We’ve recently had a number of issues arise concerning our commenting culture and what standards govern it. I’d like to share a few thoughts on that subject, because this is a very important part of the Ordinary Times community. In a very real sense, we wouldn’t be doing what we do if we did not have the remarkable and thriving commenting community which we enjoy here.
Commenting Policy
The commenting policy is intended to aim readers at our aspirational norm as much as it is to delimit the points at which those norms are transgressed. The norm is articulated in the policy:
We believe that intelligent conversations are more likely to occur in an environment where people can disagree but are also still encouraged to respect one another.
Now, there are times that this norm gets stressed. On the one hand, this norm incorporates the idea of robust, open, and vigorous discussion. We might shorthand that concept as “free speech,” and while it’s in the ballpark of what I’m referring to, I actually don’t think the phrase is precisely accurate, as described below in some detail.
Also in play is the idea of “mutual respect,” which is every bit as fuzzy a concept as “robust, open, and vigorous discussion.” We maintain the element of mutual respect in our norm because it encourages inclusiveness and participation from people who do not feel they have the ability to speak without being condemned or criticized or attacked on a personal level, based on their identity.
There is value in hearing what others, different from oneself, have to say. So what we really don’t want is something so awful being said in our forum that it drives others to disengage or, worse yet, to never engage in the first place. This is why we have a policy at all, and not just an open, uncurated forum. Take a look at a YouTube comments page if you want to see what that turns into. We don’t want that here.
Which means that if you read this website, the articles in it, and the comments to those articles, you can and should expect to encounter ideas from people that are not the same as your own. You can and should expect to encounter ideas with which you disagree. We discuss politics a lot around here, and as Eliezer Yudkowsky observed a decade ago, “People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional [lives] can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue.” So, from time to time it’s inevitable that the norms we strive to attain will get stressed. While we realize disagreement is probably inevitable, we nevertheless strive to disagree respectfully.
The Zone Of Intolerability
Not every comment is going to achieve our aspiration of friendly disagreement. For some people, it is easy to cross the line from criticizing an opposing viewpoint to criticizing the person who maintains that viewpoint. People have emotions and tempers and frustrations. There are times and ways in which it is appropriate to vent those.
So certainly there is that which we aspire to, which is actually the very large majority of comments. There is also a middle area in which we say, “That wasn’t great, but we can tolerate it.” We give commenters the benefit of the doubt, to tolerate much more than we discipline—not because we like everything we read, but because tolerating much of what one finds unpleasant is necessary to seek out diverse viewpoints and a multiplicity of perspectives.
But there are also a very small number of comments which we do find intolerable, which fall below even the standards of what is minimally acceptable. What does “intolerable disrespect” look like? How is it defined? Sort of like pornography, you know it when you see it. But here’s a couple of concepts and guidelines to consider.
- “Hostile Environment” Harassment as defined by Title VII. Liability can be triggered by expression of remarks and concepts which are (a) focused on a particular characteristic such as race, sex, national origin, LGBTQ status, religion, age, or physical ability, which (b) a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive, particularly when such remarks are severe or pervasive. Severity and pervasiveness are separate axes that work in tandem to evaluate the weight of the questionable statements; a sufficiently severe remark on its own can trigger a violation, but an accumulation of less-severe remarks over time, any one of which on their own might not be considered particularly severe, could trigger a violation as well.
- Eschew personal attacks on community members. Disparaging remarks which are reasonably interpreted as directed at another member of this community, again particularly focusing on personal characteristics as opposed to opinions expressed or the quality of arguments, will be viewed with particular askance.
- Avoid slurs and epithets. These are particularly (but not exclusively) words and phrases that have would be deemed vulgar and pejorative by a reasonable person. Such words and phrases ought to be used, if at all, as objects of discussion rather than actual epithets.
Thus, one might discuss (as illustrative but not exhaustive examples) the Blood Libel as a historical phenomenon, the use of the “n-word” in reference to people of dark skin color, or the past association of homosexuality with mental illnesses. But actually endorsing the Blood Libel, actually calling someone the “n-word,” or actually stating that homosexuals are by definition mentally ill, are all very likely to be considered intolerably disrespectful. Again, these are illustrative examples and are in no way intended to exhaust or limit what will be deemed intolerably disrespectful; this post is also intended to be a restatement of the commenting policy, and not a revision of it.
