[martin-t]

Honest question: why do you censor the word rape?

I skimmed HN's FAQ and I see no mention of forbidden topics or words and it seems the mod team prides itself on openness (does not make it true, i know). Do you believe your comment or your account would face negative consequences for using that word?

[dang]

There's no problem with plain language about rape or other topics on HN. Plain language is preferable.

The issue here is not whether people are allowed to use specific words, it's whether the story gratifies intellectual curiosity, as the site guidelines require for a story to be on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). The community verdict, arrived at via the standard tug-of-war between upvotes and flags, is that it does not. Some users are unhappy with that and are seeing it not as a community verdict, but as suspicious behavior by the mods.

I think the solution is for us to explain what is happening, what users did and what we did, and what the underlying principles are. If past experience is any guide, this won't satisfy all of the suspicions, but it will help with some of them, and it will satisfy the bulk of the community, which is the most that can be hoped for.

[joseppudev]

Internet is getting worse every day, who knows what kind of censorship they are or will be using. Maybe it isn't necessary to censor the word here but still good as kind of a trigger discipline I guess.

[martin-t]

Why would it work though?

If somebody wants to actually detect and censor talking about rape, they certainly have the technological capability to also censor all the intentional misspellings.

IMO, the only case when this works is when an organization is censoring it because of compliance but intentionally does a minimal effort at it.