GLAAD Launches Project On Homophobia In Virtual Communities
In a blog post yesterday, GLAAD's Director of Digital Media Justin Cole summed up this week's hullabaloo regarding an overzealous forum filter for the Star Wars: The Old Republic message board. Cole spoke to EA's Vice President, who wrote:
We made a mistake in constructing a filter that was intended to deter hateful language in one of our online communities. The filter was too broad and included the words "gay" and "lesbian." When this mistake was brought to our attention, we corrected the filter, and apologized to the community with a statement to say that it was never our intention to restrict any specific group in the community.The words "gay" and "lesbian" are NOT filtered in communities related to other EA games - however I have initiated a review to ensure this is the case with all EA sites.
The VP reiterates that the company didn't filter the language to prevent civil discussions or discriminate, but rather to deter homophobes from using the language against the GLBT community.
Cole took the opportunity to reveal that the organization's Digital Media Group has formed GLAAD's Project on Homophobia in Virtual Communities. He doesn't go into much detail, but announced that both EA and Microsoft have agreed to be a part of the project. Microsoft have also fed controversy in the past year by requesting Xbox Live users remove any mention of their sexuality from their names and profiles.
Hopefully having this Project will lead to real changes in how these companies deal with gay issues, beyond taking the path of least resistance or just sticking their heads in the sand. It's nice that companies go out of their way to make sure we know they weren't trying to offend us, but I'd like to see a little bit of that effort directed toward making sure there's no reason for them to apologize in the first place.
When "Old Republic" Strikes New Media [GLAADblog]
Dawdle
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 2 May 2009
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: bioware, ea, glaad, microsoft, the old republic
This is yet another example of a company trying to give me protections I didn't desire or ask for. If someone wants to make a homophobic remark on a forum where I post then I find it a delightful challenge to make that person look as stupid as they are. Its always the same old arguments, and they are always so easily countered that the person I'm having to pown comes out schooled. I think that forums should be more open and more free not more closed off to "protect the community."
I kinda feel the same way as galefan, except about our own forums. There was a big arguement just recently involving someone being bigoted, and a lot of people on the gaygamer forums got together on that thread and made some really good arguments against that person's bigoted remarks.
But then some moderators (with good intentions) stepped in and deleted the bigot's remarks and everyone's counter-arguments. I felt that this just shoved the problem under the rug instead of leaving our little anti-hate victory there for people to see.
I guess it's a tendency of most forums to be a little over-protective when they don't necessarily need to be.
Wait up.... I thought there weren't any Gays in Star Wars?
Looks like that comment was swept under the rug too.
The moderators did respond to me calling out their actions in the thread, and they nicely justified why it needed to be deleted this time :)
No worries, our forums are still the best