Thread:Sannse/@comment-27740877-20200911065202

Just asking as a supporter of free speech and self-expression if it's really fully thought through to close down the LyricWiki for new additions/further editing because of -- from what I could gather -- the prevalence of "offensive lyrical content"?

See -- getting offended by lyrics, poetry, written text, whatever, is a completely subjective emotion. What might offend you, might be just fine for someone else. In a world of true equality, you should allow those voices to have their say that you don't necessarily agree upon. It really begins to seem to me like the proponents of the over-the-top politically correct culture are becoming those book-burners and "1984"-type newspeak copy editors who they at the same time claim to be so against and afraid of.

Besides, offensive lyrics, poetry or other textual self-expressions are nothing new under the sun, in case you haven't read the poetic works of i.e. Catullus, from Ancient Rome, you might want to take a look at how much "obscenities" he wrote back in his day; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_Catullus#Main_list

Or, forget just the "bad words", how about the Wikia/Fandom sites that revolve around i.e. horror movies, games, you name it -- that visually portray hideous atrocities in graphic nature, such as ones that the censorship & shutdown decision made last year was explicitly aiming to ban and remove from the site altogether?

If you use the LyricWiki censorship approach as a standard of what's acceptable and what's not, there's a lot of wikis under this site that should be just outright deleted, should that be the definition of moral grounds to do so. Where do you draw the line, and are you sure you're not imposing a double-standard or moving the goal posts while at it?

Words are just words, and however they are interpreted by the recipient is up to him, her &cetera. Of course there is literature -- and has been throughout history -- that has offended (and will offend) someone, for whatever particular reason. This type of sticking-the-head-in-the-sand wholesale approach to LyricWiki really feels quite absurd to me.

Any friend of literature and lyrical self-expression should be defending these rights of artists, not suppressing them. Well, good intentions tend to create a great paving to hell, that's for sure, but I surely hope that wasn't your intention?

As a long-time contributor (and with a wide spectrum of submitted lyrics - being ranked among the 200 top contributors over there), I find this kind of move mostly authoritarian if not totalitarian by nature, and it's really a shame that this well-working site has come to such a conclusion. We live in an era of digital history and locking up the LyricWiki and censoring can be seen as an act to suppress artistic self-expresion and the freedom to do so, as well as denying cultural heritage altogether -- even if you disagree with the lyrical content.

As you stated in a post regarding the issue; "We will be aggressively removing--", well, those words have likely been said by every known book-burner, history revisionist and totalitarian tyrant who have imposed their own will to create a replacement narrative in what is known as our collective history. Sad, but true.

Denialism often leads to delusionalism and as someone in the comments have pointed out, puritanism as well as authoritarianism, and from there we get to what is often called fascism. "*whoops.* It's a slippery slope after all!"

Just my take on this subject and something to (re)consider in terms of the LyricWiki, and if my opinion on the matter offended you, then I'm sorry to say that I'm not sorry. Once the censorship starts, as it has started, do you (as in; being the person responsble for this decision) know, again: where to draw the line yourself?

In other words: are you making your decisions (that in turn affect others) based on logical conclusions that can be rationalized, or has the decision to just deep-freeze the entire LyricWiki and to remove everything that is "offensive" merely based upon an emotional knee-jerk response because you don't want to see words on your screen that were in some way personally offensive to you? If latter is the case, then it can only be categorized as an authoritarian measure.

LyricWiki has an immense amount of visitors as well as a user base of extremly dedicated contributors, and I really do find it a downright cultural violation to lock it all up just like that, with practically no public discourse over that decision.

These are some of the questions to ponder, and just my take on it all, as I found out about LyricWiki having been locked just today, and noticed that all the discussion threads related to the topic had been closed.

Nonetheless, I hope you have a good day. Cheers. 