As an open marketplace for ideas, Able2know seeks to support a diverse range of discussion. One of the inevitable results of said diversity is that some of the speech that occurs freely on Able2know is objectionable to some people, sometimes acutely so.
Our preferred way of dealing with such situations is to try to create solutions that allow for the free expression to continue for those who seek it, while providing a way for those who find said speech objectionable to avoid it.
Towards these aims we are introducing a new NSFW feature that allows for members to report posts that are Not Safe For Work through the normal topic and post reporting buttons. Moderators will mark topics and posts that are NSFW that follow our definition thereof. These topics and posts will not be removed, but will be marked with a “NSFW” flag (and posts are collapsed by default). Anyone who wants to see the content can still do so on a case-by-case basis or members can edit their user preferences if they don’t want to collapse NSFW posts at all.
This NSFW flag allows us to better serve the different portions of our community. For example, no longer will we be editing out graphic images, and replacing them with links. Moderators will simply mark posts NSFW and those who want to see them can, and those who do not don’t have to, problem solved.
If only all the world’s objectionable-content problems were resolved this easily.