Can anything be done about mean-spirited requests for terminology?

Question

tl;dr: Mean people suck, and we should not help them.

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EDIT: I don’t actually believe anything mechanical can be done here, and I certainly don’t expect a “closed due to meanness” reason. That’s just plain silliness. But questions asking about insults or slurs are questions that deserve to be labelled pejorative. It bothered me how many of these there were, and how they tend to draw bikeshedding list responses with no right answer. It doesn’t look good.

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Why are we helping people hurt each other?

For nearly as long as the single-word-requests tag has existed, it has been a source of several distinct types of controversy. On occasion, these have been raised here on our meta. For example:

• Single word requests, crosswords, and the fight against mediocrity, by Shog9♦.
• Against Single Word Requests, by JSBձոգչ.
• Word for disrespecting eldest half-sister by referring to her husband as girly-girl-manly-boy though he’s amused but the rest of the family isn’t?, by medica.

One particularly nasty form of these questions are those that are really just asking for our help in coming up with a new way to put others down. I made a new pejorative-language tag just for such requests, and went back and tagged some of the questions that I felt met the following criteria as talen from its tag wiki:

Pejorative language is any language that portrays someone or something in a negative light, no matter whether it is intended to be disparaging and derogatory, contemptuous or disapproving, belittling or offensive, or even abusive. It’s anything that makes someone or something look bad.

After tagging the first 201 questions I could find, I quit in disgust — but there are others still. Plus these are some of our most frequent duplicates, too, which just adds insult to insult.

As I have elsewhere observed, all these questions had their genesis in bile. Each was looking for some especially nasty new word to use against somebody whose behavior or characteristics they strongly disapproved of.

I don’t think it is a healthy thing for the questioner, nor good for our site or the larger social context, for us to be forever providing people with rude words to use to commit verbal violence upon one another, even if it is only in their own head.

But is there really anything to be done about it?

There are many reasons why these requests are problematic, but simple eliminating the tag will do nothing to address the underlying issues, because people will just end up using a different tag to ask the same thing. This seems entrenched in human nature, and inherent social issue.

In days of old, the worst of these would on occasion be closed as “Not Constructive”, but that is no longer a close reason available to us here. Some of them were so nasty that they were quickly deleted from our site, but many remain.

I would like to see constructive discussion about anything we might possibly do to discourage these sorts of mean-spirited questions. I think it makes us look bad, and I know it is going to be used in an unkind manner.

I don’t really fancy updating our off-topic criteria to include “borne out of nastiness”; that just sounds silly, not to mention subjective. And yet at the same time we (claim that we) expect people to be respectful towards one another here, and having all these questions seeking help in disrespecting others seems at some level to run counter to that principle.

How can that paradox be reconciled?

If there were a line to be drawn, I don’t know where or how one would draw it. All I know is that after reading quite literally hundreds of these nasty questions and thousands of answers to them, I find myself dispirited to the point of sickness by mankind’s continued inhumanity to his fellow man.

Community Disarmament?

So I have made a personal decision never again to supply verbal arms to these questioners, arms that I know can have no other purpose than to put others down. I figure that there are already plenty of words and expressions that assholes use to call each other assholes. I see no reason to help them, and every reason not to.

But that is merely a personal vow, not a site-wide policy.

Is there anything we as a community can do with regard to these mean-spirited questions and so stop assisting them in making this world an ever-uglier place to live in?

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PS: As a side-note, I see that the quality of our questions continues to drop in all regards, because people don’t do any research of their own. Jeff’s right about that, and it’s only getting worse. The current matter I raise is just one aspect of this.

Answer 1

While I understand people may feel icky or annoyed that our language has mean things in it, I don't feel that it is our job to tell people where the line between "not that mean" and "too mean" is. We can offer our opinion while answering, certainly, but I don't see a convincing argument that it is any of our business to start making rules based on grey moral lines.

Thus, I argue against any rule that suggests we should take any particular action or inaction due simply to the problem of unenforceability. Namely, what sort of action would be appropriate? Close "Off-topic: Too Mean"? Just forever ignore someone who asks about something that is Too Mean? Comment on the post saying, "Tsk, tsk. That's too dirty!" I predict that any such behavior will sow more discontent among new users and users who happen to disagree on the obviously subjective nature involved.

Thus, if any particular user doesn't feel like wading through the muck, they are more than welcome to abstain. But I see no reason for one group of morals to be enforced across the entire site.

