Death threats have so far, been meaningless on the internets. Called attacks on locations on the other hand, such as schools, should be immediately reported & anyone who's residing in the same country can easily do that with a phone call to the authorities. No moderation required.

Racism is a meaningless word, as far as I'm concerned & the fallback insult of anyone who has lost a discussion. When it comes to the point that a white man is automatically racist just for being alive, yet banning him from a possible job at something like the BBC based solely on the colour of his skin is NOT considered racist, then I think it's time to take that word behind the barn & end its misery forever. Sorry.

Not to mention moderating on "racist" queues is exactly the tip on one such moderating iceberg of problems looming into view. It's all downhill on a slippery slope from there. Again, sorry but I do not agree.

All of which will cease immediately with me as God-Emperor.

As far as racism goes, I'm specifically talking about slurs here.

Hum hum, a paid mod isn't a guarantee of being unbiased and even more if he/she is working alone. If we wanna complain about some "undeserved treatment", will we have to go through him/her or will there be a possibility to report some mod abuse to other people from the staff?

And much importantly, when compared to other forums, GOG forumers are very spread worldwide with various sense of humor, customs and beliefs. The cultural clash which sometimes happens is what makes this place interesting and it would be sad if this place becomes too bland :(

I'm not sure we could take the influx of grilled burgers, though.
Meaningless, true, but usually not permitted on any forum with any reasonable amount of moderation.

True. Too true. Well, GOG forum shall merge with worldwide chapters of BBQ Pit Boys barbecue & motorcycle club, so that takes care of that problem. Next.

Due to the many alts, the moderator wouldn't be able to keep up only with warnings.
EDIT for clarity
The power to also ban temporarily is quite necessary.

Don't worry, I appreciate a good discussion :) I guess we have a fundamentally different opinion here though.

My point is that it's really not okay for any civilised public community to accept its members to be exposed to racism, sexist behaviour and the like, and tools should be in place to do something about that. Since giving these tools to its regular members is out of the question, I'm of the opinion that therefore the forum owners should uphold these basics of civilised interaction instead.

Oh, and on a personal, but related note - I can cope with this behaviour just fine (learned to a long time ago). I work in an environment where I have to deal with such behaviour on a weekly basis. When I'm at home, relaxing and enjoying my free time, I *could* ignore them, but I don't want to even have to :)

Well, the warning is the proper prelude to a ban of any sort. Seems a little unfair to me to ban somebody without any indication or without allowing them to at least try to defend themselves first.

I'd love to see some of those people try to defend themselves. :P

I agree here. If you need an example of what happens if no tools are in place for it, you only need look at 4chan. They have the reputation they do for a reason.
Maybe they'd be bad at it, but they at least deserve a chance. As I said, you can't just spring up a ban out of nowhere.

Well, I'm of the opinion that nobody should give any importance to slurs.

This is one of the things that you have to *teach* people to be offended at.

More importantly, if no one pays any attention to a person outraged by a slur, that person will eventually stop caring about it.

Look, grown ups are just children with no parental supervision. The same rules apply. If you just casually dismiss most of their bullshit, they'll stop creating a fuss over every little thing.

Please call me cracker, or cracka or honkey all you want. If somebody tells me I'm blinding them with my whiteness, I don't get mad - I just tan harder!

Isn't it time to stop being so divisive?

Somehow I don't like the idea of banning at all.

Here's the thing:

Suppose that, for years, people have been calling you "fag" as an insult while bullying you. This experience is very likely to color your view of that particular term.

Now, imaging if people started calling you "fag" on the forums. Wouldn't that bother you in that case?

Another thing I should point out: A person's name is an important part of that person's identity. By calling that person a name that person does not wish to be called, you are disrespecting the person's identity, and are therefore disrespecting the person.

Just because you are okay with being called $SLUR doesn't mean that other people would be.

(The only way to be sure that something is OK is to explicitly ask the person you're referring to.)

What is racist/sexist to one person might not be racist/sexist to another.

If you'd like to take a shot at creating a comprehensive definition to use for determining whether a given post is racist/sexist/etc., I'll take a shot at trying to "break" the definition.

The regular members do have a few tools to help deal with these things. The official ones only work on a post-by-post basis, but they can work.