Comments should be relevant and at least aspire to be rational.
If a comment is rational and relevant, I can’t really see why it should be
avoided—even if someone might not like it. This means that you can (and
should!) point out the use of stereotypes or prejudice and other biases. But
the mere fact that someone could take offence is not the deciding factor.
While it’s generally good to avoid offending people, it’s cannot always be
maintained—for example, many of the atheism-themed posts would be offending
to some theists.
As a (non-rethorical) question: what would be an example of a comment that
would be both rational and relevant, but yet you would find offending?
Comments should be relevant and at least aspire to be rational.
Relevant to what standard? A comment’s relevance reflects its usefulness to a section of the community/audience. If the comment is offending a portion of that audience, does it hinder its own relevance?
As a (non-rethorical) question: what would be an example of a comment that would be both rational and relevant, but yet you would find offending?
I think the whole gender hullabaloo has provided a decent enough answer to this question.
A lot of the petty, potentially offensive things I notice are particularly not-relevant snippets smashed into otherwise decent posts.
I think the ‘relevance’ is usually rather easy to discern—it simply means
that a comment attempts to contribute something to the subject under
discussion. I added ‘relevance’ only as criterion for completeness’ sake,
because it could make an otherwise rational, intelligent comment still be out
of place. In practice, irrelevant comments are not a problem on LW.
Offensiveness is orthogonal to relevance, I would think.
But my question stands—is there any comment that is both relevant and
rational, but should yet be considered offensive or inappropriate? The ‘petty,
potentially offensive’ things can be countered with normal rational reasoning,
pointing out e.g. stereotyping, without the much more ambivalent rule of
“don’t be offensive”.
Relevant truths should be spoken, even if someone finds its offensive.
What about a simpler standard:
Comments should be relevant and at least aspire to be rational.
If a comment is rational and relevant, I can’t really see why it should be avoided—even if someone might not like it. This means that you can (and should!) point out the use of stereotypes or prejudice and other biases. But the mere fact that someone could take offence is not the deciding factor.
While it’s generally good to avoid offending people, it’s cannot always be maintained—for example, many of the atheism-themed posts would be offending to some theists.
As a (non-rethorical) question: what would be an example of a comment that would be both rational and relevant, but yet you would find offending?
Relevant to what standard? A comment’s relevance reflects its usefulness to a section of the community/audience. If the comment is offending a portion of that audience, does it hinder its own relevance?
I think the whole gender hullabaloo has provided a decent enough answer to this question.
A lot of the petty, potentially offensive things I notice are particularly not-relevant snippets smashed into otherwise decent posts.
I think the ‘relevance’ is usually rather easy to discern—it simply means that a comment attempts to contribute something to the subject under discussion. I added ‘relevance’ only as criterion for completeness’ sake, because it could make an otherwise rational, intelligent comment still be out of place. In practice, irrelevant comments are not a problem on LW.
Offensiveness is orthogonal to relevance, I would think.
But my question stands—is there any comment that is both relevant and rational, but should yet be considered offensive or inappropriate? The ‘petty, potentially offensive’ things can be countered with normal rational reasoning, pointing out e.g. stereotyping, without the much more ambivalent rule of “don’t be offensive”.
Relevant truths should be spoken, even if someone finds its offensive.