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  • I have recently been thinking about the significance of positive participation on the forum and it occurred to me that this forum is a community as much as the FactorE Farm, or the future experimental community will be.  So, I looked at the wiki about the FactorE Farm Social Contract and it occurred to me that it might be productive to create a community set of standards so that we can self-moderate more easily.  Looking at the fourteen points, I see a few that might be useful in creating a platform for this community.  Below is a simple proposal for expectations, I look forward to hearing your opinions.


    • 1- Everyone is an essential contributor to the community's needs.
    • 2- Everyone should strive to meet the community needs to the best of their abilities.
    • 3- We are a learning community- our actions should be designed to create growth.
    • 4- People come willingly and give willingly according to their desire.
    • 5- The forum is designed to be a positive experience that equips OSE, consequently, we should aim for positive interaction and avoid attacking individuals.
    • 6- Everyone should strive to respect others, giving adequate attention to others' needs and feelings.

    As I said, I am interested in others' opinions, namely, would having something like this be useful, or would it be too constrictive?  What sort of form should the expectations take?  What ideas that I wrote above should be removed or amended and what should be added?

    (For some reason neither bullets nor numbering appears if I choose the formatting supplied by the forum.)
     
  • 14 Comments sorted by
  • The community gets the community it deserves. If moderation becomes opinion and civility police as per 5 and 6, then it is no longer an open community. If no one is spamming or posting NSFW material, there cannot be a rule against it. One group dictating to another what expression is acceptable means that one group of self important people are proclaiming themselves the rulers of all other participants, which is in contradiction to the first proposal. Throw away people with good ideas and passion because they hurt your feewings and you've doomed yourself, especially in a project as focused on freedom and independence as this. If freedom means anything at all it means the right to say things that other people don't want to hear.

    Be an adult and ignore people if you don't want to be insulted. It takes two to tango and no one is going to go around harassing you and insulting you if you're not feeding the troll by firing back.
     
  • I think 5 & 6 are good. To avoid enforced 'niceness' it may be better to specify that ad hominems are not allowed, but substantiated critique of others' ideas are encouraged.



     
  • The contention that all rules can or should be inflated to the point of class warfare between the elite "mod" class and the hardworking poster is absurd, as is the idea the "the only good rule is a dead rule". I admit that there are bad rules and some people will abuse them, but it seems that netizens take pride in a brutally enforced lawlessness when most of their past problems were caused by a lack of appropriate rules rather than an excess of rules (at least on the internet).
     
  • Lets face it, there has to be some rules/guidelines.  For instance, as long as I'm involved, this Forum will not allow personal attacks of any sort.  That kind of behavior is just ego stroking and serves no useful purpose.  Constructive, positive pointing comments are just fine.  Yes, if you get insulted easily, getting involved with intelligent, driven, out of the box thinkers is probably not the best place for you.

    I have been involved in many Internet Forums over the years.  The unmoderated ones all eventually become problematic.  It just takes one bad apple.  Lets not go there.

    If a "problem" does come up, it will be dealt with quickly and I hope fairly.  Does this mean a little less freedom for all?  Yep, it sure does.  Don't act like a "nut job" and all will be well.

    Now, lets try and define "nut job" shall we?....:)

    The Dawg
     
  • Ah well, so be it then. Enjoy your tyrant hill like every other stagnant faux-community on the internet, then. I came here to hear ideas, not exchange phony platitudes with children who need civility police to hold their hand. I'll look elsewhere for ideas since clearly self-important egostroking is precisely what you are interested in. The community gets the community it deserves. Ever wonder why they're all so bad? Yeah, it's because of this sort of nonsense, which is mutually exclusive with openness and participation. It's not like I don't come up against this mentality often on the internet - better to find out and bail on a doomed community sooner than later before giving your heart to something. I do hope this project gets a competent community in the future, though. It's a tragedy to see good ideas destroyed by poor leadership.
     
  • Helpful forum activity:
    Due to each individual's inherently subjective reality, the only way one can be sure one's forum activity is helpful, is by publishing data. If you aren't publishing data, there's no guarantee you're being helpful. Publishing data is the closest to objectivity we can achieve.

    The guidelines in the OP simply help lessen the damage we do when attempting to communicate.
     
  • Before deciding whether we should have hard rules and enforce them all the time, or avoid strong rules and have only general guidelines for discussions, let's read items 5 and 6 from the "simple proposal for expectations" as they are currently written - not more, not less. (BTW, have you noticed that @ARGHaynes 's text does not contain nor imply the word "rule" ?)

