hah!
same actually, the position and arrangement of the hands doesn’t look very “hug” like to me, more of “open arms welcoming,” or maybe “happy but confused shrugging”
the other blue emoji with the two human shaped figures embracing is def more “hugging” to me. and the one I’ve seen used most often.
emoji’s are weird 
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t seem that problematic. I guess if the name was changed, nobody would think it’s a hug
To chastise is to punish or severely criticise. I gave private and polite advice.
I showed the relevant section of the CoC and that should be clear to anyone who reads it.
Why didn’t that user say, “Hey it’s ok, I have consent to give this person a hug.”, instead of publicly making untrue statements about me and demanding that all their content and their account be deleted?
I will keep on behaving in a formally polite and factual way because I am not here to ‘feel’ anybody or to be anybody’s ‘caring friend’.
Edits: I didn’t mean to reply specifically to Alien Sunset, but when I deleted the comment and tried to reply to the overall thread it wouldn’t let me. So I’ve left it here.
I read that bit in the CoC and interpreted it as someone sending those physical descriptions (sending you back rubs etc…), the recipient saying please stop I don’t like that kind of talk etc, and then if the person didn’t stop, THEN that was the harassment. As would anything be really if someone requested certain kinds of behaviour/comments were stopped and they weren’t.
I am quite surprised after reading this thread that it would appear to be automatic harassment the first time you send a hug emoji??? Even if they didn’t complain? Who on Earth thinks to get consent before sending ‘thanks and hugs’, or ‘oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, 
’?
(Personally I don’t like using that emoji, as it looks less like ‘hugs’ and more like ‘jazz hands!’.
I admit, the reasons why someone might react so strongly to it didn’t occur to me (cultural differences I’m ignorant to, PTSD etc), but it seems overly strict to be guilty of harassment after one mention of ‘hugs’. It’s clear (to me anyway) that the person who wrote that was grateful for a nice comment and was only saying thank you. I can see how they might be mortified for receiving a message from a moderator basically telling them they’re harassing someone for saying what they expected to be a friendly thank you.
Perhaps the CoC could be re-worded with an additional section that explains that due to potential misinterpretations, cultural differences, personal reasons etc, no physical descriptions are allowed in comments such as ‘hugs, back rubs, friendly punch on the arm…’ as to not make any site user uncomfortable. And if people continue to do so THEN it’s harassment.
So then if a moderator needs to remind someone about using a hug emoji for the first time, the CoC wording comes across more as a friendly reminder about trying to respect and accommodate a global range of user requirements, and not an automatic charge of harassment for a one time innocent comment.
Additional edit: I never saw any of the original posts or back and forth that may have happened, I’m literally only commenting on this thread.
I am also not criticizing how Ahab handled it in any way - only commenting that the branding of a virtual hug as immediate harassment seems harsh, and therefore being presented with the current wording of the CoC may make someone feel that it’s not fair. I never saw any of the responses but it does sound like they over-reacted.
Please excuse if not everything sound right, I’m no native English-speaking user:
Unfortunately, this topic changed from the hugging issue into a topic where the keeper of the community suddenly should be the person who did something wrong???
In my eyes, @AhabGreybeard acted correctly. Yes, it was very formal, but considering the many things that come up in a forum on a daily basis for the moderators, it is hardly an achievable thing to pick up everyone personally for their misstep and explain their misstep to the person in gentle empathetic words. I speak from experience, because I once held a similar position in a forum.
Moderators also have a private life and need to keep a professional distance, so things don’t mix up! Unfortunately, this is a very thin line to balance on.
I think it is correct to briefly and concisely point out the grievance.
Rules exist to enable communities to live together. Here we can discuss the sense or nonsense of rules and whether they should be abolished or tightened up.
But as long as a rule is not officially abolished, it must be obeyed, otherwise anarchy will soon reign.
After all, everyone has agreed to follow these rules, and quite a few demand behind the curtain of PM’s that others follow them for their own benefit, but if they are suddenly the ones affected, then it’s not okay?
Or to put it deliberately in more exaggerated terms: There is often a lot of hypocrisy, and many people believe they are infallible, demand every right for themselves but see no obligations for themselves, these obligations only exist for others to grant me more space and rights.
And there are people who freak out when their misconduct is made public.
Ask the police and emergency services, they can sing sad operas about it!
This topic is also about someone making a “grand exit” here instead of recognizing that, whether the person agrees with it or not, the person did something undesirable here.
If I think something needs to be changed, I can discuss it, but I shouldn’t make a fuss about it. And the fact that no moderator was immediately available may be bad luck, but it doesn’t excuse the user’s behavior.
Or analogously, to get away from the forum:
I know that in my home country, parking incorrectly is a trivial offense for some, but very few people make such a fuss when they legitimately get a parking ticket or are even towed away, even though they are extremely annoyed, because a conflict with the enforcement authorities can even end in prison if you go completely berserk. So people keep their mouths shut and try to make the best out of the situation afterward, because they were on fault.
