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Sorry if it is not the suitable forum, but I don't know where else to ask.

I was just wondering how administator/moderator/users would react if someone, say another user, places a political party logo in his avatar.

Is there any rule on SE to eventually prevent this kind of behaviour?

Obviously, I'm not asking such a question because I want to use a political logo in my avatar. I'm asking because of a similar discussion I and my collegues are having as moderators/admins of another forum.

Feel free to move/close/remove if you consider the question inappropriate.

Added after anorton comment.

The symbol I was referring to belongs to a political party here in Italy, and it does not contain any symbol with a proper historic significance (neither swastika, nor hammer and sickle, say)... But I feel this is not the point.

Besided Maths and sciences, we discuss also politics on our forum, in a very liberal way. Admins and mods have always had this sort of netiquette's unwritten rule, i.e. that using political parties symbols is inappropriate. For example, we never axcept any political advertising banners (also during electoral) campaigns on our site, even if we could make some profit with them.

Three days ago, a user tried to force our netiquette, using a political party logo in his avatar. The mods contacted him asking to remove the avatar, which he did. Therefore, the user himself asked the reason why we asked to remove avatar and mods kindly explained. Then he complained that this sort of rule on avatar should be explicitly mentioned in the forum's rules, otherwise it could be interpreted as we were boycotting "his" party.

Now, what would you do in such a situation?

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    $\begingroup$ Since you wrote that you are asking because you are a moderator elsewhere, it might be worth mentioning that there exists moderators.SE proposal. (Although this definitely does not help you at all with you original question.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 3, 2014 at 12:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Pacciu Which forum are you the moderator of? $\endgroup$
    – user122283
    May 3, 2014 at 19:48
  • $\begingroup$ Are we talking about US political parties, all political parties, or some other specific group? It is important to note that there are emblems, and then there are emblems. :) That is, there are certain party emblems (e.g. the swastika) that have historic significance and are interpreted as symbols of hate or evil intent. Then, there are other party symbols (e.g. a donkey or elephant) that don't have as strong of feelings associated with them. The former set would not be tolerated, the latter most likely would be. $\endgroup$
    – apnorton
    May 4, 2014 at 4:38
  • $\begingroup$ @SanathDevalapurkar : I'm one of the moderators of matematicamente.it/forum , an Italian forum dedicated to Mathematics and sciences. $\endgroup$
    – Pacciu
    May 4, 2014 at 13:23
  • $\begingroup$ @anorton : I edited my post to better explain the situation. $\endgroup$
    – Pacciu
    May 4, 2014 at 13:29
  • $\begingroup$ There was some discussion of using names of political figures as usernames: How permissive should we be with user names?. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 4, 2014 at 16:14
  • $\begingroup$ @Pacciu Maybe you could consider whether you want to add the forum you mentioned to this list. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 22, 2014 at 6:37

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