A proposal to establish policy regarding the torture and execution tags

Question

Although most questions tagged torture and execution are unquestionably well within the scope of Worldbuilding, some were or might have been inappropriate causing a discussion about the validity of continuing the tags.[1][2] The discussion is not new.[3][4][5] But this time it captured the attention of the SE Overlords.[6]

As is normal with high authority, the statements made by SE were delivered with a hammer. However, it has always been the culture of Stack Exchange to let the individual Stacks set their own rules — within limits. I have come to the opinion that @CesarM's Meta post was not a dictatorial action to shut down the torture and execution tags, but a warning that we must better police ourselves.

So, why am I posting this Meta question? Because as time has passed, it appears we have not settled on how do police ourselves. A recent comment chain argued that a question about the limits of human pain perception should be closed due to the warning given by our SE Overlords.¹ The discussion was predictably all-or-nothing. The goal of this policy is to create a standard that will help reviewers judge whether or not a question tagged torture and/or execution is "too much."²

Subjectivity

@Elemtilas points out a simple truth: everyone will have a different tolerance to vice. In the (in)famous U.S. court case Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964),[7] Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theatre in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was convicted of public obscenity for showing Louis Malle's 1958 movie The Lovers, which the State of Ohio felt was obscene. In the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the matter, we learn the basics of our problem:

The most famous opinion from Jacobellis, however, was Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence, stating that the Constitution protected all obscenity except "hard-core pornography". He wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

And that's our problem: when a question crosses the line, we're supposed to know it when we see it. Using violence as an example (although this can be applied to any vice), the complexity is that some will think little of depictions of violence that others would blanche over, some will react badly to violence where others seek to have nothing to do with it. And all that rests on the answer to a single question, "what's violence?"

The SE Overlords don't know any better than we do, save for one possibility: when somebody's parent contacts SE because they believe what we've posted on a publicly accessible site is objectionable, the threat of that lawsuit draws a line in the sand that I never expect SE to cross (nor should anyone here). As painful as it may seem, we are responsible for helping the company that provides the services we enjoy using free-of-charge to avoid unnecessary scrutiny — which means erring on the side of "decency," which is a word just as difficult to define as "violence." (Yup, we know it when we see it.)

Proposed Policy

Worldbuilding is about creating and consistently using rules for a fictional world of an individual's own creation. Questions about torture and execution are acceptable in a worldbuilding context under the following conditions:

• Questions asked here must be suitable for asking on Biology or Medical Sciences. If the method of asking the question would be considered too gratuitous for those sites, it's too gratuitous here. ("We accept a lot here as long as it's written in a clinical voice."[8])

• We allow real-world questions with worldbuilding context[9], but the purpose of this site is not to help a querent find the most³ gruesome, disgusting, disturbing, objectionable, or upsetting way to express a torture or execution — all of which are storybuilding. We will only help create the rules of torture and execution. This includes questions about methods, procedures, and consequences so long as the previous bullet is strictly adhered to and a specific and objective question is asked. Open-ended questions are strictly forbidden (as per the Help Center).⁴

• Questions that ask about the rules of torture and/or execution that are not tagged appropriately shall be immediately edited (by anyone) to include one or both tags as appropriate. This allows users who do not want to subject themselves to those topics to more easily avoid them. Users who disagree with the application of the tags are encouraged to ask about the issue here, in Meta, rather than engaging in an edit-war over the matter.

It is further proposed that the torture and execution tags be updated to include a link to this post so that querents interested in asking such questions have easy access to the discussion that led to this policy.

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_{¹ If you haven't realized by now that I'm still upset by how SE treated Monica Ciello... I can't help you.}

_{² "Too much" is obviously a subjective term. It is highly unlikely that we will come up with an entirely objective criteria by which all tagged questions can be easily judged.}

_{³ Please do not accept the superlative word "most" too literally. We're not here to help anyone find those descriptions to any extent. Per our help center, we don't help people build stories.}

_{⁴ Worldbuilding.SE is generally casual about open-ended "How could I X?" questions. But in this case, we will hold querents to a higher standard. It is not our job to explain to you how to create as much pain as possible or how to keep someone alive as long as possible. Perhaps the difference is, "could I do X and not kill someone instantly?" would be on-topic as an objective, clinical question while "how do I keep someone alive as long as possible?" would be closed as open-ended and gratuitous.}

Answer 1

I am UNANIMOUS in offering a raspberry to anyone from Corporate who tries to lord their authority over any community whose foundation is free interchange of ideas & speech within the limitations set forth by said community, and so am going to stand with JBH's proposal to define Worldbuilding's statement on self policing.

