Offensive profiles - where to draw the line?

Question

I stumbled upon a profile where the profile picture is, from my point of view, islamophobic.

After browsing the Terms of Service and searching meta for the search term "offensive" I'm still not quite sure if this should be flagged or not. On one hand people are saying you can post (nearly) whatever you like in your profile, on the other hand people are offended by using f-words or semi-naked women in profiles. In the later example people argued that it was inappropriate because it would be seen with every post the user would make. In this case, the offending profile-picture is not readable in the shrinked version next to a post.

I would tend to say it is inappropriate but I'd like to hear if the community shares my point of view.

Answer 1

Don't hesitate to flag. Even if nothing ends up being done about it, at least some other people will have looked at it as well, and will have held it against the TOS and common sense. (Yes, I do accuse moderators of common sense here).

I'd say such an image should simply go. It pretty much violates "be nice". You can have your "political" beliefs, but I'm not sure SO/SE should be the platform for them.

Answer 2

If an average person would clearly take offense at an avatar or profile due to:

• Graphic violence, nudity or sexual content
• Targeting of any race, religion, gender or ethnic group
• Exceptional cases where very poor taste would be likely to offend most people

... then you should flag it for moderator review. To be clear, we give people as much latitude as possible when it comes to their avatar and profile page. It's all about them, and we try to let them just be themselves.

When a profile page or avatar has, or is likely to create a disruption, we need to be made aware of it and investigate. We might not take action in some cases, but we really do need to be aware of it.

Flag any of their posts as 'other', let the moderators know, and if it's something that we need to look into the moderators can pass it to us quickly if they're uncertain, or just handle it themselves when they receive the flag.