-1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Content Policy Update
I don't get, why the vagueness of the policy is supposed to be a problem. It's obvious and understandable that admins want to have rules, *but* they want a wiggle room as well. There's nothing sinister about it. Even legal codes have expressions like *a reasonable person* which are not clearly defined.
Otherwise, reddit would be in a constant battle with legions of people that act like a kid who, when banned from entering a certain room in the house, will stand with one foot in that room and the other in the hall yelling *"But I'm not in the room!"*.
Being technically correct =/= really correct. Context matters. And admins have every right to have space to judge that context on a case-by-case basis.
Comment by mn920 at 06/08/2015 at 01:24 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There's a difference between vagueness and a deliberately expansive policy. As you noted, the law encounters this problem frequently as well. As Justice Sutherland famously stated:
[T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.
In short, my major complaint isn't that the policy covers too much, it's that I have no idea how much the policy covers.