The Universal Rules of Civilized Discourse
blog.discourse.org
blog.discourse.org
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
In any case, based on my experience they are at least fellow travelers, cowardly hiding behind "be polite" while suppressing rational dissent.
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.