After tagging the first 201 questions I could find, I quit in disgust — but there are others still. Plus these are some of our most frequent duplicates, too, which just adds insult to insult.

If you hate doing something, don't do it. That seems appropriate. If you want help from others in tagging the questions so you can ignore that particular tag, that also seems appropriate.

As I have elsewhere observed, all these questions had their genesis in bile. Each was looking for some especially nasty new word to use against somebody whose behavior or characteristics they strongly disapproved of.

I don’t think it is a healthy thing for the questioner, nor good for our site or the larger social context, for us to be forever providing people with rude words to use to commit verbal violence upon one another, even if it is only in their own head.

I don't think it is your responsibility to govern the appropriate usage of the English language -- nor do I think it is appropriate to try manipulating people because of your personal moral system. ELU is not a moral authority, and it shouldn't be.

There are many reasons why these requests are problematic, but simple eliminating the tag will do nothing to address the underlying issues, because people will just end up using a different tag to ask the same thing. This seems entrenched in human nature, and inherent social issue.

Unless the problems relate to the answerability of the questions, it is really none of your business. It is your responsibility to avoid things you don't like. It isn't your responsibility to banish all things you don't like -- regardless of how valid and accurate your reasons are for disliking them.

I don’t really fancy updating our off-topic criteria to include “borne out of nastiness”; that just sounds silly, not to mention subjective. And yet at the same time we (claim that we) expect people to be respectful towards one another here, and having all these questions seeking help in disrespecting others seems at some level to run counter to that principle.

How can that paradox be reconciled?

Our expectations of people extends to the behavior of the users towards each other. I see no paradox in holding these two statements: (a) Do good to each other; (b) answer questions about English. We no obligation to try and hide the dirty parts of our language behind a bushel.

All I know is that after reading quite literally hundreds of these nasty questions and thousands of answers to them, I find myself dispirited to the point of sickness by mankind’s continued inhumanity to his fellow man.

Unfortunately, you are powerless to change human nature. I see no reason for you in particular to engage these questions if they disgust you. Aside from accidentally reading about humanities venomous side, these questions don't actively harm you.

If the sheer number of such questions would cause you to leave ELU and stop contributing altogether, I would be more willing to entertain ideas on how to keep things relatively sane on the front page and in titles. Nothing I have written above is intended to make you feel like yuck -- and one thing we do want to monitor is how "family friendly" we keep ELU as a whole.

There is certainly value in treating harsh words with respect simply because they can cause immense harm. But, in my opinion, part of that respect does involve acknowledging they exist and informing people that they should be used with care.

So I have made a personal decision never again to supply verbal arms to these questioners, arms that I know can have no other purpose than to put others down. I figure that there are already plenty of words and expressions that assholes use to call each other assholes. I see no reason to help them, and every reason not to.

Good for you. I think this is the right decision for you and many others. I do not think it is an appropriate decision for the site to make as a whole.

Is there anything we as a community can do with regard to these mean-spirited questions and so stop assisting them in making this world an ever-uglier place to live in?

I think we should make sure the front page and question titles are at least palatable for those passing thorough. And I think that we should make it trivially easy for users such as yourself to safely ignore these types of questions.

But in the end, these matters are a part of our language and we have no right to tell all of the internet where the line between "too mean" and "not that mean" exists.

And, to be clear, I agree with you in the sense that people shouldn't be using these words flippantly and they shouldn't be actively seeking words in order to merely use them against people they know. I don't disagree with your morals. I simply don't think it is appropriate for you and I to impose those morals on others.

My two cents.

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(Finally, thank you for raising the issue. I think it is a very important issue and if it causes you grief it should be discussed freely.)

Answer 2

You seem awfully certain that people are asking for these words because they want to use them to hurt others. There are many different reasons why someone might want to learn a particular pejorative word, some negative and some quite positive. You yourself used a lot of negative words when writing this question—disgust, bile, nasty, violence, etc.—and nobody would accuse you of trying to be hurtful with them. For all we know, the questioner asking about the word for bigotry against a particular people or group might be preparing to deliver a passionate denunciation of all kinds of prejudice. I don't think we know what's in a person's heart, and I don't think it's up to us to ask.

If we wish to increase the level of happiness in the world, I'd rather we did it by closing fewer legitimate questions, and being less rude about the ones we do close, than by telling people they can only ask about happy things.

Answer 3

We allow questions about profanity, which are hurtful to some.

I feel like an argument against hurtful terms or pejoratives would work for profanity, too.