Frankly, we’re not anxious to describe this with a definition purporting to offer a high degree of precision, because that sort of thing lends itself to a lot of litigation and more effort invested into figuring out how to be disrespectful while cleverly staying within the prescribed rules. There are people who find that sort of thing pleasurable. There are places on the internet where they can have that sort of fun; we don’t want Ordinary Times to become one of them.
Comment Discipline
So what happens in those rare, uncomfortable instances when someone really goes over the line? We can edit or re-write or spoiler out the comment. We aren’t happy about doing that: the offending remarks are still right there to be seen by anyone, and who isn’t going to want to see what was so bad it got censored? We can delete the comment. We don’t like doing that: better to respond to bad speech with more speech. We can issue a warning, put a commenter on probation, suspend their commenting privileges, or ultimately we can ban the commenter completely.
While there are some who might express skepticism about this notion, there is not a single member of the editorial board that enjoys the idea of doing any of this. None of us derive any pleasure from it. None of us like it when we see people approaching the stress point of the commenting policy and writing things that set our ideals of mutual respect and open discussion at odds with one another. None of us enjoy calling people out for violating it, and we really don’t enjoy disciplining commenters.
We editors all have other things that we do with our time that aren’t reviewing and policing comments. We have jobs. We have families. We have obligations in the real world. We can’t stay on top of everything all the time. We try to review everything and we try to form some consensus amongst ourselves before acting, but this just isn’t always possible. For several reasons, including that it’s really unpleasant, and including that we can’t know in advance how bad something might be, we haven’t created a formal, structured system of progressive discipline. It’s sort of like a workplace anti-harassment policy: some things might be so bad we go directly to banning a commenter completely; some situations we hope to make better; each problem has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. There’s really no other way to do it.
One school of thought is that as a result of this, we don’t police the comments enough, and we too often let people get away with saying and doing things that are contrary to our norms. Another school of thought is that what winds up happening — whether intentionally or inadvertently — is that we police the comments in a way that is not evenhanded or fair.
Neither of those are what we want.
A New Site Function
Managing Editor Will Truman has done yeoman’s work searching for and implementing a new feature that we hope will help address these issues. Starting in the very near future — hopefully by the time you have this post it will already be in place — every comment will have a function called “Report Comment.” 1 If you come across a comment that you believe violates the commenting policy, click on “Report” in the lower right-hand corner of the questionable comment’s box. You must be logged in to use the feature.
When a certain number of these reports are received the comment will go into moderation and be reviewed by the editors. We will then deliberate about it and decide whether it’s above or below the line of what we can tolerate. Again, remember “what we can tolerate” is far short of “what we aspire to be,” and remember that as a general rule, our ethic is to err on the side of tolerance. Once it is approved out of moderation, it cannot thereafter be placed back in moderation.
With that said, we’ve noticed that things are getting a bit heated around here. Yes, it’s an unusually contentious time in U.S. politics, but that doesn’t mean we have to sink to the lowest level along with everyone else. So while our ethic is to err on the side of tolerance, we’re also going to be a bit more willing to call out questionable statements than we have been recently. And if something is very bad and warrants editorial response, we will respond accordingly.
Now, as with anything else, this “report comment” function is potentially subject to abuse, too. Here’s what we ask of you when you use it.
- If you see a comment you think is a problem, flag it once and move on. Please don’t try to flag the same comment multiple times.
- Do not flag a comment for review because you disagree with the argument made in the comment. This is not to become a tool by which members of Team Blue gang up to drive members of Team Red out of the comments pages (or vice versa).
- I suggest that after flagging a questionable comment, you do not thereafter otherwise respond to or engage with that portion of the comment which you found questionable. Everyone knows the wisdom of not feeding trolls. This is a suggestion, not an instruction.
- Remember that we editors are human, and that we may not respond to your report immediately or in the way you might have hoped.
This is an experiment with a new tool. If we like how it works out, we’re going to stick with it. We’re going to be feeling our way as we go. We might wind up scrapping it if it doesn’t help things. We might wind up changing how we use this tool based on experience as it accumulates.
You may certainly expect that comments which are at least questionable will be identified as such more for a period of time as we move through this trial.
