After discussing it for a handful of days, the HC has been changed to now reflect a more lenient approach. Zero tolerance is no longer in effect. Instead, the policy will now be "I know it when I see it".

What this means is that instead of taking a strict, across the board stance on a subjective community violation, we're going to instead leave it up to the moderator's discretion. Intent is a critical part of HC, after all. The past two or so months of the zero tolerance policy has shown that it's ultimately counter-productive in reducing the intended behavior. Instead, we've only given out more HC bans than a small site like this really needs, and good users that would otherwise not break rules or say hate speech have received vios.

I also want to say thank you for being patient with the team on this one. HC has been nothing short of a lengthy conversation any time it's been brought up in mod quarters, and I can understand user frustration with this. I hope this change is one that can satisfy the most amount of people on the site while still upholding an important ethos.

Q. When will this change be effective?

A. Right now.

Q. Sweet! This means I can now say slurs right?

A. No. Slurs are still going to be moderated for HC. Zero tolerance is no longer in effect, but if you call someone a racial epithet, you're still going to receive a violation for it. This has never changed and never will.

Q. WTF remove my old vio now kthx

A. No.

Q. Can I say [insert negative opinion] without getting a HC vio now?

A. If you have to ask me this, then no, you can't.

Q. Why can't we just get rid of HC?

A. Because when we didn't have HC, openly black users would get KKK manifestos and racist cartoons PM'd to them with little to no consequence.

If you have any other questions, feel free to PM anyone on the mod team with your concern. Thank you for reading this. And try to be nice to each other, dorks.

hey bronies kind of messed up that a banned guy has two stickied threads in the main forums