Journal reldruH's Journal: Slashdot Safety 1

I love Slashdot. I think the idea is great, the implementation is one of the best I've seen, the comment discussions keep bringing me back for more and as a news source it's second to none in my book. Now that all that's out of the way, I'm here to complain. I just read an article about Oblivions rating being changed. One of the reasons listed for the change was a mod somebody made to view all the female characters topless. Now, there's a lot there to talk about: is it fair to change a rating after it's been declared and the game has been sold to thousands of people? Should some type of rebate be given to parents of kids who wouldn't have bought the game if it had had that rating originally? Can a rating be changed based on a mod somebody else made? Something that's not actually a part of the game made by the publisher? Was any of that mentioned in the first couple of comments? Is all of Slashdot going to start using IE tomorrow? The first two comments were about how one would go about getting this mod and 'BOOOBIEZ!!' If I'm a girl and I'm interested in computers, technology, games and I find a site like Slashdot (and I have any sort of social awareness), I'm immedietely going to be turned off by crap like that. Most of the content on this site is great, the discussions rock, but there are people who do things like that, and then when somebody calls them on it tell that person to go get a sense of humor. Joke or not, that's not OK. We live in the 21st century, when are we giong to update our views, realize that the constant, almost pornographic abuse of the female body is turning so many women off to technology. In a time when we should be welcoming one and all to the technological fold, we're still creating a wall between ourselves and a huge number of people that could be bringing the community forward and contributing new viewpoints. There's the old stereotype that nerds are socially inept, without girlfriends no matter how hard they try. I say that if that is true, it's because we bring it on ourselves with comments like that.

P.S. The comment I left about how Slashdot is an unsafe environment for women just got modded down as flamebait. Good job, moderators.