    @Hilscher ,  item 5 states " we should aim for positive interaction and avoid attacking individuals". To me, "should aim" and "avoid attacking" both look like a mild suggestion, not like a razor-sharp hard rule. Do you disagree?

    Likewise, item 6 states "Everyone should strive to respect others, giving adequate attention to others' needs and feelings". I'm unable to warp "should strive to respect" enough so that it looks like a hard rule. Frankly, it looks like a suggestion.

    Suggesting something doesn't imply I'm enforcing it.

    Hilscher, do you mean that one simply cannot have an open community if this community has 2 suggestions on how discussions should take place? It would mean we cannot have a stated general direction to follow if we want a successful community.

    Please don't run away so fast before we have the chance to healthily discuss this.

     
  • I've recently read a forum post in which user A states that user B is "full of shit", among other things.

    I'm unable to understand how saying this can help user A, user B, this community, or anyone else.
    Quite the opposite! it is usually interpreted as something bad, since "shit" does not smell good, right?

    It does not look like user A were trying to improve that person's life in any way, nor anyone else's.

    If you are not trying to improve someone's life, or trying to improve a certain fabrication process, or an algorithm, or the performance of a given machine... if you're not trying to save someone of any kind of danger... well, if you're not doing something with the purpose of improving anything at all and no one could possibly benefit from your words, then, please, by all means, just shut up and keep it for yourself. Why bother writing or saying that kind of thing in the first place?

    So, in my opinion, it makes sense to have a guideline asking people to only say something if he believes it's got a chance of having a positive impact on the community.
     
  • @ Hilscher - You have obviously been a "victim" of moderation in the past then.  Would you care to share some of your experiences or has this bitterness consumed you?  Why would anyone have a problem with being told to behave?  Do you tend to cause problems or do you feel misunderstood?

    Here's some good advice for you.  It has been my experience that we tend to see in others what in reality we are projecting.  Think about that for a moment.

    The Dawg
     
  • @ Hilscher - Man oh man, you've been busy boy.  I wrote the above reply before I had the chance to see some of your exploits today.

    Just for your information, this is exactly what a problem looks like:

    "I'm making real arguments like the fundamental and requisite nature of a
    'viral village,' which you ignore or call xenophobic because your
    meager intellectual assets are unable to properly refute or respond to
    them. You seem more and more like a coward with every post that you
    avoid intellectually honest argument."


    Why so agressive and nasty?  Why does your ego feel so threatened?  If this is indeed your "style", I suspect we can all do without you.  Relax, we're all trying to be on the same team here.  We're all volunteers who have lives away from OSE.  Lets not scare them all away in one day, OK?

    The Dawg
     
  • I am happy with the way this conversation resolved itself because it demonstrated the strength inherent in the system we are creating.  In the industrial model, centralized authority determines and enforces everything.  Whereas, in the networked community, individuals create the atmosphere necessary for them to thrive.  We do not state emphatically that swearing is off limits and that any criticism must be sandwiched by two compliments.  Rather we agree that we have gathered together with one purpose, developing our personal vision of Open Source Ecology.
     
  • I've been in forums that have entered a death spiral based on flame wars, personal attacks, trolling, etc.  I've been in forums (and still am) that have had a long, healthy life.  What is the difference?  A couple of things:

    * having patience and empathy help a lot
    * setting expectations of behavior is important, but dictators can ruin a form as fast a troll
    * being focused on the goal by making useful contributions and ignoring the B/S.

    Overall, I think the quality of OSE forums (fora?) is quite high.  Let's keep it that way.

    - Mark

     
  • @mjn - Mark I too have been deeply involved in many forums and I think you are right here.  There has to be a balance.

    One of the worse things you can do is feed a troll.  Most are looking for attention, good or bad.  Remove that and the problem goes away all on its own.  Unfortunately, the negative wounds are left behind in the old messages forever.  So sometimes it's better to remove posting rights for a while and see if clearer thoughts rise to the top.

    The Dawg
     
  • @Dawg - It's always a judgment call.  Those tasked with administering a set of forums have to decide what's best for the community.  Historically, one of the prerogatives of any community is to exclude members who don't follow it's rules/laws/beliefs.  Ideally this is done in a compassionate, understanding way, but in some cases it is necessary for the good of the community.  Tolerant communities set the bar high and are willing to listen to opposing points of view, are patient with those who are frustrated, and seek to guide those who cause harm by their speech or actions.

    - Mark
     
     

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