Caveat No. 1: defining "too gratuitous". No one from slutmongers to SCOTUS greats has ever been able to offer a more razor sharp definition than I'll know it when I see it, so I think you might want to consider some kind rewording of that bullet point.

I've answered a large number of medical queries here, several of which are quite explicit in their physiological gore factor. That's just the nature of the beast whenever we deal with questions of what goes in within the icky insides of animal life forms.

I have a very high threshold for what I consider to be "too icky". Other people here are ready to edit out even the merest mention of blood or other fluid leakages.

The take away is that you're not really going to be able to define what is "too gratuitous" in a way that will satisfy everyone. Although I understand the need to tone it down, we need to have some room for creatively on topic gore.

I think this will require some discussion & refinement.

Caveat No. 2: I concur in so far as such questions are obviously written in a story based manner. Those ought to be closed a/o edited as appropriate.

However, I reserve the right to entertain creatively on topic gruesome, disgusting, disturbing, objectionable, & upsetting so long as it stems from the "nature of the world", the culture, the history, or some other mechanics.

Problem No. 1: I concur with L. Dutch re bullet point No. 3. It's rather self contradictory to say we both will and also will not answer physiology queries. In so far as "how" refers to nerves & mind~brain perception, rather than matters of instrument.

Problem No. 2: Re 10 year old children, I hold that we ought to continue our (astonishingly) high level of discourse in this forum. This is honestly one of the best geopoetical forums you can leave an unattended ten year old child in on the entire internet.

Level of discourse is high; interactions are regularly civil; language is tame by comparison with forums on Reddit; respect for persons & ideas is high as well.

That said, I am not going recast what I say as if this were Strawberry Shortcake Land just because we might have some ten year olds in the audience. If they wander into the adult world, they're going to be exposed to adult concepts.

I concur that we must self regulate whenever the temptation to descend into the depths of what is rude, crude, vulgar, and violent comes to the fore! We should be more creative than to rely on crudity & vulgarity anyway!

Answer 2

I find the wording of the following statement self contradictory

We will answer questions involving the physiological aspects of torture and execution with one, overriding limitation: we will not explain how to cause pain.

When it comes to torture, I don't see how one can explain the physiological aspect without also explaining or implicitly suggesting how to cause pain. If X is well know to be painful, it's obvious that X is a way to cause pain.

Answer 3

It kind of feels like this is much to do about nothing. I was under the impression that both tags were gotten rid of, and in the time since I've been here I don't think I've seen one specifically torture or execution-related question. Going through the database reveals maybe three such questions in the last year? And most questions that are really over the line are going to get close-bombed to oblivion within a few hours. I see there was the recent question cited above but even that one really isn't torture, it's asking if humans have an in-built maximum pain threshhold.

The more pressing issue is that banning the [torture] and [execution] tags won't solve anything. Take for example the controversial question in question. It doesn't include either of those tags in it at all. People are just going to take their torture-related questions either to something like [anatomy] (because most torture typically involves exploiting the human bodyplan) or [history]/[society] (going into historical details of capital punishment). And even if someone does say "well this crosses the line into torture and so we have to close it", how is that any different from a question just being close-bombed into oblivion normally?

Answer 4

Gruesome violence, torture and sex is part of human history and nature. At age 6 I was taught about the particular ways to be killed or tortured and go to hell if I was a bad child. In school children are taught around the age of 8 explicitly about human anatomy and how sex works and how various kings and queens were devastating their enemies and sometimes putting their heads on pikes or other times impaling them by trusting pikes from below upwards. At age 9 I was already studying the holocaust in history lessons.

At age 12 in america children can consent to have sex with other children of similar age, same goes for most of europe too... Except it's 11 and 13 in some countries.

So children can have sex in your country, but they can't see nipples on Tv?

The pegi system doesn't seem the smartest thing ever.

Is it ok to say that this type of censure is ridiculous and founded on adults who have no idea what children are like?

I'm young myself, so I still didn't forget what is like to be a child.

60 years ago children were murdering enemy soldiers to defend themselves and their families, it would be an insult to all the brave souls to treat todays children like some weak snowflakes.

Answer 5

Adding to the discussion about "Stack Overflow has a policy of making things appropriate for 13 years old or older", I think one aspect we may be overlooking is that even though you have to be 13 years or older to join Stack Overflow, you don't have to be 13 years or older to see Stack Overflow. Anyone can see answers posted on Stack Overflow just by using Google, and I have no doubt that Worldbuilding SE comes up as one of the first results if you search for many worldbuilding questions.

Of course, this ties into a broader Internet issue that you can't stop children from Googling anything unless you block every website with certain criteria, and when it comes to the Internet children....um...find a way, but it's certainly worth considering.