Rejected Ban Politically Inciteful Usernames

[lickitungismyfav]

Showdown has multiple policies which make the battle simulator an inviting space for a diverse group of people. Currently, politically inciteful usernames are allowed and some showdown members use them. I believe that obviously political usernames can be a form of “trolling” even if the named user does not have ill-intent.

When someone interacts with Showdown, a political username can instigate and users don’t have a personal choice to avoid someone’s name in certain instances, such as a battle. The political usernames have the potential to translate into argumentative chat which breaks Showdown’s current chat rules; flaming, trolling, and general toxicity.

I personally believe that politics do not belong in Showdown in the first place. I am not a moderator, but preventing political usernames may reduce moderator’s workload because it would avoid political disputes in chat. A well known national election is coming around the corner so rule breaking instances may become more prevalent.

I propose that political nicknames should be banned from Pokémon Showdown. I am very open to different solutions, but I do believe that the current lack of rules addressing political usernames is an issue.

Thank you for your time!

 

[Adeleine]

'ban political' is pretty vague. i and many others would call 'gay rights', 'stop climate change', and 'i support ukraine' political, and these should not be banned from usernames.

if it's for a person or ideology that spews hateful stuff, i can get where youre coming from, but that is already partially enforced, like ps doesn't allow 'hitler' in your name

 

[lickitungismyfav]

'ban political' is pretty vague. i and many others would call 'gay rights', 'stop climate change', and 'i support ukraine' political, and these should not be banned from usernames.

if it's for a person or ideology that spews hateful stuff, i can get where youre coming from, but that is already partially enforced, like ps doesn't allow 'hitler' in your name

I agree. I by no means am calling for banning any username that can be deemed political (your examples).

I was thinking of hypothetical usernames like 'Bolsanaro_save_bz', 'TrumpWon' or 'JoeBiden2024'/vice versa.

Those names under current rules are allowed and just serve to make people angry/troll and have no place in Showdown imo.

I think "a person or ideology that spews hateful stuff" is a great baseline of what shouldn't be permitted.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I don’t think PS mods should really be in the business of enforcing any sort of “political” bans in usernames, as it’s both unfair to ask them to do so and also way too wide open as to interpretation on what is and isn’t allowed. There’s already rules, to my knowledge, of disallowing usernames rooted in hateful speech/hateful ideology. There are also rules against harassing other users, which can be in the form of inciting them purposefully through changing your username to something you know is harassing them (even if it would be otherwise an allowed username). So these things should already be covered and going any further just calls for extra unnecessary moderation that I don’t think most people want, nor do I think most moderators want that kind of responsibility.

 

[Linkin Karp]

While I get where the OP is coming from and strongly sympathize with their sentiment, I see no way this won't lead into chaos.
For one there's the issue of "political" having a vague definition, as argued by Adeleine. I do not want to play on a Showdown where anything implying LGBT topics is banned from usernames (even though I personally don't have alts like that, many friends do), and this is what many similar neutrality policies in real-world politics have led to in practice.
A much bigger problem I see is that of dogwhistling, and especially the alt-right provocateur crowd that OP likely has in mind being very adept at it. One prominent user in the old-gen community that I will not name has a Smogon username that is in itself edgy yet unproblematic, however the original PS alt that the alias stemmed from had the suffix "NIQ_Q(ER)", which suddenly makes the short form very racist given the context. This player, and others with similar attitudes, have made a multitude of PS alts over the years that derived from elaborate 4chan dogwhistles, relishing in their plausible deniability and making it very unpleasant to play tour games against them if you do know the coded meaning. Frankly, I would much rather keep playing against "TRUMPPENCE2024" or even edgy open pro-Russian sentiment alts than having these dregs of society get away with their encoded racial slurs while possibly prohibiting others from letting their opinions colour their name choice.

 

[gay catgirl commie]

Those names under current rules are allowed and just serve to make people angry/troll and have no place in Showdown imo.

disagree

I think "a person or ideology that spews hateful stuff" is a great baseline of what shouldn't be permitted.

this is difficult to enforce, to put it mildly. the current policies are fine (if also a little hard to enforce)

 

[Teclis]

This forum is meant for technical suggestions, not policy ones, but I'll still reply for the record.

As Adeleine said, "political" is way too vague of a concept to be banned as a whole, and as such is not mentioned in our username rules. We often get reports of problematic usernames that could fall under this category, but those are considered on a case by case basis by the staff member who handles the report depending on their appreciation of:

• the stance's implication towards certain groups
• whether or not there might be a baiting intent
• how strongly the username is worded
• whether the user talks unprompted in chat about their position/uses PS as a preaching platform in addition to their username

We do not draw any kind of line because it would not be realistic; PS is an international platform on which countless individuals with different cultures, life experiences and conditions gather because of their shared passion for Pokémon. All of them have different sensibilities towards different matters, staff members included. Forbidding all usernames and discussions pertaining to real world matters is definitely not the way to go. From there, we as a staff can only bring good faith and open mindedness to the table to make sure everyone can enjoy our site as much as possible.

There will be differences in treatment, there will be difficult situations based on the geopolitical context, there will be people upset they were forcerenamed, or that the people they reported were no, but if the alternative is to prevent everything "political", with the concept itself being undefined, then we will have to accept it. This comes with diversity after all. On this matter as with a lot of others, we will act to maintain the best compromise we can find between everyone's user experience/goal to have a good time online and capacity to express themselves.

The above are my genuine feelings, but if you find it to be too long to read for nothing, I'll try to sum it up in a couple lines:

No. We wish it was that easy, we really do, but online communities the size of ours don't and can't work like that. We do and will keep doing our best to maintain a reasonable balance, but have to accept it will only ever be a sum of case by case matters.