So I propose that there's nothing mechanical to do in general against these kinds of requests, but to allow disinterested engagement with the intellectual problem posed by them (epithets, profanity) and aggressively edit/close questions about them that are intended to be used hurtfully.

Answer 4

I believe @tchrist has a valid point. As a community, we espouse respect and courtesy in all members. These requests have the effect of a drive by maiming. Not only are they ugly and unkind (and unlikely to be posed by people interested in becoming productive members of the site), but they attract unwanted attention and entice others to repeat the behavior in a one-upsmanship manner. It decreases the credibility that we are here to discuss language and promotes the idea that we are a platform for self-expression, a dictionary or a thesaurus for those uninterested in doing their own research.

I should not be accused of being inhospitable or a rabid closer. I do my best to make people feel welcome here. But this is beyond hospitality. I would like to see more requests closed on the basis of people not showing their research. I've not been here long enough to observe cyclical patterns, but in the time I've participated, I believe the quality of the questions has decreased. Honestly, it raises concerns about the purpose and the future of this site.

Answer 5

Personal opinion here, but I think tagging 233 posts (latest count) Pejorative language is self-defeating your noble argument that we dissuade users from seeking expressions which are used to attack, demean, and disrespect one another.

I don’t think it is a healthy thing for the questioner, nor good for our site or the larger social context, for us to be forever providing people with rude words to use to commit verbal violence upon one another, even if it is only in their own head.

Frankly, I'm getting a little weary of seeing twenty, thirty similar posts all lumped together on the active page. If anything, this unrelentless mission to tag every request for an insult as "pejorative" is giving a false impression of the site to new users. Think about it, by evidencing man's low morals, you are giving it more prominence, and perhaps, encouraging new users to believe that these type of requests are the most popular on the site.

Yesterday I tried to counteract this misleading impression by creating a new tag nonsubjective whose definition is: Undistorted by emotion or personal bias, having neither positive nor negative connotations. I only tagged twenty three questions, but there are many requests for neutral terms, for words that describe a phenomenon dispassionately without overtly negative or positive connotations. Let's try to keep things in perspective, by all means tag new SWR as pejorative when and where they occur but why actively dredge up the past, if you yourself are disgusted?

After tagging the first 201 questions I could find, I quit in disgust

Actually come to think of it, you are making it easier for visitors to find insulting terms, whereas before many derogatory questions were simply tagged single-word-requests, now users will have immediate access to a rich source of negative terms in one easy place.

Answer 6

I recently had a question tagged as pejorative-language. The question asks what skull means when used as an insult -- but it was based on a misreading of skulk, which was used in the cited text to mean one who hides. From the wiki description and my own understanding of the tag's name I believe this an apt tag.

But because this post says that the tag was made for mean-spirited requests and because the cited statistic of there being 201 similar questions (the tally as of my writing this is 233), of which it is said that "all [emphasis added] these questions had their genesis in bile," I wonder if my intentions in writing it have been mistaken for more sinister ones.

More than wielding it myself I was interested in knowing what the character meant by it. In the three months that have passed I have not found occasion to use it myself. (Although now that I'm reminded of it, I'm tempted to start applying skulk to Riki in DotA, sneaky little hero that he is!) :)

And more than in insults, my history suggests an interest in neutral terms:

1. My second question on ELU, Word for "Intellectual Prankster"

   Ethically neutral: No connotations of underhandedness, as in crafty

2. Word for "Source of Unpleasant Disclosure" (more about generality than neutrality)

3. My most recent question, Term for Only "Unbelieved Warner"

   I would like for this term to make no judgments on such characters, their messages, or deliveries.

I am at a loss for what to do. On the one hand, I feel this tag fits my question to a tee. On the other, I would like to exercise KitFox' recommendation of removing the tag because I feel by association it is saying that I mean to be offensive, that I'm asking ELU to provide me "with rude words to use to commit verbal violence." (Permit me a third hand, and I would delete the question entirely; it was not my finest hour, research-wise...)

Is the pejorative-language tag meant to carry this sort of stigma?

I have seen questions that very directly said they had someone they wanted to use their answer on, and I don't like those much either. I don't feel comfortable providing that kind of insight into a relationship I vaguely know only one side of. And so I think the advice of not answering is sound, not only ethically but also practically.

