Do we need to broaden the 'higher bar' policy to all questions relating to the history of the Jews and Jewish matters?

Question

The question below pongs of antisemitism and was rightly closed.

Are there any kernels of truth in the Jewish story of Purim?

Currently we have a policy which spells out that any Holocaust-related questions have to be irreproachably on-topic or they'll be closed. This has been quite effective, as far as I can tell, in preventing Holocaust denial from being pushed in ordinary users' faces. The same policy applies to all ww2 and Nazi questions.

The question linked doesn't ask about any of those topics, but does try to smuggle in antisemitic libels. Whatever deeply tedious person keeps making new accounts to push racist crap is not going to stop doing it. But we don't have to make it easy. I think we should broaden the policy to include any question relating to Jews.

Do you?

Answer 1

The site policy is for "heavily trolled topics". The way I tend to describe it is that the holocaust tag became the exemplar of "heavily trolled" the same way Harry Potter became the Chosen One: He didn't choose that status for himself, the baddies chose it for him.

This was mostly the enshrining of a pre-existing informal site policy. Its meant to be descriptivist, not prescriptivist. Its there to explain to new posters why everyone's being so hard on what may look like a simple question.

There has never been an official list. I'm of the opinion that would limit its utility for pointing to when an issue comes up. In other words, it seems like a status that should have soft borders, rather than hard ones. If there were a real list, holocaust would definitely be on it, but IMHO as an observer I'd say somewhat adjacent tags like hitler and jews may qualify as well.

Answer 2

I agree with T.E.D. that the rule is descriptive and not prescriptive. I generally interpret the rule to refer broadly to frequently trolled and controversial topics. This means that I consider questions about Jim Crow, Apartheid, the Atlantic slave trade, land possession in Palestine, etc. to fall under the same policy. This absolutely does not mean you cannot ask questions about them, but it means that questions need to affirmatively demonstrate good faith rather than simply not look terrible.

For those with some knowledge of legal concepts, I consider the rule to relate to procedural matters rather than substantive matters. For example, a question doesn't automatically become off-topic if it veers into the Holocaust just because the Holocaust is somehow off-topic, it just receives extra attention and care and moderators are less likely to give it the benefit of the doubt. As a moderator, I generally defer the closure of most questions to the community (even if I believe they should be closed), hammering closed only the most egregiously bad questions (e.g. "O hi, what is George Washington's birthday??? Also, was he a good person? I need it for school thx."). The main exception to this is for questions on controversial topics, which I will evaluate and close if I am not convinced they are on-topic, specific, and asked in good faith.