"David Kane" wrote in message
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"Israel Silverman" wrote in message
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"David Richerby" wrote in message
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Israel Silverman wrote:
A day ago, I played a game with a fellow who, I astonishingly
realized after the game began, had a user name of "killzjoo."
Obviously, this is a not so sneaky way of saying "Kill the Jew."

That seems the most likely, though it could be "kills you".

Upon further thought, I agree that there is a significant probability
that it could be "kills you."

I hope this means you will be offering a sincere apology to those
at FICS.

No, I will not. As I said, I still think there is a strong possibility that
it means exactly what I originally thought it did,
And I believe the FICS response was deficient.

For example, if someone had created a name such as "Killzniger," just
because there is a river called the Niger does not mean that everything
becomes peachy ok, and that the burden of demonstrating badness falls on the
reader.

There are several parts to this:

1) What was the actual intention of the creater of the name?

2) What is the reasonable interpretation of the name by a reader?

3) What is the obligation of FICS, given its rather broad self-promotion as
a "family friendly" site?

For 1) we don't know.

For 2), a reasonable interpretation (kill the Jew) is as many here have
agreed with me (while many have suggested one other reasonable
interpretation - "kills you" and one has suggested an actual name "killzjoo"
of a player in England, which is not a reasonable interpretation by a FICS
user)

For 3) FICS should have done more than just checking to see if the user had
finger notes that were also anti-semitic/racist, which he did not have.
Certainly, FICS should not be transferring the responsibility to another
user to "go ask" that player what he intended. Finally, even if a user's
actual intentions as as pure as freshly fallen Vermont snow, if a reasonable
interpretation of a handle is bad, FICS should not permit it.