There are no rules that can be made ahead of time that catch all the trolls, whilst not gatekeeping innocent folk. Allowing space for people to exist on their own terms means acting reactively, and means that trolls will slip through the cracks sometimes. That is by design, because the alternative is gatekeeping.

I absolutely agree. I think people (myself included) were concerned because the (necessary) ambiguity of rules seemed to be opening the door to times when a user would feel pushed out of spaces by having to tiptoe around other users that they think might just be trolls. It seems to me from talking to you about it that there is generally good faith assumed on all sides, which definitely sets my mind at ease.

I appreciate the clarity on what exactly does and doesn’t get someone banned. That all seems very reasonable to me, and largely answered my main question. Feel free to disengage with this conversation guilt-free if you think my followup here isn’t worth your time. Unfortunately I have reddit-brain and feel like I need to re-explain myself when I feel like i’m not being understood.

With that out of the way: I think you’re missing the point about the examples.

On the User A side, I’m not talking about directly interacting with minors. I’m talking about indirectly interacting with everyone, including minors, but also including adults who don’t want to interact in a sexual manner with randos. There’s definitely a difference, but I think it’s the same sort of effect if User A asks a minor to use their sexualized pronouns vs if they label themselves with sexualized pronouns and then go into spaces where minors may interact with them.

On the User B side, I feel like while “it” is similar in some ways to slur pronouns, it also has some fundamental differences. For one, “it” is already a word we use in other contexts and is not one people can really avoid even if they try, and for another, most “it” pronoun people I’ve encountered intend it to be uses in the object sense, not the reclaimed slur sense. Would User B be treated differently moderation-wise if their pronouns were different reclaimed slurs, like the n-word? I know that there’s no amount of complaining about misgendering that could convince me to use certain slur pronouns.

I do agree that most people are going to be reasonable and those with more controversial pronouns will likely give those who are uncomfortable an out (in the form of alternate pronouns), but I don’t think those people are who anyone is really worried about here, because they seem chill as hell, lol. I get that we’re talking about edge cases of edge cases here, so maybe the whole thing is purposeless anyway.

I think looking at a more concrete hypothetical would be more clarifying for people.

Let’s say that User A has their pronouns listed as “daddy” and User B has their pronouns listed as the t-slur. User C finds both of these uncomfortable to use, A because it feels like they’re being coerced into a sexual interaction with another user, and B because they’ve been personally victimized by that slur before and being around those that use it (even in a reclaimed sense) hurts them (and I am confident this is a thing people are sensitive to on this instance because I’ve seen people put trigger warnings for its usage before). User C wants to continue to interact with their community, so they use “they/them” for A and B instead. What happens next, from a moderation standpoint? What if they had conspicuously avoided pronouns by using “User A” and “User B” exclusively?

I think there have been cases that go up to or put a toe over the line of acceptability for some people, and some of us are confused/concerned about how far things go. It seems like you have a clear idea of what is and isn’t acceptable, but your hard line hasn’t translated well into the heads of other people, and it creates an ambiguity for the rest of us who see a very blurry spectrum. I know you have a very hard (and usually thankless job) and from both seeing your work and from benefit of the doubt, I’m sure you want to do right by the people here, but I think some clarity would be good for people. In the above example, if User C doesn’t know what will or won’t get them kicked out of their communities or even the instance, they may engage less and ultimately feel pushed out of their space, and so moderation really needs to be a balance of the needs of Users A & B and User C.

And to be clear, I don’t think anyone is asking for permission to bully someone with unconventional pronouns, nor permission to tell them their gender identity is wrong or invalid (If there are, those people do not belong here in any capacity). I think the question is mostly, which neopronouns requests are unreasonable enough for people to be allowed to use backup pronouns or just the user’s name instead.