Too many lords, not enough stewards
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 6, 2018 0:36 UTC (Tue) by excors (subscriber, #95769)In reply to: Too many lords, not enough stewards by neilbrown
Parent article: Too many lords, not enough stewards
I think a problem with that approach is that when someone sends a message to you on an email list, you are not the whole audience for that message. Possibly hundreds of other people will read it too, and they haven't all signed up to Crocker's Rules.
E.g. Alice says something to Bob, Eve is on the same list and reads that message and silently agrees with Alice's arguments, but Bob disagrees and calls Alice a moron. Alice doesn't care and shrugs it off, but Eve feels like the insult applies to her too (as she shares Alice's position) and is offended, and will be reluctant to join the discussion in support of Alice, and might become nervous of talking to Bob even in unrelated discussions, and everyone will lose out on Eve's valuable technical input.
Then there's the positive feedback cycle that farnz suggested, where newcomers who are crocks like Alice and Bob will happily join in all the discussions, while non-crocks stay quiet in any discussions that involve at least one crock, and it will only reach an equilibrium once all the non-crocks have been driven out of the community.
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Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 6, 2018 13:29 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]
Worse; if Bob is a bad actor (rather than a good actor with poor communication skills), Bob and their ilk can ensure that the Crocker's adherents don't get to the point of calling them out, but that Eve and their ilk are made aware that joining in here will result in the same bad outcomes that they've already experienced elsewhere. Things like "dogwhistles" are useful here - chances of you even recognizing them if you're in neither the abusive nor the targeted group are low, but they set expectations.
A better alternative I've seen described as "assume good intent" is to start from the assumption that Bob doesn't mean the bad thing he just said, and to respond by first rephrasing what Bob said into a good description of what you understood him to mean in Crocker's terms, and then to respond to the rephrasing you did.
Something like Bob says "WTF, this code is awful - time of the month?!?", and you respond with "Bob, that's not a good way to express things. I'm assuming you meant 'how did you test this code - I can't see how it could work?'" and continue from there.
If Bob is a good actor, then you've not harmed anyone - you've given Bob a chance to understand that they didn't express themselves well, you've given Alice and Eve a sign that bad behaviour is not considered acceptable here, and you've moved on quickly from the bad phrasing to the technical detail. If Bob is a bad actor, you've either made them realise that bad behaviour is not OK here, or you've pushing them towards being explicitly offensive.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 6, 2018 21:57 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Great comment, thanks.