Thank you FokkeTale. I had not seen the post you referenced from Staff. That was helpful. Allow me to make one additional comment about the potential for a slippery slope here, which I believe I can make without being bigoted. After this post, I will have made my point and will not respond again in this thread as I believe an ongoing debate on this topic is not welcomed. First, let me say that I am not specifically defending the recently banned mod, which I view as fairly silly. All it does is remove one selection which is already defaulted to the "typical" selection. It doesn't actually change or accomplish anything for anyone and is therefore rather pointless. That said, I do have some concerns about the difficulty of policing the content of mods. I suspect that many gamers are offended by nudity, yet nudity mods are popular and have never been banned despite the fact that they offend others. Those who are offended by nudity are simply told not to download them. That seems like a reasonable policy. Similarly, there are mods that include the historical nazi flag and swastika, symbols many find offensive and that are outlawed in some jurisdictions, yet those too are allowed. While I completely agree that this site has the right to remove mods that they find offensive and while I support their comment that they are not censoring the mod from existing but rather are simply choosing not to host it, I am curious as to why this line in particular is the one they have decided cannot be crossed and I do not feel that is an unreasonable question to ask. If the issue is truly inclusivity, then there is a current request for a mod that removes balding people from the game. (Intentionally not linked.) If created, would that mod be banned? Might the balding be offended that some were choosing their exclusion? Are we even sure they don't already exist in other games? The nudity mods also often change all body sizes to certain preferred dimensions, yet they do not seem to be flagged as creating any diversity issues. If you want a universe of women who all look like Barbie, that's A-OK. How does one discern which "phobias" are permissible and which are not in a gamer's own private gaming universe? Is it all based on which group complains and makes the most noise? Is that really the best option? From a business perspective, maybe it is. But do we risk incenting the wrong behaviors if that is the case? And as I indicated previously, I really don't care about the mod that raised the issue. Even if it were still available, I wouldn't download it. I just hit next and that works fine for me. But there are a lot of social issues out there. There are a lot of groups clamoring for attention. "If you don't like it, then don't download it" was a pretty clean standard. Is it possible that in this instance, the medicine might eventually be worse than the disease? By excluding even one mod, it almost certainly ensures that there will be calls to exclude others. I only hope that the leadership has thought this through sufficiently to ensure that it doesn't turn into a social tug-a-war. Thank you.
