How to ask statistical questions about sensitive or taboo topics (e.g. pornography)?

Question

I recently asked the question Discovering groupings of descriptive tags from porn in a way that I felt avoided being overly explicit. I chose to mention that the question is about the analysis descriptive tags on porn media, rather than leave it open-ended about any generic variables.

But I am also curious about what rules, best practices, norms, and guidelines exist (or should be discussed here) for asking about the analysis of sexually explicit data. This seems relevant to me at least because I might like to ask more questions, but I don't want overstep on a topic that can inadvertently make people feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

Some basics I guidelines I followed in making the above post:

• No sexually-explicit images
• No links to explicit media (e.g. images, videos, audio)
• No disclosure of private information
• No sexually-explicit language
• No discriminatory language
• No jokes or sarcasm

Avoiding sexually-explicit language is perhaps the most difficult to decisively draw the line on. I imagine that medical terminology might be fine if carefully introduced. Another approach might be to abstract the details of the language (e.g. Suppose $X_1$ and $X_2$ are descriptive tags on images of porn, then how can I quantify their statistical dependence?). I imagine the guideline of avoiding jokes or sarcasm may not have complete agreement from SE users, but I made that choice to help prevent the question's earnestness or respectfulness from being doubted.

Your thoughts and guidance are appreciated.

Answer 1

If the subject matter of a statistical analysis is unsavoury, or otherwise emotive, best to not go into more detail than you need to. I agree with @StephanKolassa here—your statistical question in this case is generic enough that you lose nothing from not mentioning that it has to do with pornography.

When you do need to go into some detail—and @Tim is surely right that no topic should be taboo—be serious, & use neutral, formal vocabulary. (It's a small point, but "pornography" sets the tone better than the slangy "porn".) If the topic also invites controversy, resist any temptation to editorialize.

In any case, the expectation is that you'll be attentive to other users' concerns, & willing to work together towards a mutually satisfactory resolution.

Answer 2

To be honest, I would have preferred your question to have been more generic. There are lots of other places where users can provide tags (for instance, all StackExchange sites), and nothing would have stopped you from formulating your question using SE as an example. As it is, this question is almost certain to hit the Hot Network Questions list, and we do have minors on lots of SE sites. Not a happy outcome, in my opinion.

And this is what I would propose for any future question about sexually explicit topics: try to cast them in a less controversial way. I think this should be possible in most cases.

Answer 3

Honestly, I see no problem with your question. It was a good idea from your side to deliberately avoid giving an example that would use explicit language. The question was later edited to remove mentioning "porn" from it. While I agree that mentioning it in the title was not necessary, as about the body, such information might in some cases give important context for understanding the question, so personally, I wouldn't remove such information from the question unless it is of explicit nature by itself.

Finally, I don't think any topic should be taboo on our site. Pornography (legal or illegal) can be a valid research topic. Given that, I don't think we should censor ourselves here as long as the content of the question is not offensive or explicit and the question is on-topic regarding statistics and machine learning.