4 ms·

The Universal Rules of Civilized Discourse

65 points by iamwil 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago
This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. I'd hope our standards could be higher than that. I know several public parks that are best avoided.
itchitawa 13y ago
Heh, I find it ironic that the comments on that article quickly degenerated into a political argument about racism :P
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Yup, completely derailed. The main problem with discourse on the internet is not a software problem.
gametheoretic 13y ago
In their own way, the comments are more interesting than the article. Atwood lists StormFront as one of the sites they investigated the dynamics of. The other two object; one claims Atwood was dismissive of his concerns in a twitter convo. In the end, the posts were civilized and the discourse, nonexistent. Each is visibly holding back his fuller opinion not b/c it would be uncivilized to give it but b/c he fears being seen as such. What was gained?
- mpyne 13y ago
  I actually clicked on the Stormfront link, and felt stupid immediately afterward; as far as I could tell the only demand was that you were polite to other white persons. Certainly I didn't get a very strong "be nice to every poster" vibe.
  - derleth 13y ago
    Stormfront is fairly notorious for being a racist forum, which is populated chiefly by racist whites (and those who wish to act like them) and run solely for the benefit of racist whites. It is a hateful place and its rules should be viewed with skepticism on that basis.
- batemanesque 13y ago
  exactly. I find it problematic that they seem to think calling someone names is completely impermissible but citing a white supremacist forum's guidelines is not.
6d0debc071 13y ago
It's not a bad list, as far as it goes. That said, I've moderated forums before, some of them for the better part of a decade - That ruleset is way too wordy to be effectively applied, IME of various sets of rules. Probably not at any great damage, because I expect people to deal with it the way they do must such rules, i.e. make a good faith effort while largely ignoring them. You have, maybe, three or four points that you can really pick out when you're giving people rules, preferably not in prose but in bullet point form, and the rest of it's down to how people conduct themselves in the community and how your moderators interact with people when they go wrong. People are not going to be constantly checking their posts against a big list of things they barely remember. Ideally you want to get it down to one overarching rule, like don't be a dick, with a handful of examples of what dickish behaviour is; what the tone of your specific forum would be. You really have to keep this stuff very concise. Explanations for why each rule is there can, if necessary, be included further down; underneath the short summary that you want everyone to have read. Personally I've never found much need for such explanations, that's more something you'd do in PM if someone was questioning them - by and large people seem to understand well enough from examples.
javajosh 13y ago
Has anyone tried a social killfile? Almost all usenet clients had this wonderful feature called a killfile which would simply elide known-bad posters in a newsgroup. The regulars would have a largely (but not exactly) identical killfile, since the trolls were well known. A good group would often leave troll posts totally without responses - since no-one had even read it. I always used to think it would be handy to have well-respected members of the group share their killfiles with others. Web-hosted forums could go one better and allow the easy sharing of killfiles between participants. This kind of solution gives individuals freedom to see what data they want to see, but it also never takes away an individuals right to say whatever they want to say however they want to say it, however terrible or useless anyone thinks it is. There are no "moderators" per se, just people you respect well enough to copy their killfiles. This relates to the OP's article because while it seems like a good idea to write down the rules of discourse, application of the rules will be arbitrary by nature, and so you have to let the community police itself in a scalable way.
- eksith 13y ago
  I'm an admin of a forum where we share ignore lists. I was very concerned about this at first because there's a very real chance that people will blindly ignore users based on others already ignoring them. However, for the most part, it seems users will still look at those shared lists as an "advisory" and still use their own discretion when choosing to ignore a user. There's also a feature where frequently ignored users will lose community standing (it works a bit like karma points except no numeric score is shown). Users with poor community standing will see an increase in the delay interval they're allowed to post. They will also not see new topics until a certain number of users with good community standing have already replied to those. The idea being that, perhaps, exposure to good quality posts will dissuade rubbish ones.
- lambada 13y ago
  Sounds like an (partial)-inversion of a Web of Trust.
wissler 13y ago
Productive conversation is rational and does not mince words. "Politeness" is nice to have, but sometimes, to be polite is to be uncivil. Just imagine being polite to someone advocating racism. We don't abolish poor behavior by treating it like it's civilized. On the contrary, that's an inversion of true civility. I don't trust people who elevate politeness above all else.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  I think you are mistaking politeness for 'sweetness'. You can be perfectly polite and at the same time perfectly clear. Politeness in a conversation is the art of being clear without being offensive to the other person. In your example, someone advocating racism can be countered by stating clearly and simply the historical, anthropological and economical reasons why racism is wrong. Politeness implies reasoning. An internet discussion is not war, it is a conversation. Whenever you leave politeness aside, you have lost. Always. (Obviously, this is my way of seeing it). In your example, any pro-racist argument is by itself both impolite (because it insults persons straightaway) and wrong (for many reasons). It is a no-no in any case. If you fall on the same side of the wall (by being impolite) you are placing yourself at the same level and your "reason" is lost to the reader. You can say: "racism and eugenics have lead mankind to the Nazi extermination camps" and being polite. To repeat myself: politeness is not lack of clarity. It is just the way to properly oppose wrong ideas without harming people defending them. At the same time, it protects your argument.
  - mheathr 13y ago
    Perhaps a more cogent axiom is to reason ethically rather than aim to maintain politeness. That has the added effect of distilling whether the audience is someone that can be reasoned with and large subset of polite etiquette is encapsulated within the constraint of ethical reasoning. If that was followed it would help maintain a decent signal to noise ratio as well.
  - wissler 13y ago
    I think you are using the word "polite" to refer to the Christian ethic "don't judge others". As widespread as it is, that ethic should not get to rule discourse without justifying itself. And in practice it is almost always hypocritical: those who violate this dogma are usually castigated, thereby violating the rule they dogmatically insist upon. I see no reason why we should refrain from morally evaluating what others say, whether that evaluation be positive or negative. In fact, I think it leads to a great deal of evil to not so evaluate.

