arush
arush
It makes me sad to hear about people being run off of micro.blog due to the behavior of community members, and I have a few thoughts. First, surely we can be better than this, we’re all adults. Admittedly, that’s wishful thinking on my part I know, but it still is something I think of. ... www.arush.io
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Ron
Ron

@arush I've been lobbying for your #2 for a long time. If you can make a positive statement that everyone can agree to, like to promote good will among all people, it makes for a clear standard which is easy to administer, rather than having to list every possible way a person could engage in unwanted behavior and then having to specifically ban each one of them. I think the best codes of conduct are ones that set positive, high standards of conduct, in clear short statements, such the Golden Rule, the Boy Scout oath, the Scout Law, etc but then you can also get into all kinds of cultural and/or religious differences, so what seemed easy in the beginning might get very difficult in implementation. Before you know it, you might have a Code of Ethics that is 116 pages long, like the IOC. Around here, I suppose you'd need to start with some sort of Nerd's Code of Proper Behavior, but even then, is that something the geeks could agree to, and then what about the dorks?!

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arush
arush

@Ron I think we would probably have to start with something like "There's no possible way we can define every kind of acceptable and unacceptable behavior". That said, here's what we find generally unacceptable, and here's what we find generally acceptable. I'm of course intentionally leaving out all the behaviors, (racism, anti-semitism, sexism, ETC), that I think we all agree on. It seems to me though that, since in meet space, communities have all kinds of rules about what's acceptable and what's not, we ought to be able to come up with something similar for online. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the first ground rule should be: "please keep in mind that the other end of that pithy mention you might be composing features a human being, with all the attendant complexities. If you don't think you'd say what you're about to type to that human being's face, you shouldn't say it online either."

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Ron
Ron

@arush Yes, that's a good one. But look at all the ways in which even something as basic as the golden rule can be viewed among different peoples.

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jgmac1106
jgmac1106

@arush A good friend of mine used to sum it as, "Be a Good Human"...then when the kids got real bad we just went to "Be Human"

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schuth
schuth

@arush I love your first ground rule; it belongs in an affirmative code of ethics for any online community. And I echo your hope that digital solutionism is not misapplied to address social problems.

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Bruce
Bruce

@arush @schuth @ron A discussion about community norms would be really helpful. I just posted a couple questions about my behavior in an earlier thread. In both cases, I would have said the same things in person. But I recognize different spaces are for different discussions and I'm uncertain about what is appropriate for Micro.blog.

To some extent, this may also be a discussion about who we want to welcome here. Different cultures have different expectations around arguments. In the Quaker world, we struggle with tension between the traditional cultural and spiritual norm of quiet and calm debate and the intensity of those on the margins, especially African Americans.

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bradenslen
bradenslen

@Bruce There is another factor to consider. MB is a bridge between blogs. With syndication sometimes as micro bloggers (generic) we may be posting for Twitter and not really talking to the people at M.B.

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In reply to
rnv
rnv

@arush I agree with everything you say here, but it’s too late in the evening for me to say much more than that. I think this will be a very lively conversation in the coming days, as well it should be.

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