There’s another piece to offendedness—it’s not just a an attempt to protect one’s status, it’s an attempt (sometimes successful) to assert status, and it’s possible to have a little too much fun with that. Your theory is good, but it leaves out the way many people seek out things they find offensive.
Over at slactivist, there’s an effort to distinguish between being offended and righteous anger—imho, that distinction hasn’t been defined yet, but it might be worth discovering.
Excellent and important point. I think that’s a part of my uneasiness that I hadn’t been able to verbalize abstractly up until now.
In order to have a comment policy in place, the act of pointing out language-to-avoid should have a standard and formal form which does not decrease the status of the pointed-out speaker, and perhaps even more importantly, should not increase the status of the pointer-outer.
In order to have a comment policy in place, the act of pointing out language-to-avoid should have a standard and formal form which does not decrease the status of the pointed-out speaker, and perhaps even more importantly, should not increase the status of the pointer-outer.
I don’t know if this is possible, but that may be because I’ve been spending time in an environment which is particularly poisonous that way.
I will say that shaming people for ignorance has to be treated as intolerable.… without shaming people who don’t know better than to invoke that sort of shame.
Could you clarify: in order to encourage people to admit ignorance and take correction, you want to remove the perception of low status in taking it?
That sounds great, but I’m not sure how you get there. Out of people I believe to be mistaken or ignorant, I do respect more those who admit a mistake, than those who defensively generate huge threads full of denial and obfuscation, but in the case where I’m only skimming, I can’t often be sure if they’re wrong and it’s not worth my time to understand and judge.
I suppose you’re talking about social correctness and ignorance of expected behavior, and I was thinking of general correctness and ignorance.
I think there’s more status lost here in being incorrect than rude. So maybe discouraging offense-giving is a simpler problem.
To not raise the status of the pointer-outer, we could require that the pointing out is done anonymously.
To make it formal, it might be useful to make it part of the UI: rather than posting a reply in free text, you would click a “bad language” button and mark a checkbox for the policy you consider violated. Reducing the bandwidth of the channel in this way might make it harder to communicate elaborate moves in a social-status game using it.
Not lowering the status of the pointed-out speaker seems harder: one could make the whole exchange not publicly visible, but would a private message be sufficient to enforce the guidelines, especially since there might be disagreement about what constitutes a violation?
Allow anonymous posting, with a checkbox. Not really anonymous, you have to be logged in, but non-mods don’t see ID.
Anonymous posts don’t display until a mod explicitly permits them.
Special rules for anonymous posts: be very polite, be very on-topic or validly critical of another poster’s delivery. Posts without extra effort to politeness beyond the norm will be summarily junked.
Result: this gives us criticism with no status modification, it also gives us posts with on-topic views which a poster might have good reason to disown in public, but still consider true.
The only way I can see that working is to avoid doing it publicly, either by telling someone in a message or by some other function, like a ‘Private Reply’ button that leaves a comment only the target commenter can read.
I’m reminded of the medieval “point of honor” that nobles were entitled to and commoners weren’t. Perceiving an offense and successfully thwarting it is a karma mint, so seeking out offense makes sense, especially if other people will likely support you. Not without its harms, of course, because social status is much like a zero-sum game—especially in conflict situations.
Not convinced at all that “offense” is meaningfully different from “righteous anger”. It’s pretty clear that one of those concepts is meant to be pigeonholed as good and the other as bad, and people are trying to invent a reasonable-sounding definition that would facilitate such pigeonholing; but that’s already reason enough for me to discount the whole discussion.
I believe that anger is what fuels territorial defense, territorial defense is enough work that it needs some fuel, and that people need some territory, so there might be a useful distinction between the emotions which drive legitimate defense of self and others as compared to looking for conflict for the fun of it or to gain unfair advantages.
Maybe some of the discussion at Slactivist can be summarized as checking to see whether the angry person is looking for positive sum or negative-to-zero sum solutions.
The situation is made more complicated because a person can be genuinely abused and be looking for negative-to-zero sum solutions.
In general, look up what constituted a valid reason for dueling in the Middle Ages. For example, here:
To illustrate the judicial duel I will give a synopsis of the account of the combat at Moulins, France on February 17, 1538. During this duel Lion de Barbencois (Sieur de Sarzay) did combat François de Saint-Julien (Sieur de Veniers). A quarrel had been in progress for many years between Sarzay and a gentleman by the name of Sieur de La Tour-Landry. Sarzay had sworn that La Tour-Landry had fled like a coward during the battle of Pravia in 1525 (where Sarzay was not even present). La Tour-Landry’s honor was placed in jeopardy by this and demanded that Sarzay give the source of this information. Sarzay related that he had gotten the information from Veniers who vehemently denied the accusation of supplying the information; thus giving Sarzay the Lie. Now, the quarrel changed from Sarzay and La Tour-Landry to Sarzay and Veniers. Thus the duel was not held to clear La Tour-Landry of the charge of cowardice on the field but to dispel the suspicion of a lie. Gossip true, but a lie. In this duel, Sarzay was the injured party since he was accused of lying. After the challenge was given the King was petitioned for a field.
