I think it's useful for me to first explain why I believe HN would benefit from some new guidelines. The polarized, tribal behavior that can be witnessed in any thread that has any sort of identity related angle to it (politics (and therefore economics), religion, gender, etc) is probably not the best that the above average intelligence and rationality of folks who frequent HN can come up with, but when it comes to such topics, in this respect it seems we are little different than the average discussion on /r/politics.
Of course, we're not unique in this way, but this sort of behavior is starting to cause major problems in society, and it seems to me all communities should be taking notice where it happens, and do what they can to figurr out:
a) what the nature of the problem is
b) how might it be improved
The current guidelines, if followed as written, might eliminate the majority of this behavior, but much of that would be the product of restraint, of people "biting their tongues". Maybe there are some new guidelines we could add that might both improve the quality of discourse while not requiring self-censorship.
If you pay attention to such conversations, what you'll often notice is that two people are arguing passionately about what they think is the same thing, but really they are arguing about unique perspectives upon the same thing. They are trying to discuss a multi-dimensional problem with only a very small subset of differing dimensions, and they are completely unaware of it.
What specific new rules we need is tricky, but the type of rules I suspect should be along the lines of:
- when asserting criticism, try to ensure your statements are adequately objectively correct (resilient to reasonably pedantic criticism)
- when replying to someone who is wrong, pause to observe your emotional state - are you replying to what they've actually written, or perhaps to a heuristic-powered interpretation of what they're saying?
- realize that stereotyping people by categories other than just race and gender is harmful, not only because it's not nice
- be careful to not speak in a manner that suggests you have the ability to read people's mind or see into the future ("oh those people", "all they want to do is", "they will just", etc)
- aim for epistemic humility:
(a) a posture of observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and that, as such,
(b) pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself.
This sort of thing. Exactly how any guidelines should be written and enforced I'm not so sure.
At the very least I hope you can consider whether this is a problem on HN (and keep this in mind during moderation), consider the idea that conversations that happen here and elsewhere have a way of rippling out through the world, and consider whether we all have a responsibility in contributing what we can to building the kind of society we want to live in.
Yes, that's the thing. Well, I will keep thinking on it. Hopefully you'll find yourself moderating with a new form of curiosity about what makes everyone on here tick, and what is going on under the covers to make them behave the way they do.
The in-person agreements linked below have been a helpful guide for interactions. They have some of the sentiment of your original thread, and would need to be adopted for the web. For example, how would one encourage folks to comment (make space / take space)?
Of course, we're not unique in this way, but this sort of behavior is starting to cause major problems in society, and it seems to me all communities should be taking notice where it happens, and do what they can to figurr out:
a) what the nature of the problem is
b) how might it be improved
The current guidelines, if followed as written, might eliminate the majority of this behavior, but much of that would be the product of restraint, of people "biting their tongues". Maybe there are some new guidelines we could add that might both improve the quality of discourse while not requiring self-censorship.
If you pay attention to such conversations, what you'll often notice is that two people are arguing passionately about what they think is the same thing, but really they are arguing about unique perspectives upon the same thing. They are trying to discuss a multi-dimensional problem with only a very small subset of differing dimensions, and they are completely unaware of it.
What specific new rules we need is tricky, but the type of rules I suspect should be along the lines of:
- when asserting criticism, try to ensure your statements are adequately objectively correct (resilient to reasonably pedantic criticism)
- when replying to someone who is wrong, pause to observe your emotional state - are you replying to what they've actually written, or perhaps to a heuristic-powered interpretation of what they're saying?
- realize that stereotyping people by categories other than just race and gender is harmful, not only because it's not nice
- be careful to not speak in a manner that suggests you have the ability to read people's mind or see into the future ("oh those people", "all they want to do is", "they will just", etc)
- aim for epistemic humility:
(a) a posture of observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and that, as such,
(b) pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself.
This sort of thing. Exactly how any guidelines should be written and enforced I'm not so sure.
At the very least I hope you can consider whether this is a problem on HN (and keep this in mind during moderation), consider the idea that conversations that happen here and elsewhere have a way of rippling out through the world, and consider whether we all have a responsibility in contributing what we can to building the kind of society we want to live in.