I wanted to see all of the discussion before putting my thoughts here, let me do that before the very end.
First, I think that freedom of speech must prevail. Most of the players need to release their feelings and energy in the game not only by fighting, but by trash-talking in chat, and you, WuZi, do it regularly too. I do not estimate it, I don't say it is bad (or good). It is just a fact. So why some topic should and others shouldn't be tolerated in terms of trash-talking? It sounds like double standards. Your words can offend someone as much as you can be offended by others' words. So either trash-talking must be prohibited or allowed completely. Since the first option has no sense, because excessive puritanism and restrictions never lead to anything good, we must choose the second one. And yeah, that's why I think 'no n-word' rule should be removed to, but it is the matter of the other topic.
Second, about the hurt feelings. Try to offend the feelings of a Buddhist monk. I am sure it is not possible even theoretically. One cannot offend you, but you are the only one who decides if you should take the offence personally. As many individuals correctly state above, the best way to deal with trash-talkers is to ignore them. If someone wants to offend you, you shouldn't allow him to do that. Instead, he doesn't deserve even a single moment of your attention. Yeah, unfortunately, this doesn't always work in real life, but in the Internet it does. Whatever it is, religion or something else, just ignore and don't mind! If your faith can be offended by some silly spammer, is it strong enough btw?
Third, there is the religion and there is the faith. The religion is one of the tools to control and rule any society. It can be applied to suppress people. The faith is the projection of religious main idea on your soul, on your inner being. You can have it even if you know that God doesn't exist just because the faith and the knowledge do not intersect at any point. In most cases the faith is productive and positive, and, as long it is something that belong only to your inner world, it cannot be touched or offended by anything from the outer world.
So, if someone says "God does not exist", it is just his personal opinion and you, being a smart person, shouldn't rage due to it. You can discuss it with him in friendly athmosphere though. But if someone says "You are shit because you are muslim", it means that he is just a crazy frog and he is not worth your attention. That's it.
There should be no rules that restrict the freedom of speech, but with only one exception. I am convinced that trash-talking cannot be acceptable from an admin, from the person who is picked to administrate the community. They say "Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi", but I prefer to rephrase that as "Quod licet bovi, non licet Iovi." If the person who is granted extended rights over influencing on your gaming experience, Administrator, acts as random spammer and says "Get the fuck off here, you *set of chauvinist criteria* piece of shit", you'd ask yourself if you picked right place to spend your time on.
So, I would like to see what do you thing about this question: may Administrators aggressively trash-talk against the players? Does it fit to the Administator status? I wouldn't ever ask this question on Tenshi's server despite of his constant anti-chauvinist rhetorics, everything is clear there, but I am sure I can expect more from Jonne's.
