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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3535 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm focusing on this part because it's the part which matters. Reasonable people may disagree on whether the initial warning was right, and if FNE had chosen to politely argue that she wasn't in the wrong then all would be well. I think that the initial warning was a bit harsh, though I think "indefensible" is far too strong a claim. But the way you take up your cause with the mods matters a great deal, and nobody gets to just go "nah I'm not listening to you". That's not ok.

nobody gets to just go "nah I'm not listening to you". That's not ok.

But why though?

Neither "backtalking to a mod" nor "statement of intent to commit another rules violation in the future" are explicitly forbidden by the current rules. If one or both of those are not allowed, then the rules page should be amended to make that explicit.

Dude it's common sense. It doesn't need to be explicitly spelled out in the rules, any more than the rules explicitly enumerate every single word you aren't allowed to use to describe fellow posters.

No need to do that. It seems relatively obvious to block someone who openly announces in reply to warning that they will not change behaviour at all.

"Don't be egregiously obnoxious" covers both, I think.

No matter how careful we are, someone's going to come up with a way to be annoying, in a way that technically follows the rules. If we were to write a rule saying "don't do this thing", they would bend the rule to be as broad as possible, then complain that we're not enforcing it properly.

The goal of this community is not, however, slavish adherence to rules. It's discussion. And if this means we need to use our human judgement to make calls, then that's exactly what we will do.

There are people who think that every rule should be absolutely objective, to the point where our job could be done by a robot. I will point out that no legal system in history has ever worked this way and that if you think we can do better than the entire human race working on it for five thousand years, then I invite you to submit a proposal on how it will work.

I understand that that rule is supposed to be an elastic clause, and I agree on the practical necessity of having an elastic clause. But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.

In this case we have identified something that is an explicit rule and can be phrased relatively unambiguously - either "don't backtalk to a mod" or "don't state your intent to violate the rules", whatever formulation you prefer - so why not just add it as an explicit rule?

(I also simply disagree that either of FNE's posts in that thread were egregiously obnoxious, although I think her first post that got the initial warning was an unambiguous violation of the rules on courtesy and low-effort posting.)

But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.

I'd agree with that. But suppose we want to allow people to respond to warnings, even to push back on them and explain why they think they're in the right, but we don't want people to outright defy warnings.

"respond", "pushback", and "defy" are all subjective terms. If we nail down a definition for them, we can just recapitulate this conversation again, about whether or not people were "defiant", or merely "pushing back".

If a mod says "you are breaking the rules, stop it," and the reply is "You aren't the boss of me, I'm gonna keep doing it", I don't think most people are surprised if the response is "okay, we'll cut to the chase and just give you a ban then." That doesn't seem to require a lot of elasticity. We give warnings because we want people to modify their behavior without having to ban them. We give limited-duration bans because we want people to modify their behavior without perma-banning them. If someone straight-up tells us that they aren't modifying their behavior based on the current response, escalation seems like a reasonable alternative.

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