Are you perhaps arguing that as long as people don’t have a unified formal definition of niceness, nice behavior is not possible? That would seem unlikely.
Even if everyone has a different threshold… well, everyone has their own upvote and downvote buttons, right? So the worst case is that some comments would get upvoted by some users for being nice enough and downvoted by other users for not being nice enough. Doesn’t seem that horrible.
And over time, people will adjust to the average. And those who will still find this community unbearably rude or unbearably polite will leave.
In real life, this problem is usually solved by creating subcultures; different groups having different norms. Being too rude will get you ejected from the group. Being too polite may make you leave the group voluntarily. Groups that eject too many people end up have few members. Groups that retain too many rude people end up having mostly rude members.
It would be a nice experiment to have a website that would support this “organic” grouping of people; where LW wouldn’t be one group, but rather an ecosystem of groups. But I’m afraid we are unlikely to ever see this happen. So we are stuck with having LW as one group.
In real life, sometimes the ejecting of rude members from the group is done by a local boss (a formal owner of the place, or a high-status member of the group), but sometimes the group splits “organically”—some people stop talking to some other people, and after some time we see that what was originally one group now became two groups. It could be interesting to try modelling this by a web platform. (Mere blocking is not enough, because in the group other people see when X is ignoring Y. Also, avoiding someone in real life is not a binary decision.) But I am not expecting to see this in near future.
I don’t think that LW is one group in any meaningful sense. There’s this website. There’s Slack. There’s IRC. There’s the facebook group. There are local meetups with often have their own mailing list.
There are also various diaspora groups that don’t exist under the LW brand.
Are you perhaps arguing that as long as people don’t have a unified formal definition of niceness, nice behavior is not possible? That would seem unlikely.
I think there are two distinct ways to think of niceness.
One is that being nice is about doing things motivated by positive emotions like compassion and gratitude. The other is that being nice is about conforming to a list of social standards, not picking fights and avoiding confrontation.
I think the first version of niceness is very valuable. On the other hand the second version leads to supressed emotions, passive-aggressiveness and anxiousness. In the first model people hug each other while in the second model people often avoid physical contact.
At the community camp where most people run around with free hug and crockers rule stickers, the first kind of niceness is valued while the second kind isn’t.
I’m in favor of moving this website to having more of the first kind of niceness, but I get weary when you start talking about politness with is mostly associated with the second type of niceness.
Are you perhaps arguing that as long as people don’t have a unified formal definition of niceness, nice behavior is not possible?
No, not at all. I’m arguing that there will be behaviour about which people will not be able to agree whether it’s nice or not.
It would be a nice experiment to have a website that would support this “organic” grouping of people; where LW wouldn’t be one group, but rather an ecosystem of groups. But I’m afraid we are unlikely to ever see this happen.
Why unlikely? There are at many ways to move in this direction, for example the establishment of LW subreddits which will develop their own, possibly different, cultural norms. For another example, killfile equivalents or some sufficiently flexible tagging system will allow people to define their own personal “groupings of people” all of which could coexist on LW.
there will be behaviour about which people will not be able to agree whether it’s nice or not.
And some of them will downvote it, and some of them will upvote it.
There are at many ways to move in this direction, for example the establishment of LW subreddits which will develop their own, possibly different, cultural norms.
I suspect that mere “moves in this direction” will not be enough. May improve things, but not enough.
My reasoning is roughly this:
People have complex social instints, finely tuned by evolution. Sometimes we coordinate in groups by using small signals, such as face expressions, body posture, tone of voice, looking away or otherwise not paying attention when someone is speaking, sitting closer to some people and further away from others, etc. Some of these actions include plausible deniability; for example one can signal boredom with a debate by looking away, but when confronted, they can verbally deny being bored. This mechanism allows different intensity of interaction.
When using a web interface, most of these options are missing; sometimes replaced by crude approximations that fail in some important aspect. (For example, what is the equivalent of “looking away when someone keeps debating stuff you consider super boring”? Merely not reading and not participating in the discussion is too invisible: you don’t have feedback about who is reading and who is skipping which comments. Downvoting feels too aggressive; it is more like shouting “shut up”.) Another important aspect is that in real life most kinds of reactions are simple, so if they require some inconvenient action online, it’s not the same thing.
It is these situations where our instinct offers us a real-life solution, but there is no sufficiently corresponding action in the web forum, that make online discussions develop in many frustrating ways that wouldn’t happen in real life. (Also other dissimilarities, e.g. creating sockpuppets, etc.)
This is why I think it would be an interesting project to develop a web interface that would allows us to act as closely to our instinctive social behavior as possible. The hypothesis is that it would make the discussions much less frustrating for many participants. But crude approximations will not work, precisely because they are crude.
(I am not saying that our social interactions in real life are the best possible mode of communication. There is a space for improvement. I am saying that we are unable to get even there.)
I suspect that mere “moves in this direction” will not be enough.
Not enough for what?
develop a web interface that would allows us to act as closely to our instinctive social behavior as possible.
You seem to want, basically, video conferencing. Or, if you prefer a more future-y way of doing that, telepresence in virtual reality.
The hypothesis is that it would make the discussions much less frustrating for many participants.
