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As a warning to people looking at and answering a potentially offensive question, should there be a tag? I just asked a question about terms used in reference to the Germans around the time of the world wars, which includes quite a few pejorative/offensive terms.

Link: Terms describing Germans around the two World Wars — Differences and context?

Faut-il une étiquette pour avertir les visiteurs que certaines questions peuvent choquer ? Je viens de poser une question sur les termes utilisés pour désigner les Allemands à l'époque des guerres mondiales, dont beaucoup sont péjoratifs ou insultants.

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    By the time they've seen the question, it's a bit too late for this tag to warn them, isn't it?
    – Jez
    Aug 25, 2011 at 14:40
  • No, I don't think so (reminder: downvoting indicates disagreement)
    – Benjol
    Aug 26, 2011 at 6:41
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    Another example of a potentially offensive question would be to discuss terms used to refer to certain male or female body parts, which can be asked in a way that doesn't use offensive language, but may contain a variety of offensive terms in the answers.
    – Zoot
    Sep 14, 2011 at 20:18

3 Answers 3

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If the question is offensive it has to be closed, it's the close-vote system's purpose. If the question only refers to offensive words, it shouldn't be offensive, and thus has no need to marked as offensive.

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  • I disagree. Here is the related tag in English.SE: english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/offensive-language
    – Zoot
    Aug 26, 2011 at 14:13
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    @Zoot: AFAIK, those are questions about words that are considered offensive, not questions that might happen to contain offensive words. Subtle distinction perhaps, but the difference between a tag that describes the topic of the question (good!) and one that simply categorizes it based on factors that may have no connection at all to the topic (bad!!!)
    – Shog9
    Aug 26, 2011 at 17:25
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    Maybe what we need are "grossièretés" and "insultes" tags.
    – Joubarc
    Aug 31, 2011 at 10:02
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I don't believe we need to tag items that may be offensive simply because it is so incredibly subjective - especially as we may be dealing with cross cultural issues.

An answer that contains factual content from a time when it was in normal use that we may now find offensive is not the same thing as an offensive post provided it is presented within context. If anything the example you give illustrates this ideally because the answer merely points out that these terms may be offensive or xenophobic thus increasing the richness of the answer.

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I vote up for <[pejorative]> tag :

Quality of StackExange is to help anybody who want to learn french to avoid unappropriate formulation, specially in oral discussion.

« I've heard (or read) some word », before reuse it, I look in StackExchange with <[pejorative ]> selection.

This acknowledgementcan be add later to indicate dangerous formulation.

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