In the Name of Civil Conversation

[Cluedrew]

So this might be a lost cause... in fact in our modern age it might be very well be mentioned in the definition of lost cause. How do you get people to be polite on the internet? OK, there are limits on my foolishness, how do we encourage politeness on Giant in the Playground?

Luckily, most users on the forum are very reasonable most of the time. However there are times where... things get out of hand. Does anyone have any strategies to handle those situations? Particularly to head them off before moderator involvement comes up. At that point it really is the moderators' jobs and civil conversation has already been lost.

Yeah, I'm not sure if there is an answer to this question, but if I could stop the 2 page arguments over something tangentially related to the topic I totally would. So I continue to try.

[JeenLeen]

I think the combination of reasonable yet strict posting rules plus good moderators has, over time, led to an atmosphere of civil conversation here on the forum.

I don't know if much can be done to be preventative in a given situation. Since 'vigilante modding' is against the forum rules, we shouldn't tell folk they are breaking rules, but I guess--and note this is a guess--that saying something like "This looks like it might be getting into hot waters. Let's take a step back" could be civil and not break any rules.

---

For the internet in general: ...I guess having a place where non-civil conversation is punished until folk accept civility is needed. Almost impossible to truly do in general, but you could likely get another forum to function with levels of politeness akin to this one if you have good enough mods with enough time.

[Kalmageddon]

I think the combination of reasonable yet strict posting rules plus good moderators has, over time, led to an atmosphere of civil conversation here on the forum.


I strongly disagree with this one.
All that happened is that insults got sneaky and creative.

I don't know about you but I'd much rather be called an ******* and be told to **** off rather than be implicitly labeled as ignorant, bigoted and generally being misrepresented by people that obviously have no intention to understand what you are trying to say or come to any sort of compromise.

[Fuchur]

I really like how this board puts a clear emphasis on blacklisting any kind of insolent or abusive behaviour that you're "allowed to do elsewhere", and this seems to be the only way to go on the Internet if you want to make your users behave. Not only you need to do that, but you also need to apply these standards on everyone on the exact same basis, including your veterans, your staff and yourself, because else you'll ultimately create an environment of bullying and conspired cliqueyness where "important members" are free to develop any kind of abusive quirks without being made accountable ever, this is when you seem to have rules but they're completely not impartially enforced.

[Bohandas]

I think the combination of reasonable yet strict posting rules plus good moderators has, over time, led to an atmosphere of civil conversation here on the forum.

In my experience strict posting rules lead to an atmosphere of paranoia and oppression

It's like that one Monty Python skit about the happy kingdom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpI9yuv6D8o#t=00m52s (warning: mild coarse language later in the clip, after the relevant part)

"And all his subjects flourished and were happy, and there were no discontents or grumblers, because wise King Otto had had them all put to death along with the trade union leaders many years before. And all the good happy folk of Happy Valley sang and danced all day long. And anyone who was for any reason miserable or unhappy or who had any difficult personal problems was prosecuted under the 'Happiness Act'."


I mean, it's not particularly bad here, but I've seen sites where it's really really bad exactly because of posting rules

[2D8HP]

The most rancor that I've seen in my short time at this Forum have been over gender, "alignment", and whether an edition of D&D was "broken" (particularly in regards to "Wish/Simulacra" spell chains).

At a plumber's Forum I've seen threads devolve into vitriol over politics and religion, which is why although I find those topics very interesting, I'm glad that the Mods here ban them.

So it seems to me that it's when an internet discussion touches on identity, and moral judgements that things get heated.

[Trekkin]

I strongly disagree with this one.
All that happened is that insults got sneaky and creative.

