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Make it easier for people to say something honest and civil than get defensive and say something reflexive and knee-jerky, which is all too easy online. The pr

Make it easier for people to say something honest and civil than get defensive and say something reflexive and knee-jerky, which is all too easy online. The problem is people are going to say reflexive, awful things no matter what. You could bury Mount Everest under the evidence of that fact at this point. So this isn't about "scoring points" -- if it were I'd just link people to the guidelines over and over again -- it's about publicly calling people out when they do this stuff. Because as long as everyone's polite to them about it, why should they stop?

grzm 10y ago
You're right. Some people will do nothing but respond reflexively and awfully. Some people do that only sometimes when they get particularly heated. Some people aren't aware that they're doing it and would want to be better if it's brought to their attention in a constructive way. Unfortunately humans are psychologically bent towards paying attention to the negative rather than the neutral or the positive, so we tend to remember the negative behavior, which lends itself to thinking this stuff is happening all the time and people can't change. Just calling people out on it doesn't solve the problem, either. It just pushes people further apart, which doesn't do anything to improve the behavior. If I didn't think it was worthwhile saying anything, I'd say nothing. (I was frustrated with myself yesterday because I couldn't figure out a constructive way to express myself in our interactions yesterday, btw.) And online it's easy to misinterpret the intent or meaning of what someone is saying. This happened yesterday in an interaction between me, 'adrienne, and 'Hydraulix989. Online we've only got text. We don't get to hear intonation, phrasing, facial expression, all the other information that we exchange face-to-face. I've heard somewhere that > 50% of communication is in these non-lexical channels. It makes sense to give each other the benefit of the doubt that we've misinterpreted what the other has said, if honest, mutually constructive conversation is the goal. And, yeah, there are some real jerks out there. In those cases I try to remember "don't feed the trolls". If it's particularly egregious, and I feel I can't let what they said go unanswered, I'll try to be extremely civil, let them know I'm no longer going to participate in the discussion, and then email the mods.

grzm 10y ago

You're right. Some people will do nothing but respond reflexively and awfully. Some people do that only sometimes when they get particularly heated. Some people aren't aware that they're doing it and would want to be better if it's brought to their attention in a constructive way. Unfortunately humans are psychologically bent towards paying attention to the negative rather than the neutral or the positive, so we tend to remember the negative behavior, which lends itself to thinking this stuff is happening all the time and people can't change. Just calling people out on it doesn't solve the problem, either. It just pushes people further apart, which doesn't do anything to improve the behavior. If I didn't think it was worthwhile saying anything, I'd say nothing. (I was frustrated with myself yesterday because I couldn't figure out a constructive way to express myself in our interactions yesterday, btw.) And online it's easy to misinterpret the intent or meaning of what someone is saying. This happened yesterday in an interaction between me, 'adrienne, and 'Hydraulix989. Online we've only got text. We don't get to hear intonation, phrasing, facial expression, all the other information that we exchange face-to-face. I've heard somewhere that > 50% of communication is in these non-lexical channels. It makes sense to give each other the benefit of the doubt that we've misinterpreted what the other has said, if honest, mutually constructive conversation is the goal. And, yeah, there are some real jerks out there. In those cases I try to remember "don't feed the trolls". If it's particularly egregious, and I feel I can't let what they said go unanswered, I'll try to be extremely civil, let them know I'm no longer going to participate in the discussion, and then email the mods.