You are taking a very one-sided view. Online discussions are not just hobbled and maimed discussions in person—they have disadvantages, but they also have a lot of advantages. They are different and that makes them occupy a different, useful niche in the panoply of ways humans communicate.
Sometimes you want to talk in person, but sometimes you don’t and email or chat are the preferred way.
Are you perhaps arguing that as long as people don’t have a unified formal definition of niceness, nice behavior is not possible? That would seem unlikely.
Even if everyone has a different threshold… well, everyone has their own upvote and downvote buttons, right? So the worst case is that some comments would get upvoted by some users for being nice enough and downvoted by other users for not being nice enough. Doesn’t seem that horrible.
And over time, people will adjust to the average. And those who will still find this community unbearably rude or unbearably polite will leave.
In real life, this problem is usually solved by creating subcultures; different groups having different norms. Being too rude will get you ejected from the group. Being too polite may make you leave the group voluntarily. Groups that eject too many people end up have few members. Groups that retain too many rude people end up having mostly rude members.
It would be a nice experiment to have a website that would support this “organic” grouping of people; where LW wouldn’t be one group, but rather an ecosystem of groups. But I’m afraid we are unlikely to ever see this happen. So we are stuck with having LW as one group.
In real life, sometimes the ejecting of rude members from the group is done by a local boss (a formal owner of the place, or a high-status member of the group), but sometimes the group splits “organically”—some people stop talking to some other people, and after some time we see that what was originally one group now became two groups. It could be interesting to try modelling this by a web platform. (Mere blocking is not enough, because in the group other people see when X is ignoring Y. Also, avoiding someone in real life is not a binary decision.) But I am not expecting to see this in near future.
I don’t think that LW is one group in any meaningful sense. There’s this website. There’s Slack. There’s IRC. There’s the facebook group. There are local meetups with often have their own mailing list.
There are also various diaspora groups that don’t exist under the LW brand.
I think there are two distinct ways to think of niceness.
One is that being nice is about doing things motivated by positive emotions like compassion and gratitude. The other is that being nice is about conforming to a list of social standards, not picking fights and avoiding confrontation.
I think the first version of niceness is very valuable. On the other hand the second version leads to supressed emotions, passive-aggressiveness and anxiousness. In the first model people hug each other while in the second model people often avoid physical contact.
At the community camp where most people run around with free hug and crockers rule stickers, the first kind of niceness is valued while the second kind isn’t.
I’m in favor of moving this website to having more of the first kind of niceness, but I get weary when you start talking about politness with is mostly associated with the second type of niceness.
This is perfectly true. However, our current ways of communication also lead to supressed emotions, passive-aggressiveness and anxiousness.
I don’t think we have much passive-aggressiveness on LW. People here are usually pretty direct.
No, not at all. I’m arguing that there will be behaviour about which people will not be able to agree whether it’s nice or not.
Why unlikely? There are at many ways to move in this direction, for example the establishment of LW subreddits which will develop their own, possibly different, cultural norms. For another example, killfile equivalents or some sufficiently flexible tagging system will allow people to define their own personal “groupings of people” all of which could coexist on LW.
And some of them will downvote it, and some of them will upvote it.
I suspect that mere “moves in this direction” will not be enough. May improve things, but not enough.
My reasoning is roughly this:
People have complex social instints, finely tuned by evolution. Sometimes we coordinate in groups by using small signals, such as face expressions, body posture, tone of voice, looking away or otherwise not paying attention when someone is speaking, sitting closer to some people and further away from others, etc. Some of these actions include plausible deniability; for example one can signal boredom with a debate by looking away, but when confronted, they can verbally deny being bored. This mechanism allows different intensity of interaction.
When using a web interface, most of these options are missing; sometimes replaced by crude approximations that fail in some important aspect. (For example, what is the equivalent of “looking away when someone keeps debating stuff you consider super boring”? Merely not reading and not participating in the discussion is too invisible: you don’t have feedback about who is reading and who is skipping which comments. Downvoting feels too aggressive; it is more like shouting “shut up”.) Another important aspect is that in real life most kinds of reactions are simple, so if they require some inconvenient action online, it’s not the same thing.
It is these situations where our instinct offers us a real-life solution, but there is no sufficiently corresponding action in the web forum, that make online discussions develop in many frustrating ways that wouldn’t happen in real life. (Also other dissimilarities, e.g. creating sockpuppets, etc.)
This is why I think it would be an interesting project to develop a web interface that would allows us to act as closely to our instinctive social behavior as possible. The hypothesis is that it would make the discussions much less frustrating for many participants. But crude approximations will not work, precisely because they are crude.
(I am not saying that our social interactions in real life are the best possible mode of communication. There is a space for improvement. I am saying that we are unable to get even there.)
Not enough for what?
You seem to want, basically, video conferencing. Or, if you prefer a more future-y way of doing that, telepresence in virtual reality.
You are taking a very one-sided view. Online discussions are not just hobbled and maimed discussions in person—they have disadvantages, but they also have a lot of advantages. They are different and that makes them occupy a different, useful niche in the panoply of ways humans communicate.
Sometimes you want to talk in person, but sometimes you don’t and email or chat are the preferred way.
Because we don’t want to go there.