I don't know about you but I'd much rather be called an ******* and be told to **** off rather than be implicitly labeled as ignorant, bigoted and generally being misrepresented by people that obviously have no intention to understand what you are trying to say or come to any sort of compromise.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I wonder if there isn't some overlap between vociferous expressions of disagreement and really sneaky or creative insults. In my view, there's a grey area between "only an ignoramus of the first water could think X" and "I can see how you could think X if you aren't taking into account the implications of Y and Z" where the same comments can be read as insulting or condescending or well-meaningly overexpository or just expressed in a way that inadvertently implies more than was meant. Unremittingly crushing all of that in the name of civility can choke off creativity and enthusiasm in the bargain.

I like where this board sits on that spectrum; it's neither stultifyingly censored nor a cesspool of unthinking rudeness. In that spirit, and bearing in mind this is all just text, free of any kind of tonal cues and written by people with all sorts of experiences, I find that I'm a lot happier on here if I assume that arguable insults are unintentional and just take the high road myself. After all, what are people going to do, tell you they don't think you've fully appreciated their insults?

[Kalmageddon]

Ignoring insults and carrying on is certanly an option.
However that does very little to improve the forum, beside maybe having less arguments and flame wars, which wouldn't be a bad thing, mind you.
In the end, those that like to be dismissive or hide behind valuable ideals just to call people names and feel superior will keep on doing just that and attract more of them.
The problem is, this forum has a policy and an ideological alignment that strongly caters to these kind of people. I don't have a real solution as of now but it would be nice if arguments like the one in the thread for page 1068 weren't allowed to continue just because nobody dropped an F word or brought religion into it. It was evidently hostile and caustic and even if nobody violated the forum rules as written, I would argue that they were violated to hell and back in their intentions.

[Rockphed]

I strongly disagree with this one.
All that happened is that insults got sneaky and creative.

I don't know about you but I'd much rather be called an ******* and be told to **** off rather than be implicitly labeled as ignorant, bigoted and generally being misrepresented by people that obviously have no intention to understand what you are trying to say or come to any sort of compromise.

If somebody is calling someone else ignorant or bigoted or whatever, that sounds just as likely to get moderator attention as out and out swearing is. It might take a while longer to be squashed, but most threads that get "locked for review" aren't out-and-out shouting matches, they are long spats of insults, rudeness, and insinuating that the other side is somehow less evolved. Part of why all of those threads don't get squashed faster is because there are about 15 mods, all of whom are volunteers, and all of whom have other things to do with their lives.

[Cluedrew]

I have found that ignoring insults usually works a lot better than... any response to them I have ever seen to them. It doesn't really solve anything per say, but it doesn't make things worse and it often causes things to die out with time.


However that does very little to improve the forum, beside maybe having less arguments and flame wars, which wouldn't be a bad thing, mind you.I'd even go so far to say it is an improvement. Over all the issue is you can't enforce the spirit of the rules, because it becomes more and more arbitrary when you do, and hard lines with arbitrary locations is an issue. And it is, as mentioned by JeenLeen, enforcing the word is up to the moderators.

Which is why I asked about 'encouraging', not enforcing.

[Trekkin]

It doesn't really solve anything per se, but it doesn't make things worse and it often causes things to die out with time.


I wonder how many of these uncivil arguments start with someone saying something open to interpretation, someone else responding to the most inflammatory possible interpretation thereof, and that process spiralling onwards until everyone's convinced they're being attacked.

It's probably more than we would intuitively estimate.

So I guess my general advice would be to bear in mind that very few people want to reduce an otherwise civil discussion to a ruin of hurtful comments and general animosity all at once. It takes coordinated effort to bring that about -- and how hard could it be to discourage people who are increasingly irritated with each other from cooperating to produce something nobody wants in the first place?

Often, I've found it's as easy as not letting the whisperings of animosity disturb your equipoise.

[A.A.King]

Politeness is not a good thing in and of itself. There are plenty of polite ways to tell someone to f the f*ck off which achieve the same destructive effect but without using those particular words.

The simple truth is: Proper civil conversation happens between genuinely nice people and/or people who don't have particular strong views with regards to the topic at hand. Even on this forum there are a lot of hateful people who have no respect for the other and who do not tolerate opposing views. The only reason that it looks so much more civil than other places is because the language is a lot cleaner and the insults a little subtler (oh, and the 'the other' seem to usually be the other other with respect to the standard other which also somehow makes people it is more okay).