But if people think that parking should be allowed here or there, for whatever reason, then they can ask the city hall for a review, and if they are lucky, a solution can be found.
But for that I have to remain polite, no matter how unfair I think a regulation is, until the topic is discussed as civilized people should.
On the Internet, however, a growing number of people seem to be getting carried away with blaming others for their misconduct, mostly because of their supposed anonymity. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Michelist
I’ve said this several times in the post you are quoting:
the COC gives no good reason for WHY hugging is banned, just quoting the CoC is not helpful for helping someone understand why giving hugs may be harmful or unwanted, and that is the issue i have brought up several times.
Why didn’t that user say, “Hey it’s ok, I have consent to give this person a hug.”, instead of publicly making untrue statements about me and demanding that all their content and their account be deleted?
(i don’t know what untrue statements they made, once again I’m only seeing what was posted here)
because you just rudely (in their opinion) busted in and told them they were being bad!
you didn’t ask or couch your language in any way that could be considered polite (considered by most people socialized in the way they most obviously were) and it hurt their feelings. and yes, they overreacted, but that is why.
like, seriously, there was no casual “hey” no “i know you meant well” no “sometimes it upsets people”
you just quoted a rule with no context and said “please” at the beginning.
not to be rude, but are you AMAB (assigned male at birth) and/or possibly autistic? because you are hitting those notes of pedantic letter of the law and strict holding to dictionary definitions despite general social norms and drift, and I think it is leading to some difficulty and misunderstandings.
let me throw some dictionary.com back at you: you are quoting the definition that tends to synonymize with castigate. I was going for verbal censure, you know that image of the teacher wagging their finger at a group of children? that.
And then the ‘not to be rude’ insults start 
i was unaware that it was a bad thing to be male or autistic for that matter. such that asking is one was such in order to understand their thinking processes was an insult
i said not to be rude because it was a very direct, (and personal) question, and those are sometimes considered rude, much like the stereotypical “asking a woman her age”
I think the discussion is going in a tangent focusing on the mod action we are not here to do that. This should not be a public trial of the mods. The reason we made this thread for public is to know whether to do away with this point. That itselfs says we know this is problematic point.
And if there is a point in coc we need to follow it we can’t be ignoring it. So that is why we mods send messages when something like this happens. We can’t selectively follow the CoC.
Yes we can make mistakes and we accept that. So can we move on and fix this? And not argue on the point in CoC and not something else? Otherwise this discussion will devolve into heated debate without any fruitful conclusion
If the community tells us to remove this point we will remove it.
Maybe it’s the way you said it and you should have been more sensitive
Anyway, I’ve already spent more than enough time and effort on this and I won’t be spending any more time unless @raghukamath asks me for some assistance.
I don’t think it needs to be removed per se. but a better explanation of why it is there needs to be amended. also, yes, moderator action is a concern too, because of how these things are enforces IS a related issue.
like… does moderator action really need to be made if no complaint is made?
the rule says “without consent” which is 100% good, but how is consent determined? prior authorization via asking “would you like hugs?” or saying “hugs if you want them”
or is it more: if someone complains, but phrasing isn’t a problem? (so someone just says “hugs to you” but the recipient doesn’t mind and therefore doesn’t make a complaint)
because really that’s what started this whole thread.
someone gave hugs, and even though the recipient didn’t complain (implying consent however tenuously) the huger was still reprimanded, without a proper explanation of why the rule is needed
.
HA!
tuché
i’ll cop to that one, i (also?) am on the spectrum, so my wording does sometimes get a bit… brusque, despite intense (and sometimes traumatic) attempts to socialize and teach me otherwise
textual (hah, i made a pun) communication if rife with problems like that/this, which i suppose is the big issue of those whole thing.
no hard feelings, eh?
If there is a point in the CoC which says
Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g. textual descriptions like “hug” or “back rub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
We interpret any hug sent is without consent. and we ask the user about it. And Ahab sent this message . The user can simply tell us we are wrong and they have consent to send hugs.
I do not see where Ahab reprimanded them. He did not send the message publicly nor he punished them immediately. He also wrote that the forum has users of 13+ age and also people of different cultural background explaining why the point matters.
I agree that we can word it more better. We will work on that . And the time period that we all were absent was 1 hour. We will henceforth write a warning that responses may be delayed due to timezone difference. And all the mods are placed in different timezones. But we can’t cover all 24 hour right. There will be coincidences where all the mods are offline for few hours.
When we saw the messages we immediately wanted to talk and discuss this issue and resolve it. We requested the user to calm down and reconsider the decision we even said this is a misunderstanding and we wanted to solve it by discussion, we even offered them that we can discuss this point in CoC and make changes in consultation with the community. We sent this type of messages 5-6 times asking them to reconsider their decision. Some of the members also asked to reconsider but they insisted on deleting the account.
As you yourself say this, textual communication can be a problem for us mods too. Our text can be blunt sometimes but we do take effort to talk to the user. This particular user was not ready to talk and solve the issue and we tried 5-6 times.
