I have work today, so limited time, but I've read everything in this thread, and I'm taking it on board. Thank you all for your help.

Meanwhile: another Discord server I'm in has the equivalent of our Blacklist, but they call it a Trigger List, and it has a sub-channel to itself so it's plainly visible in the sidebar. I propose that renaming the list to "Trigger List" would help prevent confusion about what it is and whether the listed topics are completely banned or not, since "blacklisting" something does usually mean that it's forbidden.

I don't know if giving it its own sub-channel is necessary, since I don't think it's much of a stretch to go look in Rules, but then again, why not?

~Neshomeh

ETA: Visibility. Don't all comment at once now...

so here's the series of events that made one point I brought up. I remember the political conversation most clearly (and it has the most posts from other people as context clues), so I think I can reliably explain what happened. It may seem like I'm intentionally phrasing things in a way that makes Dachaefill come off badly, but I really am trying to not do that. Some of what they said is just that inflammatory.

One of the first things they did was ask if anyone wanted to "discuss political opinions" or something to that effect. After being pointed to the correct channel for that topic, they subsequently endorsed anarcho-capitalism and said that governments never helped with anything. Multiple people pointed out things that governments directly contribute, including fire departments, and their response was that fire departments are extraneous because they personally have never received benefits from one while Elon Muk had directly helped them because they've driven a Tesla. This was the first time in the conversation that Elon Musk, or any other specific person or corporation, had been brought up. Dachaefill was the only person to bring up Elon Musk or corporations during the entire conversation.

At some point they also either said or heavily implied that even disregarding public schooling Elon Musk and Google should just fund schools privately, and directly said that the police should have more power.

Please keep in mind that this alone was only one part of why they were banned, and in particular is suspect because it was one of the first things they did upon entering the server. The topic of politics isn't a forbidden one, and this is the only community I've been in where political conversations can genuinely end on either mutual understanding of some sort or an agreement that the conversation isn't going anywhere and should probably be left alone.

I've been regularly active on the server for years and can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen the moderators called to sort something out (including for explicitly political conversations), and Dachaefill managed to require us to call the mods multiple times in the very brief time they were on the server.

(edited for clarity)

In general, I think the blacklist is a good idea; after all, most of us - if not all - have themes and topics that may not only bring us heavy discomfort but an actual trigger (not talking about mild annoyance or unwillingness to debate subject, but actual psychological shutdown response). And that's fine. Do I personally think we shouldn't skip/spoiler those subjects? Yes. Hiding in a safety bubble can only be good for a certain period of time.

As per the taboo in question - sentient food/food shown as animals/saying things like "invite [food] to the party ... I just don't understand it and probably never will. But I don't have to, and I don't try to understand it; just respect it. On the other hand, I'm afraid the situation might evolve into an excuse to not speak on sujects generally viewed as harmless, just because one person doesn't want to hear it, instead of just not participating. I do not wish to call out people or say that these particular topics are not valid to be on the blacklist, so I'll use myself as an example: a lot of people in the Discord server likes frogs and toads. I personally can't stand the sight of them. I'm scared of them, because they can stand still and then suddenly be very jumpy and unpredictable. So if somebody happen to post a frog picture, I'll just comment "eugh, froggo" and leave the channel for some time to not look at it/hear about it (animated/not-real frogs are fine though). I'm not gonna ask to put it on the Blacklist, because I find it too silly to bother others with. Same thing with death - I am severely thanatophobic and the thought about my own inevitable death always comes with the worse attack of panic. But there's another twist - fictional deaths are fine, same with deaths happening to people far from me/unknown to me personally. So I'm not asking for that to go on the blacklist. Alcohol is another thing: my father is an alcoholic, and alcohol is the reason my family's broken. But when people say they're drunk, or we joke around it, I will not say "stop talking about it" because I know it's my problem and not everyone is like my dad. It wouldn't be fair to the others.

So, yeah. I support the idea of the blacklist for heavy and controversial subjects (although I still think they should be discussed), but I'm afraid we might not be able to find a limit to it.

I wasn't there to see what happened yesterday, but I know that BL2 has already been rephrased at least once for the sake of clarity. I'm pretty sure it was discussed on the Discord, but I can't find the relevant piece of the backlog.

Maybe it should have an addendum or something that specifies BL2? That'd probably help.

(Sorry if my formatting's bad, I'm typing this from mobile.)

So. I'm not getting in on any part of this but the Blacklist, save to say that no, I never saw any request for an explanation of any part of the rules or really any evidence of them having been read, save for a screenshot of the unspoilered blacklist a couple minutes before being banned, in the middle of everyone yelling for them to shut up and leave.

The PPC Blacklist, I've discovered, is a very weird beast. Most servers with blacklists use them to detail what things cannot be brought up in the server at all, and those that allow them when spoilered and tagged or put in a certain channel (or both) don't use any kind of numbering system. For example, if someone wanted to post a BL9 picture, they would have to tag it as "destructive fire" or "burn injury". This makes a lot of sense, since in most places, no one can actually remember everyone's problem subjects. But we are small, and we are strange, and we are very bad about actually formalizing our social rules. (Did you know we've soft-listed Harry Potter? Most people don't, and there's no way to check.)

So, no, I can't say I personally blame a newbie for not knowing to not talk about this Pickle Rick thing, strictly speaking. But I think that if someone does sit down and try to understand the Blacklist, it wouldn't really be a difficult conclusion - any more than, say, VeggieTales.

BL2 is, in the Intro and Rules channel, worded as: "References to people or animals being food and/or preyed upon, as well as food being presented in the shape of people or animals, or being self-aware". Maybe I've been here long enough to learn all the ins and outs, but in my eyes, food that is capable of intelligent speech that responds to other individuals speaking is almost certainly self-aware. My proposed change to make this clearer is adding or changing it to conscious, because that's much harder to mistake for something else and definitely closer to the real line.

The point of BL2 is a little hard to pin down in a concise manner, and it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. Gingerbread men, for example, are a fun holiday tradition - but serve to deeply upset multiple community members. Why? It doesn't really matter, in my book. If it hurts people, they should be able to avoid it. That's why our blacklist policy isn't "you can't do this at all"; it's "you have to warn people and give them a chance to not see it".

(On a more personal note, Nesh, I was definitely the one who got onto you for posting food outside the Foodstuffs channel, and that was out of line. I'm sorry. Nine times out of ten, that shouldn't be a problem.)

But yeah. No explanation was asked for, but neither did it seem like an explanation would have helped. If someone hasn't read the rules in the first place, going into the details of them won't do a ton of good; it's usually just a confusing back-and-forth.