Many gamers and gaming communities have clashed over the past few years over increasing use of the word "rape" in their chat rooms, servers, and forums.

Thanks to its multiple meanings and interpretations, some voice deep offense to its very utterance and take their fight to the forums, while others steadfastly, and somewhat beligerantly, defend its usage of it in what they consider "harmless" ways. These are the two typical sides of the issue.

In response, more than a year ago, the exact date of which is unknown due to the records being lost, the staff adopted a policy of forbidding the word in its entirity due to its potentially offensive nature.

As many of you are aware, this zero-tolerance policy has been the cause of a few rather heated debates and flame wars over the past few weeks. During this period, it became apparent that the policy's nature as an absolute enforcement of a word that is contextually used... was problematic. Therefore, this was the first matter discussed at last Sunday's meeting.

Our decision was to repeal the absolute ban on the usage of the word "rape", and we agreed that the word is henceforth to be moderated based on the way in which it is used.
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