Jim Henderson (hendersj@gmail.com) wrote:
On 07/22/2014 01:24 AM, Richard Brown wrote:
With the following in consideration, I ask that you respect the wishes of the openSUSE Forum team and comply with their request, removing the religious passage from your signature when posting to the openSUSE Forums/Newsgroups Thank you, Richard.
The purpose of our enforcement of the rule is simply that, as a private forum, anything that's included in a post that includes content of a religious nature is prohibited. That avoids the discussion of "well, you let Felix post his bible passage, but you wouldn't let me post a passage from [insert religious text of some other belief system there]!"
A semantic discussion about the meaning of the word "content" is superfluous, because we have made it clear what the intent of the rule is - to uniformly say "our forums are not a place for religious topics, discussions, or text."
The actual content of the verse isn't at issue here. The inclusion of religious material is. The way we enforce this rule is by not focusing on the content itself, but rather that it is of a religious nature.
Our purpose is to support users in the use of openSUSE. Our purpose is not to provide a forum for religious debate or discourse; there are plenty of such places on the Internet where that is perfectly acceptable.
We have had to ask users to remove religious signatures before, or to not post topics (even in soapbox) of a religious nature. Every single time they have expressed understanding as to why the rule is in place and have been fine with it because we enforce it uniformly, regardless of their religion.
Felix, your signature may be fine on the mailing lists; they've established that it is. The forums are not the mailing lists.
+1 - thanks Jim, this is an excellent post and I agree 100% with everything you say. This whole discussion is an unpleasant time sink which in itself is a good reason to enforce the rule without exception. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-web+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-web+owner@opensuse.org