65 points by iamwil 13y ago

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. I'd hope our standards could be higher than that. I know several public parks that are best avoided.

itchitawa 13y ago

Heh, I find it ironic that the comments on that article quickly degenerated into a political argument about racism :P

pessimizer 13y ago
Yup, completely derailed. The main problem with discourse on the internet is not a software problem.

gametheoretic 13y ago

In their own way, the comments are more interesting than the article. Atwood lists StormFront as one of the sites they investigated the dynamics of. The other two object; one claims Atwood was dismissive of his concerns in a twitter convo. In the end, the posts were civilized and the discourse, nonexistent. Each is visibly holding back his fuller opinion not b/c it would be uncivilized to give it but b/c he fears being seen as such. What was gained?

mpyne 13y ago
I actually clicked on the Stormfront link, and felt stupid immediately afterward; as far as I could tell the only demand was that you were polite to other white persons. Certainly I didn't get a very strong "be nice to every poster" vibe.
- derleth 13y ago
  Stormfront is fairly notorious for being a racist forum, which is populated chiefly by racist whites (and those who wish to act like them) and run solely for the benefit of racist whites. It is a hateful place and its rules should be viewed with skepticism on that basis.
batemanesque 13y ago
exactly. I find it problematic that they seem to think calling someone names is completely impermissible but citing a white supremacist forum's guidelines is not.

6d0debc071 13y ago

It's not a bad list, as far as it goes. That said, I've moderated forums before, some of them for the better part of a decade - That ruleset is way too wordy to be effectively applied, IME of various sets of rules. Probably not at any great damage, because I expect people to deal with it the way they do must such rules, i.e. make a good faith effort while largely ignoring them. You have, maybe, three or four points that you can really pick out when you're giving people rules, preferably not in prose but in bullet point form, and the rest of it's down to how people conduct themselves in the community and how your moderators interact with people when they go wrong. People are not going to be constantly checking their posts against a big list of things they barely remember. Ideally you want to get it down to one overarching rule, like don't be a dick, with a handful of examples of what dickish behaviour is; what the tone of your specific forum would be. You really have to keep this stuff very concise. Explanations for why each rule is there can, if necessary, be included further down; underneath the short summary that you want everyone to have read. Personally I've never found much need for such explanations, that's more something you'd do in PM if someone was questioning them - by and large people seem to understand well enough from examples.

