Context > Linguistic Morphology, Appealing for strike removal, and requesting a mod be inspected...

I don't want to publicly call out the moderator who did this, but I will provide a screenshot of the notification or name of the mod if necessary for an appeal to remove the punishment escalation flag attached to my account.

But simply put, I had a comment removed for "hate speech", by a mod. While I'm not concerned with the particular comment being removed, I do think that the mod in question who reviewed and removed the comment should be inspected, because it was a gross misapplication of the board rules. At the very least, i'd expect the mods to be held to a standard of competency above what was displayed.

The exact statement was in response to a thread asking, essentially, "What's wrong with the game". The response I provided was

> HOMOGENIZATION No Homo = Good game. Lots of Homo = bad game. I ain't no homophobe, but there are just objectively some extremely necessary aspects of development that being homo just doesn't work for, and until riot straightens themselves out and stops making the game so homo, these problems will continue to get worse.

Now, the reasoning I was provided was > We take hate speech and homophobic slurs very seriously. Dont think worldplay around using it is clever and the next time we will issue an escalated punishment. If you wish to post in a more meaningful manner please feel free to do so.

There's one key problem that you might notice with this excuse... Not once did I use a homophobic slur, unless you're to assume that "homophobe" itself is now a slur. Simply the use of the prefix of "homo" in a negative way, doesn't comply with your own Board Rules definition of "hate speech" (speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which can include attacks a person or group), because homo doesn't uniquely refer to homosexuals. Even a tacit reading of the comment clearly indicated that the context of the use of the prefix "homo" was related to the concept of homogenization, not homosexual people. The fact that this moderator in question had a prejudicial assumption of the context calls into question their competency for applying the board rules.

I'd rather not make this mod's name public if unnecessary, assuming that the ticket/notification can be reviewed by other mods in it's entirety. Though, again if this is how this moderator is implementing and interpreting the Board Rules, then they need to be informed of their misapplication at the least or stripped of moderation powers at most (assuming that this is a persistent problem).