notes-group-old-myDiscussionForumCommunityGuidelines170130

See notes-group-discussionForumCommunityGuidelines.

This document is my attempt to create some discussion forum community guidelines after looking at many others.

this is still WAY too long!!!

NOTE: i love the way reddit expands the details of rules on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20150710230652/https://www.reddit.com/rules/

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

Goals of these rules

We censor. We are martinets, we police tone. We prefer to call it 'moderation', but whatever you want to call it, if we feel that you are disrupting our community, we'll disemvowel or even delete your posts. Although we moderate tone and topic, the moderators try not to target particular points of view (although the community might do that through the voting system). Our goal is just to promote civil discussion while avoiding flamewars and hassle. We strive to welcome all people and to have open discussion, but we are neither a free speech platform for unpleasant truths, nor a supportive safe space for oppressed groups; we are neither a place to educate others about how their rights are being trampled upon, nor a base from which to organize change.

We are boring. We encourage concise, clear, humorless prose.

Be concise.

The rules

Things against the rules:

• Spam or commercial promotion
  • exception: on your personal profile page you can do a little commercial promotion, AFTER you have already contributed a lot to the forum
• Doxing, shaming, or otherwise posting anything that could negatively impact another person IRL, or threatening to do so
• Posts that contribute more humor than intellectual content (eg memes)
• Links posted without any description
• Inflammatory remarks, trolling, baiting
• Politics (including any attempt to promote collective action, to criticize or promote a group of people or their leaders or candidates, or to educate readers about something they 'should' know but may not wish to spend time reading about right now) or religion, very off-topic posts
• Remarking upon, predicting, or questioning the downvotes on a particular post (even implicitly), or remarking that the point you are making won't be well-received because people are close-minded, or similar (except in the Internal Politics and Disputes boards)
• Pornography, obscenity (including slurs, including reclamatory speech), highly offensive or disruptive remarks and topics
• illegal posts, posts assisting others on how to break the law, or posts that could get us in trouble or cause a big hassle, or bring us substantial negative publicity, or bring us to the attention of DDOSers, trolls, lawyers, etc

Some rules might be surprising and controversial:

• Posts that contribute vague, topic-independent polite trivialities but not content (eg "So, what do you think?"; "Thanks for the good writeup, you've made good points"; "I've learned some good stuff here"); unfortunately these sorts of things are a favored tactic of spammers and viral content promoters
• Posts that ask for help using the site or that ask questions which are easily Googleable (eg "What is garbage collection in the context of computer programming?")
• Attacking a person (rather than their points). Or making fun of a person, including sarcasm. Or any mean-spirited or impolite remarks.
  • example: "For a mathematician you sure like fallacious arguments."
  • example: "I like how you're doubling down on the (some argument that the poster is disagreeing with, phrased in a way to show some internal contradiction) argument." (this is sarcastic)
  • example: re-posting even legal, public pictures of unattractive people to call attention to their unattractiveness
  • exception: if a person gives evidence for why they have special expertise or authority, you may refute it, and give counter evidence
  • exception: two users that have mutually marked each other as Friends in our system can subsequently make fun of each other
  • exception: if the discussion topic is about actions or speeches of a particular person, then those specific actions/speeches can be attacked
• Referring to people in a way that they don't wish to be referred
• Advocating physical violence other than in self defence from physical violence
• Trying to contact or communicate with people outside of this forum if they don't want to as a result of their participation in this forum
• Discussing aspects of a person's life IRL, or their beliefs, that they don't want to be discussed and haven't brought up (recently/relevantly) themselves in this forum
• Insisting that a person give their position on an issue that they don't want to take a position on, or insisting that a person state their position using your terminology or definitions
• Discussion about the rules of this forum, or criticism of specific actions by moderators, outside of the special boards for this purpose
• Reminding third-parties that someone used to hold some position on an issue when they have since publicly and clearly rejected that position
• Taking offense at someone's position on an abstract issue (you are allowed to take offense regarding people's tone, their actions, or their statements regarding specific, particular individuals; however, in general, avoid using "im' offended" as cover for the ad-hominem "you're an offensive person")
• Do not post an argument against something in the article being commented upon if that argument was already addressed by the article, unless you (a) rebut the article's response, (b) explain why the article's response doesn't apply to your argument, or (c) the article's response is subjective or a guess and you are merely stating your differing opinion.
• Except in the agree/disagree dimension, do not downvote unless you have a (quasi)-objective reason (which must be stated). (by the "quasi" in quasi-objective, we mean that things such as pornography, which can be widely and non-controversially agreed upon in most if not all cases and for which an algorithm cannot be produced, is objective enough for these purposes -- note that if the mods disagree with your stated reason then it will be taken to have failed the test of being sufficiently non-controversial to be quasi-objective)

