I may be reading the wrong thing into this post but:
This feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. As I see it, the L-word was used as a setpiece to explain how voting people out removed them from the game. It was easily replaced when the issue came up, because set dressing is easily replaceable. Gaslighting I don’t think is really comparable, as it relates to actions within the game. If you were to try to express the idea through other words, I feel like it would be muddled.In post 4401, Thestatusquo wrote: For instance, a similar argument can be (and was!) made frequently in response to our sitewide decision to do away with the word "lynch" and this rule continues to this day to cause confusion among both new (from other sites especially) and returning users.
We deal with these bits of confusion in the same way, with reach outs, escalated to warnings if users do not heed the reach outs, followed by bans if they continue to persist.
99% of the time this conversation ends after the reach out. The result is we have almost no one saying that word on the site anymore outside of some genuine slip ups.
Gaslighting as a word in game is being handled in the exact same way.
I guess my takeaway is “I don’t think treating usage of both words the exact same is fair because one is essentially a conscious choice to be an ass, and one is potentially a lack of any other effective way to describe a scenario”.