On other boards trolling can very easily destroy any chance at civil discourse but it is equally true that flippantly accusing people of trolling destroys civil discourse. The viewpoint "Anyone who disagrees with my on X is obviously an idiot, doesn't care about other people and/or is trolling" that certain members have makes it impossible to have civil conversations on certain subjects. Their is no nice way to say "my way or the high way" and when someone genuinely believes that the person she or he is talking to is an idiot/troll/emotionless-drone then there is no way that won't feed into the conversation. There have for example been discussions on here where I haven't put my 2 cents in; not because I didn't believe I had anything good to add but because I genuinely believed that a dissenting view point would not be tolerated and would have been met not with arguments but with insulting accusations. Of course, when you don't actually join in you don't know what would have happened but I feel you have to ask how civil a place is when people believe they can't be different

Of course, there is always the fact that it can be easy to misinterpret something that is written down. Without tone of voice of facial expressions it isn't always easy to get what people were trying to get at. Just as some people have seen an 'intent to harm' in the occasional comment of mine where there was clearly none (according to the writer anyway) I too must have seen that intent were the writer did not intend it to be. I am perfectly willing to admit that I'm not perfect in that regard (even though in most other regards I clearly am).

But that is all a long way to say:
You can't judge the civility of a place and it's discussions simply on the things people do say, you must also try to think about the things people don't dare say. A place that does not tolerate dissent is only a nice place to be if you're a member of the inner party. Similarly, Politeness isn't about the way people speak but about what people are trying to speak. No amount of language police can prevent people from being insulting, it just means that they will look for 'acceptable insults' and 'plausible deniability' leaving you with the shame shaggy shed but now with a nice coat of paint.

To make anything a nice place you have three options
1) Find a way to turn all people involved into actual nice people
2) Teach all people involved to genuinely look at things from all perspectives and not just from the ones they deem 'acceptable'
3) Limit discussion to non hot-topic issues and try your best to limit membership to people who share the same view point.

Anything less and you'll end up with a place were occasionally things get out of hand.

[Red Fel]

You can't fix other people. The only people who can do anything about other posters are the Mods.

What you can fix is your reaction. See yourself responding with hostility? Stop yourself. See a situation escalating? Pull out of the thread. See a poster engaged in disciplinable offenses? There's a report button for that.

Civil conversation is enforced by a combination of (1) posters disciplining themselves, and (2) Mods disciplining violators. You can encourage politeness by being a good example, by maintaining civility whenever possible and schooling your own behaviors, and by leaving the rest to the Mods.

[Cluedrew]

Although the words change it mostly seems to come down to: "Be polite/civil/respectful yourself."

I mean ideally everyone does that and we are done. Unfortunately not everyone is all the time (actually I would be surprised if anyone was all the time). It still is a good start, I even got a few tips I had put together for that. (Some have already been mentioned.)

Assume the best: I would rather an insult go over my head instead of picking one that doesn't exist.
Don't Accuse: And I don't mean not insulting people, present a disagreement as just that and not as "I'm right and your wrong". Its just a bad way to start.
Ask for Clarification: If someone said something that doesn't make sense, it seems more likely that something was lost in translation than they are completely stupid.

[Xyril]

In the end, those that like to be dismissive or hide behind valuable ideals just to call people names and feel superior will keep on doing just that and attract more of them.
The problem is, this forum has a policy and an ideological alignment that strongly caters to these kind of people.


Could this statement be an example of one of those "sneaky ways" to insult people? Not trying to attack you personally or say you're doing something wrong, but to me the whole reason calling someone's statement bigoted, or ignorant, or racist is that you're dismissing their stated reasons for holding a position, attributing an entirely different motivation for having that position, and then the thinly veiled insult comes from that fact that most people associate that reason with a negative personal trait.

