Sometimes it is easier to remember what to do by also giving examples of what not to do. So let’s try to describe some ways how to ruin a community.
Some communities need ruining, or at the very least weakening far enough to be altered. Necessarily anyone who’s an outlier, for better or worse, is going to be constrained by a society with very exacting norms.
If someone is introducing the described anti-patterns into a community as a strategic tool to destroy the community from within, well… that’s a fine strategy. And if I happened to hate the given community, I would applaud them.
My concern is that many people around me seem to have internalized these ideas, and would automatically bring them to communities they don’t want to ruin. (As an example: Once in a while someone complains about the karma system on LW. It’s usually not because they have the experience of discussions without karma being predictably better than discussions with karma. It’s because karma makes differences among people, and—as a cached thought—any such system is evil.)
It’s like using a biological weapon against your enemy, only to find later that you started a world-wide epidemic infecting everyone. In this specific case, we have a memetic outbreak destroying communities.
I’ve not shared that observation. Most of the time when it looks like that’s what’s going on I generally find it to be a language problem. Take should, for instance, I’ve rarely found that to go well when trying to alter someone’s behaviour, while suggesting that they were being mean or that something else might work better for them has generally worked quite well. But I do sympathise with your concern.
Some communities need ruining, or at the very least weakening far enough to be altered. Necessarily anyone who’s an outlier, for better or worse, is going to be constrained by a society with very exacting norms.
If someone is introducing the described anti-patterns into a community as a strategic tool to destroy the community from within, well… that’s a fine strategy. And if I happened to hate the given community, I would applaud them.
My concern is that many people around me seem to have internalized these ideas, and would automatically bring them to communities they don’t want to ruin. (As an example: Once in a while someone complains about the karma system on LW. It’s usually not because they have the experience of discussions without karma being predictably better than discussions with karma. It’s because karma makes differences among people, and—as a cached thought—any such system is evil.)
It’s like using a biological weapon against your enemy, only to find later that you started a world-wide epidemic infecting everyone. In this specific case, we have a memetic outbreak destroying communities.
I’ve not shared that observation. Most of the time when it looks like that’s what’s going on I generally find it to be a language problem. Take should, for instance, I’ve rarely found that to go well when trying to alter someone’s behaviour, while suggesting that they were being mean or that something else might work better for them has generally worked quite well. But I do sympathise with your concern.