Official Representation

I was going to make a post about this issue as well but it seems you beat me to it :P Regardless of my personal opinions on the matter, I do believe that it would be helpful to clarify the guidelines, since "controversial" or "offensive" topics seem to be too much up to interpretation. I believe the rule might've been intended to encourage people to stay away from any programs that could be construed to be "controversial" or "offensive," but there clearly have been and will be programs that toe the line. And said line has always been pretty murky in defining what is religious enough, political enough, offensive enough, or otherwise controversial enough to get a program hidden.

I'll say that pride programs do seem to be relatively controversial within the KA community - whether or not they should be regarded as controversial is an issue for another day (and likely would devolve into unproductive discussion) - as they've generated quite a lot of off-topic comments in support of and against them. The same goes for the programs countering pride programs. I think a lot of the dissatisfaction and anger here stems from a gap between how controversial the programs really are within the KA community and what KA and the guardians consider should or shouldn't be controversial.

Adding on to the guidelines and giving specific instances for the "controversial" rule (in addition to doing so for the "offensive" rule) might be helpful. I know for a fact that there's been some confusion as to whether or not programs celebrating Christmas, Ramadan, Easter, etc. were allowed due to their religious ties, and now there's also the matter of whether or not Pride Month programs and/or the programs criticizing them should be allowed.

If anything, I hope this will give KA the opportunity to further discuss and justify their reasoning of which programs should or shouldn't be hidden in order to increase transparency and placate misgivings about allowing potential bias or disrespect towards certain groups.

Hi Quinn,

Thanks for checking on this!

While I can’t go into any specific moderation actions that have been taken in relation to this, I can say that we generally don’t consider identity (gender, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity) to be a controversial issue, and thus that does not fall under the “controversial or divisive topics” as listed in the guidelines. Religion, politics, and personal issues, on the other hand, do fall under the “Off-topic” category and are explicitly mentioned in the guidelines.

In regards to “discriminatory or offensive language”, we have a zero-tolerance policy on this. Any user-posted content that is racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory towards others will be removed and will result in an immediate suspension from the site. We want Khan Academy to be a welcoming place for all individuals, and any form of prejudice, degradation, or harassment will not be tolerated. We believe it’s important to recognize that we are all different, and it’s important to respect those differences. To summarize, if you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s best not to say anything at all.

Projects celebrating secular holidays are perfectly fine, assuming the project adheres to the rest of the guidelines. Some projects celebrating Christmas, for example, may be allowed since this is a holiday that is often celebrated as a secular and cultural holiday, rather than a religious one. However, a Christmas program celebrating the religious version of the holiday would be removed, since this falls under the “Controversial or divisive topics including religion, politics, or personal issues...” section.

If you see any comments that are inappropriate as described above, please flag them for Guardian attention so that we can review and take action on them as fast as possible.

Hopefully this helps clarify! Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

Hey everyone!

Though I haven't really seen the Pride Month program (that I know of), I do think that if it really was against the guidelines, it should've been taken down. But until I see it, my opinions are still neutral about this.

Like other people have mentioned, KA is supposed to be a fun learning platform for kids of all ages. I guess it's okay to express your opinions but everyone should keep in mind that there are child accounts here too. From what I know, they can view the HL too.

Really, I still have neutral opinions about this. When I first came to KA it was a place where I could learn and improve myself. I didn't really get the flag feature and tbh I'm still scared of it. But either way Khan Academy is a good place to learn. And if you don't like the computer programming courses, then you could always just try Pixar in a Box or the math courses.

Remember that KA first started out with Sal's love to teach and help students. I'm not sure how computer programming courses came to Khan, but I'm sure it was for a similar reasons.

CoraL 

Hi friends! Because this thread has seen several off-topic comments, we're going to go ahead and close it for future comments. Please remember to keep your comments in the community productive and respectful of all of our learners in accordance with our Community Guidelines.