This is about our behavior policy and how it relates to flagging offensive comments (and posts, I suppose).
- Is it a violation of the behavior policy to insult another citizen, or to equate their actions on the site with serious offenses such as violent hate crimes?
- In particular, should a "rude or offensive" flag for such statements be acted upon?
- Are flagged comments which would normally be deleted as offensive considered not worthy of removal if their visibility is limited to only some citizens rather than the entire Internet? (i.e. does our dirty laundry get washed less vigorously if we're the only ones who can see it?)
These questions are prompted by a recent comment which compared a citizen's undesirable posting habits to an act of genocide. It was an otherwise accurate comment which may have contributed to the speedy deletion of the post by its owner, and so the comment is only visible to 10k+ rep users. I flagged it as offensive prior to the post's deletion, and the flag was declined after the deletion --to my incredulous dismay.
I provided links to the individual incident, as requested, but I'm concerned it'll put focus on the incident instead of the questions it brought to my mind.