My experience with a forum that has adopted this policy to an extreme in the last couple of years was that whenever local social norms strongly prescribe against any behavior that falls short of active niceness, the result is a suffocating atmosphere accompanied by a severe decline in content quality (because attempts to set higher standards are perceived as “rude” towards the people lowering the standard). (If that matters, the forum was themed around game graphics creations.) “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” was probably their most oft-cited slogan. There were multiple suggestions of basically making it socially taboo to post your stuff in a picture thread without praising recently posted creations, and some posters made it a habit of theirs to make entire posts consisting of thanking 15-20 people individually and telling them how much they loved their creations. The overall group rationality could have benefited from moving away from this extreme of niceness, in my estimation.
Fortunately, LW is in no danger of ending up like that any time soon. In fact, what is most refreshing about discussion going on here is that it’s low in both active niceness and active meanness. There’s this third category, entirely distinct from the other two (in fact, in a way, completely off the spectrum), that is characterized by neutrality, or reluctance to make either positive or negative general assessments of the other users or to express either appreciation or contempt. It is my belief that, overall, it is better to strive for this sort of neutrality than to try to move the community in the direction of either niceness or meanness (particularly when neutrality approximates the initial state).
The dangers of a tendency towards meanness are obvious, so I’m not going to bother with those; my main concern is that excessive pressure towards active niceness makes for a bad user experience for the less naturally empathetic folks (the kind experienced by people required to plaster a big smile on their face for the customers) and shoves completely unrelated things into the discussion, especially things that have the potential to stir up drama.
A lot of what we consider to be polite behavior is really just a series of strategies for assuring the other party that yes, we come in peace; no, we’re not trying to claim higher status; yes, their needs, desires, and fundamental rights as a human being are taken into consideration, their contributions are valued and their emotional needs are attended to, plus an inordinate number of similar claims. If the goal at hand is to send forward a purely factual message on an unrelated topic in the most efficient way possible, all of this becomes diplomatic filler which can and should be cut down upon. Honestly, I can’t see why we’d bother with all that unless the priors for the other party being hostile are abnormally high.
(Disclaimer: Again, I’m not suggesting that LW has any chances of ending up so far along the “niceness as community norm” axis. My perception of this community is that it is very balanced in that regard, and has thus reached an optimum (although I will not contradict any experienced member who says otherwise). The main point of this post was to elaborate on the problems of warm-fuzzy-prioritizing communities in general.)
My experience with a forum that has adopted this policy to an extreme in the last couple of years was that whenever local social norms strongly prescribe against any behavior that falls short of active niceness, the result is a suffocating atmosphere accompanied by a severe decline in content quality (because attempts to set higher standards are perceived as “rude” towards the people lowering the standard). (If that matters, the forum was themed around game graphics creations.) “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” was probably their most oft-cited slogan. There were multiple suggestions of basically making it socially taboo to post your stuff in a picture thread without praising recently posted creations, and some posters made it a habit of theirs to make entire posts consisting of thanking 15-20 people individually and telling them how much they loved their creations. The overall group rationality could have benefited from moving away from this extreme of niceness, in my estimation.
Fortunately, LW is in no danger of ending up like that any time soon. In fact, what is most refreshing about discussion going on here is that it’s low in both active niceness and active meanness. There’s this third category, entirely distinct from the other two (in fact, in a way, completely off the spectrum), that is characterized by neutrality, or reluctance to make either positive or negative general assessments of the other users or to express either appreciation or contempt. It is my belief that, overall, it is better to strive for this sort of neutrality than to try to move the community in the direction of either niceness or meanness (particularly when neutrality approximates the initial state).
The dangers of a tendency towards meanness are obvious, so I’m not going to bother with those; my main concern is that excessive pressure towards active niceness makes for a bad user experience for the less naturally empathetic folks (the kind experienced by people required to plaster a big smile on their face for the customers) and shoves completely unrelated things into the discussion, especially things that have the potential to stir up drama.
A lot of what we consider to be polite behavior is really just a series of strategies for assuring the other party that yes, we come in peace; no, we’re not trying to claim higher status; yes, their needs, desires, and fundamental rights as a human being are taken into consideration, their contributions are valued and their emotional needs are attended to, plus an inordinate number of similar claims. If the goal at hand is to send forward a purely factual message on an unrelated topic in the most efficient way possible, all of this becomes diplomatic filler which can and should be cut down upon. Honestly, I can’t see why we’d bother with all that unless the priors for the other party being hostile are abnormally high.
(Disclaimer: Again, I’m not suggesting that LW has any chances of ending up so far along the “niceness as community norm” axis. My perception of this community is that it is very balanced in that regard, and has thus reached an optimum (although I will not contradict any experienced member who says otherwise). The main point of this post was to elaborate on the problems of warm-fuzzy-prioritizing communities in general.)
I agree, most of my comments and the comments I read are talking about the subject, not praising or attacking a person.