfortunately not possible.

The internets humour has devolved into a pretty interesting place where a fair majority of them use derogatory language to target these players - including insults such as "ur gay". And as a result, to protect those people, adding the word "gay" into the chat filter was our only option. I hope this clears some of our logic up.

CubeCraft is extremely proud to have a diverse & inclusive staff team & community, and we would never want to discriminate against anyone, intentionally or otherwise.

Our choice of banning "gay" and "lesbian" on our chat filter was an extremely carefully made decision by us, but ultimately we had to make the hard decision to block it due to the amount of people using it with the intention of being insulting or homophobic on our network. This decision is obviously constantly under review and it is possible that we may change our filtering around this at some point.

As a team we have and always will try our best to stand up for and champion LGBTQ+ rights, and we have strict rules against hate speech & discrimination against any minorities. It's just a hard truth that these terms are mostly used to just be discriminatory in-game. Our blocking of these terms doesn't mean that we have a blanket ban on talking about LGBTQ+ topics at all - we're just trying to prevent the use of abusive language.

I'm going to lock this thread now as I have a feeling that the replies here are going to quickly devolve into an argument or similar. Feel free to create another suggestion or staff feedback thread if you have anything further to add :)