Now considering the rules of the forum, we are open to suggestions and we have tweaked the rules earlier too. This thread is also such an exercise. But if there is a rule we try to follow it to the letter and not be selective.
This particular point is a bit subjective and troublesome to moderate. Hence we made this thread to ask the community how it feels about it. After all this CoC was adapted with open consultation with the community here ,so if we need to make changes to loosen the rule we need to ask the community.
As I have stated my personal opinion earlier - I too feel this point is a bit too strict and I am in favor of removing it and handling cases of harassment on the basis of complaints.
Hi @Sketchy
I just wanted to point out that the person received a polite and private message reminding them of the CoC. There was no accusation of harassment.
Oh of course, I know there wasn’t an accusation from the moderator personally. My point was that the CoC states that sending a ‘hug’ is harassment, so pointing out the CoC to the commenter, it is basically telling them they just harassed someone as per the CoC rules.
That’s why for my feedback for the question ‘should the point about hugs in the CoC needs any change’ I made the suggestion to downgrade a first time hug from harassment status to perhaps a section explaining about why it may be unwelcomed to some, and only if the unwanted behaviour continues, THEN it’s harassment. And therefore if a moderator does need to send the CoC paragraph to anyone as a gentle reminder, it doesn’t look like they’re being told they just harassed someone for what was probably a well intended comment.
Can we have a space for signatures at the bottom of our posts. I would like to give automatic consent to hugs. I consider a virtual hug different to harassment on the grounds of intent. I don’t want people who like to give virtual hugs to feel restricted or to be called out by moderators on my account. If I am concerned about harassment, I am adult enough to deal with it myself as a first option. Only if it continues after my own attempts to deal with it fail do I want the mods to become involved.
You might be able to understand it better if, like me, you ask deeply devout Muslim women and men from the Arab world (who grew up there (there are probably other regions where this is a taboo subject)) about it and take a close look at their reactions (watch their eyes). For many of them, it is difficult or even unthinkable to even discuss such things.
Perhaps you will become aware when I assure you that people who are severely affected post-traumatized can fall into a kind of rigidity within fractions of a second the moment they see such things, which triggers a shock-like state of FEELING NO LONGER EXISTENT and depersonalization, that it is simply impossible for these people to object afterwards due to the most negative overwhelmingness?
These are all facts. Facts that often only become clear to those not affected when they witness such a “switching process” in those affected and have to experience the consequences. Just as I had to watch my wife/girlfriend destroy her body with knives, broken glass, fire and all sorts of impossible things, only to feel something of herself and her body again after triggering and re-traumatization.
I have also experienced this behavior, and a few completely disfigured people, in most of the therapies I have attended with my fellow patients. And the unspeakable suffering associated with it as well.
I myself also react to certain triggers, but in a different way, which almost destroyed me decades ago, today I am “only” “thrown off track” for varying lengths of time. The current status regarding this has been for 3 months.
We should protect these people from our urges. You can communicate your joy at being praised for your work in an honest, credible and clearly empathetic way without this form of expression. You don’t need these emojis and the expression for that, which is why it is banned in the world of KDE.
And for all those who have missed it, I already pointed out in my first post that the term “harassment” and the classification of “hugging” under it is unfortunate. Something can certainly be optimized there, but the ban should not be questioned or lifted.
If you want to see images that are difficult for most people to digest and the consequences that triggering can have for those affected, you can take a look at the image linked below, and I assure you that, although cruel, it is harmless compared to what I had to experience!
Do you want to be responsible for this because of your urge to hug others? Really?
Hovering the first link will immediately show the pic of the healed wounds of a person with this self harming behavior! ! ! Be warned!
The second link shows the picture search-results to this behavior, DON’T OPEN IT IF YOU CAN’T SEE BLOOD, even if these pics are harmless in comparison because Google can’t show the cruel reality!
Michelist, who won’t answer here anymore BECAUSE I CAN’T SEE THAT IT IS UNDERSTOOD BY SOME, WHAT THIS ALL IS REALLY ABOUT
No use emoji is not banned in KDE.
Considering all the responses. I feel that this is a minor issue, I do not want it to snowball into big meaninglessly lengthy discussion.
Right now the general key point is that using hugs and emoji is okay as long as the user receiving it is not complaining. So moderators should act only on the complaints for such issues. For other serious obvious harm and malice moderators may act proactively.
I think this is a middle ground and I propose to remove the point about hugs from the CoC. This doesn’t mean that we will ignore those who feel uncomfortable about it, we can request such users to message the moderators about it. And we would take it from there.
We moderators will also try to give more descriptive reasons in conveying our warning. Highlighting the point that we want to discuss and talk it out first before the user or mods take any action.
We would also highlight the point about our availability on the forum. most of the time we are available but there can be some period coincidentally where we all are offline. So we would ask the user to be patient and wait for the response.
So I think it is safe to remove that particular line from CoC. Will edit it this evening.