Given MrHen's suggestion of titles that make the subject matter easy to guess, I would even advocate a firmer stance of: If the subject matter sounds like something that would rile me, it's probably in my best interest to not even add to its view count. Ideally, when more people follow this principle, there would be more incentive to post content that appeals to the intellect than morbid curiosity: They would get the most views/votes/activity/etc. But this eventuality depends on an ideal, so it's hard to practice, odd to promulgate (especially to non-community members), and thus somewhat unrealistic.

But in general I think more, warmer responses to all-around good questions is a good thing to aim for.

Answer 7

From your quote:

"Pejorative language is any language that portrays someone or something in a negative light, no matter whether it is intended to be disparaging and derogatory, contemptuous or disapproving, belittling or offensive, or even abusive. It’s anything that makes someone or something look bad."

Unless I miss my guess and "assholes" has a positive - or at the very least, a neutral connotation - your statement:

So I have made a personal decision never again to supply verbal arms to these questioners, arms that I know can have no other purpose than to put others down. I figure that there are already plenty of words and expressions that assholes use to call each other assholes. I see no reason to help them, and every reason not to.

seems a little hypocritical in that you've stooped to using pejorative language in order to decry the very pejorative language you're railing against!

Is there anything we as a community can do with regard to these mean-spirited questions and so stop assisting them in making this world an ever-uglier place to live in?

Well, one can't expect to foist one's moral leanings on others, so it seems to me that all one can do is to lead by example and hope the sheep will follow.

Answer 8

I’m coming at this as someone whose question was just tagged pejorative language (I’ve already got a good answer, so I don’t really care). I can understand why someone could see my question as looking for an insulting term, but I was looking for a term to refer to a class of people which at some point or other includes nearly everyone who posts on forums, and probably includes everyone in the world who engages in normal conversation. Talking witout any expertise is a practice that’s looked down on, but I was specifically looking for the least insulting term possible that still gets the meaning across, preferably with some humor. Basically, the intent of the question was to find a way to convey this (slightly) negative description in the least mean-spirited way possible. And I got a wonderful answer, and learned a new word at the same time.

If people took the tag seriously, then perhaps the most useful answers would never have been posted, because they are not particularly pejorative. The question might have prompted a lot of pejorative responses, but that was not the intention. Tagging a question based on the answerer’s interpretation rather than the questioner’s intent seems a unproductive practice.

And this is far and away the most times I’ve ever used the word pejorative in any piece of writing.

Answer 9

I don't know what you're goal is here. You tagged Word meant to describe a crime where women beat men with your pejorative language tag. Why would you feel such questions are mean-spirited?

There are a lot of bad things that happen in the world, and our language has words to describe people and their behaviors. If I were to ask 'what do you someone who....?" that doesn't imply anything beyond my own obsession with choosing the right word to describe a person or situation. If my own question were to be tagged, I'd be inclined to ask another - "what do you call someone who wishes to censor the parts of our language that aren't quite so beautiful?"

If your tl;dr is true, your premise seems very 1984ish to me. What is your goal of not discussing these words? If I observe someone behaving badly and ask for the right word for the act, does that make me mean, just for asking? I'm not one to gossip, but I believe that a marriage contract allows a couple to privately share their thoughts (with each other), and when I'd like to tell my wife about someone who was less than kind, the right words might be useful.

Answer 10

I rise in defence of mean people.

The reason I believe vocabulary questions are skewed to confrontational words is because when we are dealing with a disagreement the last thing we want to seem is stupid. Thus, people are strongly motivated to learn such words as opposed to others.

This can easily make it seem like most users are mean people. I suspect they just don't want to be intimidated when arguing with someone with a broad vocabulary.

Rather than discourage this I'd prefer to deal politely with such questions and lead by example. On the whole I don't think this is bad for the site.

And, if you ever do feel like being mean to me, I would actually appreciate it if the names you called me made sense.

Answer 11

It comes down to the motivation of the asker. If they say:

Person X did Y to me. What word Z can I call them?

it seems like this is asking for verbal ammunition. If we could be 100% sure of their motivation, we could close the question as not relating to learning about English. I am careful not to accuse people of bad intentions, but I do occasionally write a comment directing them to Interpersonal Skills (which is about helping people, not hurting them).

I do agree we shouldn't help people hurt other people. However, words can be used for all sorts of things, and just discussing them can be OK. For example, one swear word is "fuck". I didn't swear myself just then because I am only discussing the topic, not using swear words right now.

So we need to be careful. It's your choice whether you respond to such a question or not. I usually don't because I don't like these questions but I'm not going to flag them for closure or removal unless there is something else seriously wrong with them.