Doctrine (philosophical disagreement with doctrine in general is fine anywhere, but disagreement with doctrine with respect to particular forum members or particular issues regarding this forum is confined to the AntiDoctrine? board):

• Politics is the mindkiller. But politics are also important; so allow it, but only in a special forum.
• It cannot be unethical to hold a particular belief about factual/empirical/objective matters
• With-us-or-against-us ethics is invalid, that is, it is invalid to insist that in a particular instance, some person A is behaving unethically just for failing to censure/resist another person B who is behaving unethicaly
• There can be no power without responsibility, and there can be no responsibility without power
• Do not collectively punish
• An entity cannot be held responsible for the actions of other entities in an aggregate of which it is a member, except to the degree that it can control them
• Do not hold people accountable for what the things they do 'represent' when the people at issue were just trying to do something, rather than trying to 'make a statement'.
• Do not limit people's freedom to define their social identity based on their historical circumstances, or based on things they cannot control
• Freedom of speech (todo define more precisely what is meant here)
• Phyical violence is abhorrent except in the face of necessity for self-defence

Some of these rules may be bent somewhat for long-time contributors with a high score, for example, the rules against humor and polite trivialities. The moderators may violate some of these rules in the course of their duties.

Special boards

• Discussion about (but not violation of) the rules of this forum can go on the Meta board, or on the Internal Politics board
• Violations of and discussion about changing Doctrine can go on the AntiDoctrine? board
• The Commercial Promotion board can contain promotion of commercial products when they are of special interest to this community (but we still delete what we see as outright 'spam' from there)
• the Internal Politics board permits 'politics' relating to this particular forum only; personal criticism of officials (including Moderators) or of candidates AFTER they have accepted their nomination
• the Disputes board is for disputes involving users. On it, you may criticize specific action taken by moderators, and you may attack a user when it is relevant to the dispute
• the Politics and Religion board permits politics and religion
• Off-topic subjects can go on the Offtopic board
• the Help forum is for asking for help using the site, or for asking 'stupid questions'

Punishments

• disemvowel posts
• delete posts
• disemvowel all posts by a given person
• ban a person (we do not shadowban)

We have a 3 strikes rule for serious infractions.

If you see a post that breaks the rules, don't reply to it, just Flag it.

Governance

Classes of users, and what they mean:

• New user: anyone with an account
• Guest: their initial post was validated by a Moderator
• Contributor: received a positive Score on a post
• Member: by invitation only; can vote on posts, elections, and proposals; can view Hidden posts
• Moderator ("Mod"): by election by the Boardmembers. Can Disemvowel, Hide, or Delete posts; can Warn, Disemvowel, Ban, or place in Bad Standing a person. Also clarifies Policies, and protects the rights of Members.
• Admin: Administers the software running the site.
• Chair: preserves the rights of the Members
• Steward: have a special role in the voting system which allocates Influence among Members
• Boardmembers: elected by Members; vote on Proposals; choose the CEO
• CEO: elected by Boardmembers; manages the site

todo

be kind, respectful, professional, and welcoming (by "be professional" is meant: (a) if something would be inappropriate at work, it's probably inappropriate here (b) strive to prevent personal issues from disrupting discussion) no with-us-or-against-us focus on the issue, not the person metadiscussion confined to meta forums