I think another big issue with codes of conduct is that they just shift the burden around. You’re still left with the issue of interpreting the spirit of the norm, deciding if everyone at least made a good faith attempt to stick to it, if good faith is enough, etc. I don’t have much experience with them but I honestly don’t know if they help that much. Seems to me like there are two types of “troublemakers” in communities no matter what:
people who are purposefully deceptive and manipulative;
people who simply lack the social grace and ability to “read the room” required to meet other’s expectations of social norms adherence rather than just stick to their own interpretation of them.
Type 1 you want to kick out. Type 2 you ideally want to be a lot more graceful and forgiving with, though in some extreme cases you might still need to kick them out if their problems are unfixable and they make no effort whatsoever to at least mitigate the issues. Writing the rules down doesn’t help as long as they’re flexible, because the problem those people have is a lack of the sort of intuition that others possess for grokking flexible rules altogether. And if you make them inflexible you just have a chilling effect on every interaction, and throw away a lot of good with the bad. After all, for example, why shouldn’t someone ask a woman out at their first meeting if they’re both clearly into each other and sparks are flying? These things happen! And people should be able to give it a try, I think it’s important to make it clear that there’s nothing sinful or bad about courtship or flirting per se; too many rigid rules about such personal interactions inevitably carry a sort of puritanical vibe with them, regardless of intention. But as usual, “use your best judgement” has very uneven effects because some people’s best judgement is just not that great to begin with, often through no fault of their own.
It would be better if the “guardians of proper behavior” had options beyond “permaban or nothing”.
I mean, for serious wrongdoing—permaban; of course. But for mere annoying behavior—verbal admonishment in private, verbal admonishment in public, second admonishment, temporary ban, and only after everything else fails, permaban. This would be a more gentle approach.
Counter-intuitively, the gentler approach would require more authority and trust in the guardians. The verbal admonishment needs to be taken seriously by everyone else, otherwise the admonished person will not take it seriously, and thus it is a waste of time. (Unfortunately, as I know my people, the most likely reaction would be a loud and long debate about what are the proper norms, what is the best algorithm to decide what are the norms, whether the guardians are overstepping the line, and whether telling someone “dude, she said she was not interested, leave her alone” means that the entire community is epistemically rotten, corrupted by wokeness, and tomorrow the wrongthinkers will be probably be taken to death camps.) It is important for the admonishments to be cheap (cognitively and emotionally) for the guardians, otherwise they will hesitate to react, and the entire system will revert back to “we only act when the situation is clearly horrible”, in which case the appropriate outcome is indeed the permaban.
Less Wrong has put a lot of effort into creating other options and automating them. Downvoted allow subtle user feedback. Mass sock puppet voting previously ruined down votes, so they put effort into controlling sock puppets. Weighted votes so trusted people have more impact. Too many downvoted comments will lead to throttling but not bans.
My sense is these have improved things a lot, but we’re also far from my ideal outcome.
I think another big issue with codes of conduct is that they just shift the burden around. You’re still left with the issue of interpreting the spirit of the norm, deciding if everyone at least made a good faith attempt to stick to it, if good faith is enough, etc. I don’t have much experience with them but I honestly don’t know if they help that much. Seems to me like there are two types of “troublemakers” in communities no matter what:
people who are purposefully deceptive and manipulative;
people who simply lack the social grace and ability to “read the room” required to meet other’s expectations of social norms adherence rather than just stick to their own interpretation of them.
Type 1 you want to kick out. Type 2 you ideally want to be a lot more graceful and forgiving with, though in some extreme cases you might still need to kick them out if their problems are unfixable and they make no effort whatsoever to at least mitigate the issues. Writing the rules down doesn’t help as long as they’re flexible, because the problem those people have is a lack of the sort of intuition that others possess for grokking flexible rules altogether. And if you make them inflexible you just have a chilling effect on every interaction, and throw away a lot of good with the bad. After all, for example, why shouldn’t someone ask a woman out at their first meeting if they’re both clearly into each other and sparks are flying? These things happen! And people should be able to give it a try, I think it’s important to make it clear that there’s nothing sinful or bad about courtship or flirting per se; too many rigid rules about such personal interactions inevitably carry a sort of puritanical vibe with them, regardless of intention. But as usual, “use your best judgement” has very uneven effects because some people’s best judgement is just not that great to begin with, often through no fault of their own.
It would be better if the “guardians of proper behavior” had options beyond “permaban or nothing”.
I mean, for serious wrongdoing—permaban; of course. But for mere annoying behavior—verbal admonishment in private, verbal admonishment in public, second admonishment, temporary ban, and only after everything else fails, permaban. This would be a more gentle approach.
Counter-intuitively, the gentler approach would require more authority and trust in the guardians. The verbal admonishment needs to be taken seriously by everyone else, otherwise the admonished person will not take it seriously, and thus it is a waste of time. (Unfortunately, as I know my people, the most likely reaction would be a loud and long debate about what are the proper norms, what is the best algorithm to decide what are the norms, whether the guardians are overstepping the line, and whether telling someone “dude, she said she was not interested, leave her alone” means that the entire community is epistemically rotten, corrupted by wokeness, and tomorrow the wrongthinkers will be probably be taken to death camps.) It is important for the admonishments to be cheap (cognitively and emotionally) for the guardians, otherwise they will hesitate to react, and the entire system will revert back to “we only act when the situation is clearly horrible”, in which case the appropriate outcome is indeed the permaban.
Less Wrong has put a lot of effort into creating other options and automating them. Downvoted allow subtle user feedback. Mass sock puppet voting previously ruined down votes, so they put effort into controlling sock puppets. Weighted votes so trusted people have more impact. Too many downvoted comments will lead to throttling but not bans.
My sense is these have improved things a lot, but we’re also far from my ideal outcome.