So my question for you is this: How saying that someone's statement is racist in order to feel superior to them any different than saying that the only reason they're arguing their position because they "like to be dismissive or hide behind valuable ideals," presumably because you feel superior to them?

It's possible to enforce politeness with an iron fist from up top, but in general those places become useful fora for a specific purpose (i.e., getting information from the author, giving product feedback), but not particularly interesting communities in general. You can't stamp out "impolite" behavior, but you can create a community where social norms strongly encourage people to be polite. In order to have this, you need a few things.

First, people have to care about their reputations. This doesn't mean obliterating real life anonymity, but it does mean giving people some incentive to say everything they want to say through their main handle. We shouldn't care whether Kalmageddon is really a 60 year old divorced nurse from Wisconsin, or Steve Bannon. We should care whether people are creating sock puppets in order to have"neutral third parties" appear in support of their positions, or "random anonymous trolls" threatening or harassing people they don't like. This should solely be enforced by moderators who have access to information such as IP addresses, and not by random forumites basically saying, "I don't like that you suddenly appeared to defend this unpopular guy I'm arguing with, so you're probably a sock puppet." We should also give people a reason to care about what people think of their handle in the future. Part of this means attaching value to the handle--forum swag, reputation (hard-coded or not), that sort of thing. The other, harder part means creating a community where people believe there are second chances--that if they have some sort of meltdown, there's actually some reason for them to try to rehabilitate their reputation, rather than burning every bridge they can in the most spectacular way possible and coming back a week later as a new identity.

Second, you're going to have to accept that a certain amount of "impoliteness" will occur because the only way "politeness" can be enforced (outside the aforementioned iron fist of the mods) is social pressure. The reason most people wouldn't go up to some random stranger wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat and call him an idiot for voting for Trump is because deep down inside, they realize that most people--regardless of their political position--think it's impolite to pick a fight with a random stranger over politics, and a substantial portion of them wouldn't hesitate to tell you and all your friends what a jerk you are. By the standard that you and some other folks in this thread seem to be using, saying "Hey, you've picked a fight with all the people who disagree with you, and half the ones who agree with you. Maybe the problem is you?" is a thinly veiled insult, and yes, maybe it is impolite, but it's generally how adults in free countries let each other know that they're breaking some sort of norms and how they discourage even more outrageous behavior.

[Kalmageddon]

Politeness is not a good thing in and of itself. There are plenty of polite ways to tell someone to f the f*ck off which achieve the same destructive effect but without using those particular words.

The simple truth is: Proper civil conversation happens between genuinely nice people and/or people who don't have particular strong views with regards to the topic at hand. Even on this forum there are a lot of hateful people who have no respect for the other and who do not tolerate opposing views. The only reason that it looks so much more civil than other places is because the language is a lot cleaner and the insults a little subtler (oh, and the 'the other' seem to usually be the other other with respect to the standard other which also somehow makes people it is more okay).

On other boards trolling can very easily destroy any chance at civil discourse but it is equally true that flippantly accusing people of trolling destroys civil discourse. The viewpoint "Anyone who disagrees with my on X is obviously an idiot, doesn't care about other people and/or is trolling" that certain members have makes it impossible to have civil conversations on certain subjects. Their is no nice way to say "my way or the high way" and when someone genuinely believes that the person she or he is talking to is an idiot/troll/emotionless-drone then there is no way that won't feed into the conversation. There have for example been discussions on here where I haven't put my 2 cents in; not because I didn't believe I had anything good to add but because I genuinely believed that a dissenting view point would not be tolerated and would have been met not with arguments but with insulting accusations. Of course, when you don't actually join in you don't know what would have happened but I feel you have to ask how civil a place is when people believe they can't be different

Same here, especially the bolded part.
This forum, some sections of it in particular, have a real problem with "echo chambers", where people just want their already existing veiwpoint to be validated over and over again without any external influence. You don't even need to say anything particularly controversial to incite a vitriolic response. Even asking the wrong question can be enough to be bullied out of the thread.