I ask of each and every member of our community to use the tool in good faith, and that you trust that we are going to figure out how to use it best in good faith.
- It’s been in place for a while at Blinded Trials II, although for technical reasons it was easier to implement there than here.
Thanks for this, Chief.Report
FWIW — I just experimented with reporting a comment (MD’s, above) and noticed that there’s no confirmation dialogbox nor any obvious way to undo it.Report
Your comment is fine, @michael-drew ; but I guess by default it’s about to become a live test case.Report
I just tried to report KenB’s comment talking about reporting Michael Drew’s comment and I only see the “report comment” button in IE. I do not see it in Firefox.Report
TIA everyone for the technical information so we can get this thing working right.Report
I’m not seeing it in Chrome on a Mac.Report
Nor Firefox on the same Mac.Report
It’s not possible to try IE on a Mac, which is one of the very nicest things about Macs.Report
But it’s all because I was logged in, so I’m going to report all my comments above as “You should have read all the comments first, stupid.”Report
I see it on my Firefox, which is a surprise, because my Firefox tends to work very poorly when it comes to normal things like visiting websites.Report
There is no way to undo it, but the report button should be replaced with a checkmark after you click it.Report
This post is a nice illustration of why I hope that your efforts to become a judge are successful.Report
Thank you and I very much appreciate the well wishes for my career ambitions.
But don’t give me too much credit. I had a lot of help and input from the other editors, and @will-truman is the one who’s done the more technical work.Report
another suggestion: Stop using “but he was mean first” as a justification for being mean.Report
This is a bad comment and someone should report it.Report
My comment is less bad than yours and so should not be reported. What happens if yours goes into moderation but mine doesn’t?Report
I would like to extend my apologies to the community for losing my cool and acting unprofessionally.
I’m sorry. I misbehaved.Report
This is also a bad comment and worthy of being reported.Report
I love the Indian head test pattern, it’s a classic.Report
You must be logged in to use the feature.
Could you say a few more words about this? One of the interesting things about OT (at least to me) has always been that the commentariat is remarkably well behaved for a community that doesn’t require readers to be registered. Or does logged in mean something different here?Report
There was a miscommunication. It’s the other way around: At least some people who are logged in cannot report a comment, but those who are not logged in can.
We know that editors cannot Report a comment. What we don’t know is whether contributors can. Could you do me a favor and log in and tell me if you see the Report button?Report
fwiw…i’m seeing report buttons using firefox.Report
When I’m logged in, I do not see the report button. When I’m not logged in, I do see the button. Firefox in both cases.Report
Ah, I’m logged in in Firefox and I am *NOT* logged in in IE.
So I probably mis-guessed the nature of the issue.Report
Yeah, there don’t seem to be any browser-related issues. I’ve tested eight and it works on all of them (as long as you’re not logged in).Report
There are 8 browsers?Report
By OS as well. No guarantees that Firefox’s Javascript engine on Mac OSX is bug-for-bug compatible with their engine on Windows. Or Linux. Or what they do in the brain-damaged world of Android (which is largely Linux underneath, but…).
Microsoft has leveraged this well. Office on Windows is a global de facto standard. Anything else… you take some chances.Report
There are way more than eight. That just happens to be what I have installed on my devices at the moment.Report
Is Netscape Navigator one of them? Cuz that’s what I’m rocking.Report
Nothing better for cruisin’ Geocities, but you may need to upgrade if you want to check out Friendster.Report
As soon as my mom is off the phone, I’ll log on. Lemme just find an AOL cd… They’re hard to find.Report
Sweet. I’m really old school and they’ll take Mosaic out of my cold, dead fingers.
(I actually used Mosaic once! For real!)
Geocities may be dead, but Friendster is huge in The Phillippinnes.Report
iirc, you could go to a page on Mosaic that was ‘all the pages on the internet’ and was about 3 scrolled pages of links (this was circa ’93-’94)Report
Geocities is alive and well in Japan. If you’re familiar with Japanese web design, your response to this should be, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
I have vague memories of browsing the Internet in text mode over dial-up around 1995 or so. Not sure if it was Lynx, or just some proprietary thing the ISP set up.
