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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Thank you so much!

This makes me pretty unimpressed with OP. For one thing, this isn't a post "explaining the rules of the subreddit," as OP claims. It's an opinion from an ordinary user. It's also preceded by several important caveats that make it less inflammatory than if it had started from the place where OP begins their quote. Also, it's from nine years ago -- how far did they have to dig in order to find something they could quote out of context in order to make it sound suitably threatening?

@KingKong, I don't think you posted this in good faith. You omitted important context. You didn't provide a link so people could check. And you lied about what the post actually was.

You should be ashamed. The culture war is hot enough without misrepresenting things deliberately in order to cause drama.

To be fair, at least on the old.reddit configuration, this page is linked under "Policy on Trans Women and Dating" on the right side bar under "Important things to read!"; on new!reddit, it's available from the "Friendly Reminder: Please Read AL's Policies Before Posting", under "AL's Official Policies" header, right after the "Self-Picture (Selfie) Policy", again as "Policy on Trans Women and Dating." which implies it was accepted at least as of three years ago. I think it's reasonable to take it as the official rules of the subreddit, and I would genuinely expect it to still be enforced.

On the gripping hand, the third Official Policy notice is to a long-deleted "Please Read: Labels and Sexual Orientation Policy" (original), so there's clearly some link rot going on. And I do agree that it's chopped at least a bit out of context and limitations.

Oh, I see! That makes a bit more sense, then. Thanks for clarifying, and sorry to @KingKong for assuming the worst.

If there are existing rules posts by subreddit mods that say this, then OP should have posted one of them! Then calling it a post "explaining the rules of the subreddit" would not have been a lie, and we could have had this conversation on a sound, truthful basis.

This nit-picking reminds of the "law vs commentary" legal case where some US state didn't make clear if commentaries on its laws are legally binding, but still considered them non-public domain.

Here, there is no ambiguity, as @gattsuru points out, and expecting leniency from reddit mods, particularly of a sub as politically charged as the one under discussion, is misguided.

Just because a distinction doesn't matter to you, that doesn't mean it couldn't possibly matter to anyone on a forum like this, where we aim for breadth of worldviews. Accuracy matters. I like to know exactly what I am commenting on.

With that said, I was unaware that this post had in fact been officially linked to, and have therefore apologised for jumping to an unflattering conclusion. I'll be posting a longer reaction to the substance of the matter at hand in a bit, now that I've been able to get the details I needed.