Anyway. If we want to find a way to incite civil conversation rather than enforce it, I agree that it's mostly dependent on how nice a user is already.
I don't know, maybe, speaking in broad generalization, not assuming the worst from the speaker might do a lot to make conversation more pleasant for everybody. I feel like in this forum, regardless of subject, people always tend to go with the worst possible meaning to one's words.

[Rockphed]

You can't fix other people. The only people who can do anything about other posters are the Mods.

What you can fix is your reaction. See yourself responding with hostility? Stop yourself. See a situation escalating? Pull out of the thread. See a poster engaged in disciplinable offenses? There's a report button for that.

Civil conversation is enforced by a combination of (1) posters disciplining themselves, and (2) Mods disciplining violators. You can encourage politeness by being a good example, by maintaining civility whenever possible and schooling your own behaviors, and by leaving the rest to the Mods.

I don't know how many times I have typed out a response to something, looked it over, and just deleted the whole thing. Sometimes it was because I thought my response drifted too close to forbidden topics. Sometimes it was because I thought my response could be interpreted as an attack and I couldn't see how to explain that it wasn't an attack without making it worse. Sometimes it was because I decided to just not engage with someone who was being hostile.

My mother used to tell me that the only person I can change is myself.

[Telonius]

Developing a persona on the boards isn't exactly required, but I think it's tacitly encouraged. I'd bet most people can think of at least five or six regular veteran posters, and the "make me an avatar" posts are relatively popular. I think that goes at least some way to removing the anonymity that can encourage serious trolling.

Swift and frequent application of the banhammer helps, too.

[Starbuck_II]

On other boards trolling can very easily destroy any chance at civil discourse but it is equally true that flippantly accusing people of trolling destroys civil discourse. The viewpoint "Anyone who disagrees with my on X is obviously an idiot, doesn't care about other people and/or is trolling" that certain members have makes it impossible to have civil conversations on certain subjects. Their is no nice way to say "my way or the high way" and when someone genuinely believes that the person she or he is talking to is an idiot/troll/emotionless-drone then there is no way that won't feed into the conversation.

There have for example been discussions on here where I haven't put my 2 cents in; not because I didn't believe I had anything good to add but because I genuinely believed that a dissenting view point would not be tolerated and would have been met not with arguments but with insulting accusations. Of course, when you don't actually join in you don't know what would have happened but I feel you have to ask how civil a place is when people believe they can't be different.


Yes, this is why I don't post on RPG.net anymore.
They have biased mods who are on one side and if you post dissent with that (or correct lies others posted) they ban you.
Not all their mods are biased (I hope), but there are many at RPG.net.
Hilariously, they note when unlogged in "No fear, all welcome" when if you dissent with popular stuff you have much to fear.

[veti]

You can't fix other people. The only people who can do anything about other posters are the Mods.

What you can fix is your reaction. See yourself responding with hostility? Stop yourself. See a situation escalating? Pull out of the thread. See a poster engaged in disciplinable offenses? There's a report button for that.

This.

The most useful advice I ever received, when I first joined an online community (over 20 years ago now): you don't have to reply. Not even - or especially not - when a comment or post is addressed directly and personally to (or at) you.

Just let it go. That's not wimping out, it's just letting your previous comments stand for themselves.

Personally, I don't think moderation makes all that much difference. Obviously it makes a difference to what topics get discussed, but I don't believe it does much to enforce courtesy or consideration, because you can't moderate for those things. I've seen (unmoderated) Usenet groups discussing politics, religion, history and philosophy, that were every bit as polite as this board. It requires a tight community of people dedicated to maintaining the peace, but they don't need superpowers (mod rights) - just the same kind of keyboard as everyone else.

Having said that: in the second half of last year, I was profoundly thankful that politics was strictly forbidden here, when I saw the smoking ruins that other fora were reduced to at that time.