Microsoft: Gamertag ban “inelegant”

That was fast. It was only yesterday that we posted about the complaint of Teresa, one XBL user who got herself banned for putting in her profile information that she’s a lesbian. The complaint published on The Consumerist sparked outrage throughout the Internet community. But what do you know, Microsoft too heard about the post on the site within the hour it was put up. Here’s their side of the story.

That was fast. It was only yesterday that we posted about the complaint of Teresa, one XBL user who got herself banned for putting in her profile information that she’s a lesbian. The complaint, published on The Consumerist, sparked outrage throughout the Internet community. But what do you know, Microsoft too heard about the post on the site within the hour it was put up.

Here’s their side of the story. Stephen Toulouse, program manager for policy and enforcement on XBL, talked to MTV News and explained the current stand of the company on the matter, and the steps they are taking to address the said issue.

It is true that as a matter of policy, the expression of relationship preference in Gamertag profiles and tags is not allowed across the board, whether that’s heterosexual or other. But as we saw when we ran into the issue with this [last year], we started looking into that policy.

And as for Teresa’s incident, they weren’t able to take any action, he said, because they did not have all the information as to the said incidents of harassment. “Certainly, harassing someone, even if they have the expression of their relationship preference in their profile of their Gamertag, even if that may be against the current terms of use in the current policy — that does not give the right for anyone to harass another player.”

So will they be lifting the ban then? “On the face of that, we have no objection to that, except for one simple problem.” That being some users prejudiced or immature enough to use the word “gay” pejoratively (pe⋅jo⋅ra⋅tive: adj. [pi-jawr–uh-tiv,–jor–,pej–uh-rey-,pee-juh–]: having a disparaging , derogatory, or belittling effect or force). And that’s between 95 to 98 percent of the time that the word “gay” is used, mind you.

So what about coming up with a solution that will let people like Teresa, or even the unfortunate Mr. Richard Gaywood (though he’s straight) express their “gayness” – literally or otherwise – without opening up the floodgates for abuse? One such suggested solution is having symbols or checkoff boxes that will denote one’s sexual orientation. To that, Toulouse said,

That’s the type of thing we’re looking at as a solution… I can’t talk about future plans, except to say we want to provide the capability for our users to express relationship preference or gender without a way for it to be misused.

Great, then. But as to what everyone else is waiting for, am sure, Microsoft’s apology – well, he didn’t outright say “sorry”, but he did acknowledge their fault in the matter:

It’s inelegant. And it’s inelegant because the text-box field is freeform.

That’ll do for now, I guess. And now I leave you with a treat – especially for our gay members out there – the queen of all queers. Madonna (let’s put this under the “Just Cos” categ, shall we? ;P ).

Via MTV News