Tachikoma's post would be offending to any Chinese who is proud of their nationality and/or believed in their government.

You should avoid:

• Insulting a person's religion, religious beliefs, race, sex, sexuality, nationality, political beliefs, gaming preferences, etc. Debate is encouraged, as is civil disagreement, but respect the beliefs and opinions of others.

By rule, that is worthy of a moderation.

Regarding your second paragraph, fair enough. It's not the users that are the cause for your drastically different point of view, it's your own beliefs regarding China. That should actually have been clear to me when you said that China deserves to be called worse things.

Tachikoma's post would be offending to any Chinese who is proud of their nationality and/or believed in their government.

You should avoid:

• Insulting a person's religion, religious beliefs, race, sex, sexuality, nationality, political beliefs, gaming preferences, etc. Debate is encouraged, as is civil disagreement, but respect the beliefs and opinions of others.

By rule, that is worthy of a moderation.

Regarding your second paragraph, fair enough. It's not the users that are the cause for your drastically different point of view, it's your own beliefs regarding China. That should actually have been clear to me when you said that China deserves to be called worse things.

Alright, then it's time for me to post what I think about Tachikoma's moderation.

I obviously disagree with it, because there's really nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade. While she expressed it in an overly blunt manner, China's laws are incredibly restrictive, so it easily evens out. What China does is hard to believe for people who live in the "free" world.

Now there are two things that could have led to this moderation. The first is that the mod team picked out the post on their own, but the probability for that is low because at the current time the mods aren't particularly active in the forums. The second option is much more likely, and that is that somebody reported Tachikoma. Since her post was so short and blatant, there is really no gray zone, so the mods had to act. There is also the issue of consistency, so if the mods did nothing here, then it would mean that such posts should also be tolerated when they are directed at other countries.

The curious thing is that there are hardly any Chinese people on VGC, and the few that are here would probably share Tachi's sentiment. After all, they are gamers and this was a subject that directly concerned gaming. So there has to be someone who doesn't like Tachi and took the opportunity for a report, and that brings us back to the topic of consistency in moderating. Since consistency is the underlying matter, the moderation will be upheld. I don't see it playing out any other way.

Should make it a rule where if someone is banned as a result of being reported, the ban reason should include a list of people that reported the post, I would guess that patterns would soon emerge.

That's a bad idea. If they did that, people would be afraid to report.

That would go against the practice that reports are anonymous, so it isn't a realistic option.

Nothing to be afraid of if the reason for reporting is a legit one.