Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4050367-20140130001358/@comment-1038387-20140201101825

Sci100 wrote: I talked with the user a little bit, and they wanted a new rule about the usage of "God", basiclly prohibiting its usage because "its insulting to say anyone or anything is god". Also, this user is Muslim (so please keep that in mind when you respond).

Now, this user left chat before I could continue, but I did type up a response to that. Is this the right thing to say? I don't want to say the wrong thing and cause a huge turmoil over it.

Well... that's what I came here to talk to you about. Even though you have your own personal beliefs about the usage of "God", other people may not have the exact same views. Keep in mind that most people aren't treating their fan fiction like actual living, breathing, almighty and omnipotent beings of existence. Its purely fiction. And to create a rule basically blacklisting the word "God" from the wiki would be infringing on everyone's rights, as this is a multi-religion, multi-racial place. We all come from different backgrounds, and  you can't change that. So, if you do not want to use "God" like that, by all means do that. However, you shouldn't demand people rename pages, add warnings, and not use what is considered to be proper names for comic book/novel groups (like DC's "The New Gods", Egyptian Gods in the Rick Riordian series, etc). The best thing to do is just to ignore it, because you can't FORCE people to not use a certain word in their pages/on chat. You can't change others, only yourself.

"Gods" is such a broad term. "Deities" doesn't have the same poeticness and gravitas, and is usually only used if you want to include both Gods and Goddesses. "Gods" is not specific to one religion, but if there were to be content using one (active) religion's character names, like Mohammed or Jesus or the Messiah, you could employ a bit of self-censorship.