Edit: Yahoo is surprisingly big there, too. Ebay never really caught on, and Yahoo Auctions filled that niche.Report
Back in Usenet days, I knew a guy who used Lynx and would complain bitterly every time he tried to use one of the 99.85% of websites that don’t work well in text-only mode.Report
This appears to be what’s going on. We think we know what to do to fix it, but we’re reluctant to do that during peak readership hours. Stay tuned, we’ll try again in a little while.Report
Well done, Overcounselor Likko!Report
Everybody please do me a favor and Report “Bad Commenter”s comments. I need to test a couple of things.Report
This is one last bad comment. Please report this! It’s bad! Bad! Bad!Report
ooh i reported it and it got a tick mark. Nice!Report
I’d expect that kind of comment from someone like you.Report
I think I caused, I apologize I should have kept my cool.Report
Ack! I reported in error!! Sorry sorry!Report
Dand:
I apologize to you directly. I had no cause to be so insulting. It was immature on my part. I’m sorry.Report
Huzzah for this. And let me say how happy I am that the technical changes being made to the site are finally under the control of people interested in maintaining OT as a respectful community. It shouldn’t have taken until April 2016 for this feature to be implemented.Report
Excellent efforts, Burt and Will.Report
I reported the last ‘bad comment’ and got a nice checkmark. Great ‘hacking.’
However, after reloading the page, as a test, neither checkmark or the report button was visible. Not sure this is the intended effect.Report
While I wish the checkmark would stay there, the lack of a report button is intentional to prevent a single person from reporting something several times.Report
Any chance you could make it possible to unflag a post or at least move the flag button so it’s not so close to the quote button?Report
Unfortunately not yet. Since something out there will offend just about everybody, it takes more than one click for a comment to get pulled. So hopefully that will not be a recurring problem. I hope to be able to dive in at some point in the future and be able to set the button apart or do something to make it stand point.Report
@dand Seems like a good place to remind folks that if errors are made, one could write the editors and tell us “wait wait I didn’t mean to flag such-and-such comment.”
Not perfect, but a better-than-nothing patch perhaps?Report
Reporting is fine, by why stop there? Feature Request:
[Report]
[Duel]
[Dance Off!]
[Drink!]
[Pun]
[Banned] see aboveReport
Pretty sure if you can code it, we’d adopt it ;).Report
Shouldn’t “Band” go next to “Dance Off!”?Report
Looking…for…right…button. failed.Report
Schilling comments need a “Rapport” button for the good will he engenders.Report
If there were a way to report people for puns, I think that that would be something worth exploring.Report
Agreed. G-d knows they deserve pun-ishment.Report
There’s nothing uglier than punis envy.Report
Hannibal my manimal!Report
But seriously, imagine if we had something like “state of discussion”, just for puns. I would read the heck out of that.Report
Do not encourage the Cat.Report
So just to be clear, you’re changing the commenting policy to say the blood libel, n-word, and calling homosexuals mentally ill are the only things that violate the comment policy? 🙂
I’ve lost my cool at least a few times and shouldn’t have. So I apologize. While I’ll probably do it again, I’ll try not to.
To be honest, most of the time when I’ve written a comment that I’ve come to regret, there’s usually a little eudaimon inside me that says, “I know it will feel good right when you say what you’re about to say, but in an hour or so, you’ll start to regret it.” The more I listen to that eudaimon, the more civil my comments have become. Also, the happier. After the initial flush of “I must get back at that person” subsides, I can go on my merry way and just leave certain things be and live my life.
Glyph had a comment a while ago about civility that I think is a very good supplement to the things Burt said in the OP: https://ordinary-times.com/2015/11/05/the-state-of-the-art/#comment-1090972Report
I’m sure we all benefit from 2,000 words worth of humbug from you.Report
Art, never change.Report
I believe the logged-in/logged-out thing has been addressed.
Can anyone (else) logged in let me know if Report is showing up for you?Report
The Report button is showing up now, while I’m logged in. It appears to be functional.Report
Seems to work for me too.Report
Works for Jaybirds.Report
None of us enjoy calling people out for violating it, and we really don’t enjoy disciplining commenters…
None of us? I’ve had my moments. 😉Report
Hey, @dave , how ya been? Haven’t seen you around much recently.Report
Dave! You grumpy New Jersyite, where the hell you been?Report