No insult intended and I will have to think about it for a while as to why it is that my gut reaction is one of "the overwhelming sensation of saccharine in the mouth". The only line of concern to me is:

Our industry has traditionally been dominated by white males, and expanding that demographic can only help to enrich the experiences offered to players.

Whilst it is accurate in every way, it brings to mind, random white male stats like the majority of serial killers are white males i.e. seriously lets just lose the one racially identified group dominating the others with their "colonialistic or patriarchal or whatever BS".

My opinion:

Delete that line, the rest reads fine. Though I would possibly cover that poorly crafted English will sometimes occur due to language barriers and should be afforded some leeway in other's responses.

My opinion:

Delete that line, the rest reads fine.

Given the sheer amount of voices in the disallowed topics thread, I would have thought that there would be a similar number of voices in here by now.

Today is also the first day I saw it. The first few posts apparently occurred in the early morning in USA timezones, so were probably pushed under the active-topics list before most of us woke up.

Anyway, I have some potential suggestions: (changes in red)

Welcome to GameDev.net, one of the largest and most active online communities for video game developers! We have a diverse community and recognize [typo] that this can sometimes result in misunderstanding and conflict, especially when controversial topics such as politics, discrimination, and similar are discussed.

We want to foster a welcoming and inclusive community where such matters can be discussed productively, and ask that the following guidelines be kept in mind when discussing such topics on our site.

Note that these guidelines are intended for use in controversial topics and do not necessarily apply to purely technical discussions. Most people know a topic is controversial when they post, and we expect you to use reasonable judgement.

This is a welcoming community, and discrimination will not be tolerated.

We welcome members of different backgrounds and believe that a more diverse community will provide different views and experiences to therefore offer a better overall knowledge-base that can better serve the wider community. Personal details such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, or similar, should not be used to judge the value of a person's contribution, and insults based upon those things will not tolerated.

A diverse conversation is more interesting and productive. Do not encourage one-sided discussions.

Please ensure you're making a real contribution and adding something new to the conversation. We can only have an enlightening discussion when different points of view are allowed, and this can't happen if the majority of posts represent a single point of view. If, after writing your post you find that you are just posting to agree with others and have not added anything significant to the conversation, please considering revising or cancelling your post.

If you want to respond to something another member posted, and notice that one or two other people have already addressed it, please refrain from dog-piling additional responses on that one community member unless you truly have something to say that hasn't already been covered by the other responses.

If too many posts espousing a single point of view are posted without waiting for alternative views to be represented some posts may be edited or removed to improve the balance of the conversation. ?If you disagree with a moderator's editing, don't start a discussion about it in that same thread - you can either PM the moderator directly, or start a new thread.

Unverified claims are unproductive and should be avoided. Check and cite sources for any statistics.

Meaningful conversation can be disrupted when made-up or poorly estimated data is introduced. If you're posting a statistic or comparison do a quick search to verify that you're really correct and consider citing reliable sources in your post so that the information can easily be verified. Remember to also share any relevant context for your information, as something that is true in a limited environment may not necessarily match the experiences of other members.

Understanding that one person's individual experiences is different that another person's in another area of the world, personal experiences should have their context clearly defined: "X isn't a problem" isn't helpful, whereas "At <Company A> in <Country>, I've never encountered <X>" adds actual value to the discussion.

Text lacks tone and context.

Remember that written text does not always convey the tone and intended mood of the writer.

The goal of a discussion is to share knowledge and experiences, to help all of us develop and refine our views. If you are posting solely to "win" an argument, rather than share knowledge, please rethink whether your potential posts actually contribute value to our community.

If a particular post annoys you, consider waiting 24 hours to get your emotions under control before posting something you regret. You're talking to other humans, treat each other with respect.

Try to make your own writing as clear as possible and avoid potentially problematic devices such as sarcasm. When reading comments from other members, try to assume the best rather than the worst; if your default reaction is to take offence and otherwise productive conversation is more likely to go off-track.

Ultimately I'm not sure how additional rules is supposed to alleviate some of the burden for moderators. I'd suggest when such a thread starts, one moderator claims "ownership" of the thread, and doesn't participate in the conversation (since that seems to be part of the problem moderators were mentioning - not wanting to close threads they themselves were a part of), except to moderate the thread. Other moderators can still moderate, ofcourse, (and close the thread if necessary), but I think it might reduce some of the emotional pressure on them to know that a fellow moderator has already volunteered to make the tougher decision of when to close it.

"I said that dealing with this can be draining for the moderators. This isn't an issue of workload (on last count we had over 70 moderators!) or technical difficulty (it mostly amounts to typing messages and clicking buttons) but a human issue: our moderators are people too, and it can be difficult to try to maintain objectivity when making these sort of subjective calls, especially when some of us are personally engaged in the discussion or have strong feelings about the topic. It's emotionally taxing to make decisions that involve censoring people, and it can be tough to find the right balance or appropriate action to take with some members who regularly contribute to on-topic discussions in valuable ways but happen to hold some reprehensible personal view." - [linky]

"You're not wrong, but moderators are people too. Regardless of the standards to which we attempt to hold ourselves, it's still very possible for us to get emotionally involved -- and sometimes it's not always very easy for us to realize how much our theoretically-objective judgement may have been compromised before we make a decision. Dealing with extremely troublesome users after they've been antagonizing others in a thread for several posts is much harder than closing a thread on policy. It's much easier in the former case to narrow in only on the user I perceive to be the new-kid-on-the-block stirring up trouble, much easier for my personal bias to override my judgement." - [linky]

Maybe a reminder under the "one-sided" section that it's not always necessary to get the last word.

While the wording seems good and it elaborates a bit on the existing posting guidelines, I'm not so sure that I really see much difference. Is there any feedback from moderators that suggests that this works towards dealing with the uncomfortable position that they're in keeping order in a controversial topic, particularly when opinions are offered that may be considered less than progressive?

(edit)

Hmm... Not just piling on a similar point, I was somewhat ninja'd by Servant. That element of the "one-sided" section could be fun to moderate.