javajosh 13y ago

Has anyone tried a social killfile? Almost all usenet clients had this wonderful feature called a killfile which would simply elide known-bad posters in a newsgroup. The regulars would have a largely (but not exactly) identical killfile, since the trolls were well known. A good group would often leave troll posts totally without responses - since no-one had even read it. I always used to think it would be handy to have well-respected members of the group share their killfiles with others. Web-hosted forums could go one better and allow the easy sharing of killfiles between participants. This kind of solution gives individuals freedom to see what data they want to see, but it also never takes away an individuals right to say whatever they want to say however they want to say it, however terrible or useless anyone thinks it is. There are no "moderators" per se, just people you respect well enough to copy their killfiles. This relates to the OP's article because while it seems like a good idea to write down the rules of discourse, application of the rules will be arbitrary by nature, and so you have to let the community police itself in a scalable way.

eksith 13y ago
I'm an admin of a forum where we share ignore lists. I was very concerned about this at first because there's a very real chance that people will blindly ignore users based on others already ignoring them. However, for the most part, it seems users will still look at those shared lists as an "advisory" and still use their own discretion when choosing to ignore a user. There's also a feature where frequently ignored users will lose community standing (it works a bit like karma points except no numeric score is shown). Users with poor community standing will see an increase in the delay interval they're allowed to post. They will also not see new topics until a certain number of users with good community standing have already replied to those. The idea being that, perhaps, exposure to good quality posts will dissuade rubbish ones.
lambada 13y ago
Sounds like an (partial)-inversion of a Web of Trust.

wissler 13y ago

Productive conversation is rational and does not mince words. "Politeness" is nice to have, but sometimes, to be polite is to be uncivil. Just imagine being polite to someone advocating racism. We don't abolish poor behavior by treating it like it's civilized. On the contrary, that's an inversion of true civility. I don't trust people who elevate politeness above all else.

pfortuny 13y ago
I think you are mistaking politeness for 'sweetness'. You can be perfectly polite and at the same time perfectly clear. Politeness in a conversation is the art of being clear without being offensive to the other person. In your example, someone advocating racism can be countered by stating clearly and simply the historical, anthropological and economical reasons why racism is wrong. Politeness implies reasoning. An internet discussion is not war, it is a conversation. Whenever you leave politeness aside, you have lost. Always. (Obviously, this is my way of seeing it). In your example, any pro-racist argument is by itself both impolite (because it insults persons straightaway) and wrong (for many reasons). It is a no-no in any case. If you fall on the same side of the wall (by being impolite) you are placing yourself at the same level and your "reason" is lost to the reader. You can say: "racism and eugenics have lead mankind to the Nazi extermination camps" and being polite. To repeat myself: politeness is not lack of clarity. It is just the way to properly oppose wrong ideas without harming people defending them. At the same time, it protects your argument.
- mheathr 13y ago
  Perhaps a more cogent axiom is to reason ethically rather than aim to maintain politeness. That has the added effect of distilling whether the audience is someone that can be reasoned with and large subset of polite etiquette is encapsulated within the constraint of ethical reasoning. If that was followed it would help maintain a decent signal to noise ratio as well.
- wissler 13y ago
  I think you are using the word "polite" to refer to the Christian ethic "don't judge others". As widespread as it is, that ethic should not get to rule discourse without justifying itself. And in practice it is almost always hypocritical: those who violate this dogma are usually castigated, thereby violating the rule they dogmatically insist upon. I see no reason why we should refrain from morally evaluating what others say, whether that evaluation be positive or negative. In fact, I think it leads to a great deal of evil to not so evaluate.