The Wikipedia page on Duel also gives a vivid flavor of the time.
Of course, that leads to offenders trying to assert status by accusing offendees of status-assertion (because we regard status-protection as more worthy than status-assertion), and round and round we go.
There’s another piece to offendedness—it’s not just a an attempt to protect one’s status, it’s an attempt (sometimes successful) to assert status, and it’s possible to have a little too much fun with that. Your theory is good, but it leaves out the way many people seek out things they find offensive.
Over at slactivist, there’s an effort to distinguish between being offended and righteous anger—imho, that distinction hasn’t been defined yet, but it might be worth discovering.
Excellent and important point. I think that’s a part of my uneasiness that I hadn’t been able to verbalize abstractly up until now.
In order to have a comment policy in place, the act of pointing out language-to-avoid should have a standard and formal form which does not decrease the status of the pointed-out speaker, and perhaps even more importantly, should not increase the status of the pointer-outer.
In order to have a comment policy in place, the act of pointing out language-to-avoid should have a standard and formal form which does not decrease the status of the pointed-out speaker, and perhaps even more importantly, should not increase the status of the pointer-outer.
I don’t know if this is possible, but that may be because I’ve been spending time in an environment which is particularly poisonous that way.
I will say that shaming people for ignorance has to be treated as intolerable.… without shaming people who don’t know better than to invoke that sort of shame.
Could you clarify: in order to encourage people to admit ignorance and take correction, you want to remove the perception of low status in taking it?
That sounds great, but I’m not sure how you get there. Out of people I believe to be mistaken or ignorant, I do respect more those who admit a mistake, than those who defensively generate huge threads full of denial and obfuscation, but in the case where I’m only skimming, I can’t often be sure if they’re wrong and it’s not worth my time to understand and judge.
I suppose you’re talking about social correctness and ignorance of expected behavior, and I was thinking of general correctness and ignorance.
I think there’s more status lost here in being incorrect than rude. So maybe discouraging offense-giving is a simpler problem.
To not raise the status of the pointer-outer, we could require that the pointing out is done anonymously.
To make it formal, it might be useful to make it part of the UI: rather than posting a reply in free text, you would click a “bad language” button and mark a checkbox for the policy you consider violated. Reducing the bandwidth of the channel in this way might make it harder to communicate elaborate moves in a social-status game using it.
Not lowering the status of the pointed-out speaker seems harder: one could make the whole exchange not publicly visible, but would a private message be sufficient to enforce the guidelines, especially since there might be disagreement about what constitutes a violation?
It seems that if you buy this policy, no UI change would be necessary. Just a policy of sending PMs rather than making it public would suffice.
I would generalize, as follows:
Allow anonymous posting, with a checkbox. Not really anonymous, you have to be logged in, but non-mods don’t see ID.
Anonymous posts don’t display until a mod explicitly permits them.
Special rules for anonymous posts: be very polite, be very on-topic or validly critical of another poster’s delivery. Posts without extra effort to politeness beyond the norm will be summarily junked.
Result: this gives us criticism with no status modification, it also gives us posts with on-topic views which a poster might have good reason to disown in public, but still consider true.
The only way I can see that working is to avoid doing it publicly, either by telling someone in a message or by some other function, like a ‘Private Reply’ button that leaves a comment only the target commenter can read.
I’m reminded of the medieval “point of honor” that nobles were entitled to and commoners weren’t. Perceiving an offense and successfully thwarting it is a karma mint, so seeking out offense makes sense, especially if other people will likely support you. Not without its harms, of course, because social status is much like a zero-sum game—especially in conflict situations.
Not convinced at all that “offense” is meaningfully different from “righteous anger”. It’s pretty clear that one of those concepts is meant to be pigeonholed as good and the other as bad, and people are trying to invent a reasonable-sounding definition that would facilitate such pigeonholing; but that’s already reason enough for me to discount the whole discussion.
“Karma mint” is a great phrase.
I believe that anger is what fuels territorial defense, territorial defense is enough work that it needs some fuel, and that people need some territory, so there might be a useful distinction between the emotions which drive legitimate defense of self and others as compared to looking for conflict for the fun of it or to gain unfair advantages.
Maybe some of the discussion at Slactivist can be summarized as checking to see whether the angry person is looking for positive sum or negative-to-zero sum solutions.
The situation is made more complicated because a person can be genuinely abused and be looking for negative-to-zero sum solutions.
What is the medieval “point of honor”? Wikipedia, Google, and Bing are all failing me...
In general, look up what constituted a valid reason for dueling in the Middle Ages. For example, here:
The Wikipedia page on Duel also gives a vivid flavor of the time.
Of course, that leads to offenders trying to assert status by accusing offendees of status-assertion (because we regard status-protection as more worthy than status-assertion), and round and round we go.