The Universal Rules of Civilized Discourse

http://blog.discourse.org/2013/03/the-universal-rules-of-civilized-discourse/

by iamwil • 13 years ago

65 19 13 years ago

blog.discourse.org

ams6110• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

pessimizer• 13 years ago

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

gametheoretic• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Sounds like an (partial)-inversion of a Web of Trust.

wissler3• 13 years 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.

pfortuny3• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

wissler3• 13 years 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.

ensignavenger• 13 years ago

The most stinging rebukes I have ever received have come from the kindest, nicest people I know. Even when they were wrong, the rebuke pierced my heart and made me want to make sure that I would never do anything to actually deserve such a reproving in the future. In the particular situation I am thinking of, the person was so gentle in the way they reproved me that I didn't even bother with correcting them, though I knew that it was a misunderstanding, I also knew they would not hold it against me.

Sometimes sharp reproof is necessary, but when you use it, you should always show the target love afterwards. If you fail to do so, your reproof is likely to be ineffective, and may be counter productive.

The Universal Rules of Civilized Discourse

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