Name calling and incivility
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2013 5:24 pm
Perhaps the foremost long-simmering issue that seems to hover just below the surface is name calling and lack of civility.
I believe that this board must be a place where people can almost always say what they want to say how they want to say it. That's why we have an open discussion policy. It's also why we have a policy about tone policing: the idea is to mandate discussion on the merits of arguments without the threat of collateral attack (i.e. we are disallowing argument along the lines of "I'm not going to respond to what you said because I don't like the way you said it").
This is also why we have aggressively moderated, and will continue to aggressively moderate, posts devoid of meritorious argument that contain only invective. The policy isn't meant to protect incivility, but to avoid collateral civility discussion getting in the way of actual discourse on the merits, so posts that have no merit will be removed. (For example, the post about Hannah was removed to the forbidden zone very quickly, contrary to prevailing belief.)
All this is to say that, with open discourse as the guiding principle of the forums, I don't think we can do much to implement an official "niceness" policy. Think about it. How would it look? Who would enforce it? How would moderators embroiled in a discussion ensure that both sides were treated fairly? It's far better to allow everyone to say what they want to say how they want to say it. But even though we as moderators can't do all that much to police for tone, and even though I think we're getting progressively better at treating each other well, I don't think it's controversial for me to say that most of us would like to see an even greater shift toward polite discourse.
Here's what I see as the main problem: the temptation is strong to see this policy as justifying incivility instead of simply failing to forbid it. And our anti-tone-policing rule can make it seem like the only possible response to antagonistic language is a retaliation in kind.
As I've said, I don't think we can do anything about this as moderators without diving headlong into even more problematic rabbit holes, but I'd like to see people listen to their better angels and think about whether antagonism is truly necessary, and once antagonized, whether retaliation is the right way to respond. Speaking purely as a reader of the forums, I find that antagonism and retaliation don't win arguments, and in fact, that I'm much more likely to be dismissive of someone who feels compelled to lash out at every perceived barb instead of taking the high road. If we ban discussion of tone because it's irrelevant to the merits, why would you cloud your own argument with incivility and name calling?
While I don't think that tone-policing dialogue should clutter up forum discussion, I encourage other forum users to contact particularly "vituperative" posters privately to address their concerns. For the most part, we all know each other and we interact in real life. If it is truly the case that the issue of "talking to each other" is so complex that we need to deputize the moderating crew into the tone police to tackle it, I feel very sorry for us. If you have an issue with how someone is discussing quizbowl, you should have the backbone to reach out and say "the way you're discussing quizbowl is counterproductive" privately. And if you're the target of such criticism, you should have the metacognitive ability to respond in a meaningful and hopefully productive way.
This in no way condones incivility. Incivility makes us look bad and unprofessional to outsiders and would-be forum users, but more importantly, it causes needless personal strife between people who would otherwise be arguing on a purely intellectual level. And perhaps most detrimentally, it undermines the credibility of people who are working for the good of the game. Because it only gets in the way of everything we're trying to accomplish and tends to stem from artificial online tough-guy bravado, I see incivility as the epitome of the internet-only BS that this forum strives to avoid.
I welcome discussion and private feedback on this issue.
I believe that this board must be a place where people can almost always say what they want to say how they want to say it. That's why we have an open discussion policy. It's also why we have a policy about tone policing: the idea is to mandate discussion on the merits of arguments without the threat of collateral attack (i.e. we are disallowing argument along the lines of "I'm not going to respond to what you said because I don't like the way you said it").
This is also why we have aggressively moderated, and will continue to aggressively moderate, posts devoid of meritorious argument that contain only invective. The policy isn't meant to protect incivility, but to avoid collateral civility discussion getting in the way of actual discourse on the merits, so posts that have no merit will be removed. (For example, the post about Hannah was removed to the forbidden zone very quickly, contrary to prevailing belief.)
All this is to say that, with open discourse as the guiding principle of the forums, I don't think we can do much to implement an official "niceness" policy. Think about it. How would it look? Who would enforce it? How would moderators embroiled in a discussion ensure that both sides were treated fairly? It's far better to allow everyone to say what they want to say how they want to say it. But even though we as moderators can't do all that much to police for tone, and even though I think we're getting progressively better at treating each other well, I don't think it's controversial for me to say that most of us would like to see an even greater shift toward polite discourse.
Here's what I see as the main problem: the temptation is strong to see this policy as justifying incivility instead of simply failing to forbid it. And our anti-tone-policing rule can make it seem like the only possible response to antagonistic language is a retaliation in kind.
As I've said, I don't think we can do anything about this as moderators without diving headlong into even more problematic rabbit holes, but I'd like to see people listen to their better angels and think about whether antagonism is truly necessary, and once antagonized, whether retaliation is the right way to respond. Speaking purely as a reader of the forums, I find that antagonism and retaliation don't win arguments, and in fact, that I'm much more likely to be dismissive of someone who feels compelled to lash out at every perceived barb instead of taking the high road. If we ban discussion of tone because it's irrelevant to the merits, why would you cloud your own argument with incivility and name calling?
While I don't think that tone-policing dialogue should clutter up forum discussion, I encourage other forum users to contact particularly "vituperative" posters privately to address their concerns. For the most part, we all know each other and we interact in real life. If it is truly the case that the issue of "talking to each other" is so complex that we need to deputize the moderating crew into the tone police to tackle it, I feel very sorry for us. If you have an issue with how someone is discussing quizbowl, you should have the backbone to reach out and say "the way you're discussing quizbowl is counterproductive" privately. And if you're the target of such criticism, you should have the metacognitive ability to respond in a meaningful and hopefully productive way.
This in no way condones incivility. Incivility makes us look bad and unprofessional to outsiders and would-be forum users, but more importantly, it causes needless personal strife between people who would otherwise be arguing on a purely intellectual level. And perhaps most detrimentally, it undermines the credibility of people who are working for the good of the game. Because it only gets in the way of everything we're trying to accomplish and tends to stem from artificial online tough-guy bravado, I see incivility as the epitome of the internet-only BS that this forum strives to avoid.
I welcome discussion and private feedback on this issue.