@ArtOfCode, I share this concern. I’ve been uncomfortable with the phrase for a while because of how it’s been weaponized in broader society, but in a spirit of compromise I didn’t push back against it earlier (I pushed back on plenty of other stuff). But I think we should reconsider using what for many is a code word, and instead say what we mean. We already bar rudeness, ad hominem attacks, and harassment; what “hate” isn’t covered by that? Provocation or incitement? If so, say that. (I’d call it rude or harassment, myself.)
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Just to say I’ve seen this. I’ll get some thoughts together and respond at a later date.
I am not sure, whether that solves these problems/concerns, but after reading through the dictionary definition and the current CoC again, it seems to me, that we have the aspect of “verbally” harming a person/group already included. Hence we’d be left with:
Not okay are …
- threatening to physically or verbally harm a person or a group
I think this is more precise than “hate-speech”, but covers the same original intent (in combination with everything else of the CoC). What do you think?
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Or, more succinctly (and following the pattern of the rest of the list):
- threats against a person or group
Threats are threats. We don’t need to specify types, and in doing so leave open a door for arguments about X not being verbal or physical but something else.
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I’m not a huge fan of including hate speech, but I don’t understand why it’s that bad?
Is this meant in a “technically correct” way? As in rule lawyering
(Not to imply you’re doing that, but that that is one type of troll we will have to deal with?)
I would say sure, it “invalidates the all backgrounds statement” - for example, that “god hates fags” church would be excluded by that. Other groups, e.g. neo-nazis, also would be excluded. So I’d rather say the “all backgrounds statement” is not an ideal goal?
However, I also don’t see how that excludes “a large chunk of the world” - aren’t the biggest religions pretty good when it comes to “hate speech” (unless you look at the fringe groups)?
I’ll put in my 0.02 now:
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“rude” seems like almost the wrong thing to put in a CoC. Many people are “rude” not intending to be hateful or harmful, but simply because their language is a bit “rough” (I am not talking about 4-letter words, just “not as nice”) or they get a little upset about something. “Rude” happens. A lot. A pattern of “rude”, consistent rude, rude against very specific people while “nice” to everyone else - all of those could raise it to what I would consider “problem” levels. But just “rude” - that is, unfortunately, the way some people are without intending to cause problems, especially when direct interaction is boiled down to “just speech” which then goes down to “just text on a page” - a lot gets lost in the process and some people just can’t communicate as well as might be hoped.
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“hate speech” vs. “threats”. Threats are, of course, a definite “no”. The problem with “hate speech”, as with so many other buzzwords, is that gets misused, weaponized, etc. - i.e., used for things far beyond the way it was originally used. And yet, the concern is, I think very real. No single word is “bad” - start praising Nazi Germany and we will all (well, nothing is “all”, but hopefully nearly all) will agree that is inappropriate here. Yet many of us joke about the “soup Nazi” on Seinfeld. Plus a History Q&A could talk about Nazis in a serious discussion. All that being said, I think most people would understand that there is a line when talking about Nazis that if crossed in a certain direction would be arguably “hate speech” of the type we are trying to keep out of this system. Does it qualify as “hate speech” if it doesn’t actually contain a “threat”? Again, I think most people could see situations where that would indeed be the case.
I don’t know the answer. The problem is that “be nice” may truly be too vague. Putting a certain amount of specifics in a policy helps.
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And the first response to this sort of thing, when it crosses a line, is gentle correction. We should presume good intent and – especially in a worldwide, multi-cultural community – assume that there might be some gap between what person X says and what person Y hears.
If there’s a systematic problem, stronger action might be needed. We should try our best to resolve things using the smallest action that achieves that goal, but if dialogue and gentle guidance aren’t doing the job and we have to temporarily restrict someone, so be it. “That’s just how so-and-so is; he doesn’t mean anything by it” is not an acceptable excuse for rudeness.
It doesn’t have to be restricted as hate speech; it’s already restricted as rude and/or harassment. Continuing to espouse a position to be provocative, after being told by others that it’s not ok, violates our code already. We do not need to spell out every detail. I agree that adding “threats” explicitly is helpful, both to warn the would-be abusers and reassure the potential targets.
The current code is already more than “be nice”. It adds specific categories. I will strenuously object to any attempt to make an exhaustive list of all possible violations. That sort of thing is way too easy to abuse and weaponize. In a way, it’s what got us here. We have to be willing to invoke, apply, and heed human judgement (with transparency).
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“Hate speech” to many people today, includes even conveying a dissenting opinion on a delicate subject. Using your example, yes, the Westboro type of conveying opinion would be and should be banned as inciteful, but so would, say, your run of the mill Catholic, Jew, Christian, or Muslim simply stating that in their faith something is a sin in the most careful manner. Even that is considered “hate speech” by irrational people nowadays. (See SE’s new CoC debacle as a quick example). That may or may not be reflected in a random dictionary entry, but that’s how it’s used and weaponized today by nearly every major tech company. Stating civil discourse is banned and hateful is very unwelcoming. If you aren’t aware, there’s still a lot of Catholics, Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the world and this demonizes all of them.
Now, as a matter of practice, you could say religion is off-topic, but that doesn’t avoid the inevitable clash of worldviews. Take pronouns, for instance. One may argue that’s not a religious subject, but that falls apart pretty quickly when you put a Christian and a GLAAD member in a room and ask them to converse. Instead of picking sides, our wording should, and mostly is except for the hate speech clause, focused on how to have those two converse without violating either’s worldview. It can be done and should be done, otherwise people will only talk within their sects, and that does no one good.
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And in fact, we can’t say that. We could on specific communities (no reason for religion in a community focused on a programming language), but we will likely have communities focused on specific religions, where by definition religion is on-topic (and everything else is off-topic!). In fact, the issue here isn’t even what is or is not on-topic - e.g., typically “Shopping questions” are off-topic in many SE communities (for good reasons within certain contexts), but we might have a specific community where “shopping questions” are actually encouraged. End result: “on topic” vs. “off topic” is almost always a community-specific thing.
What we are discussing here is not so much “off topic” as “inappropriate conduct”. They are sometimes the same but very often not - you can be “off topic” but totally nice and then your individual question will be closed, but you as a member will be free to continue to participate. It is only if you discuss things, whether on-topic or off-topic, in a “bad” way. Discussing the history of Nazi Germany in the proper context is absolutely fine. Using that as a springboard to advocate for such activities today is not.
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Agreed. My point for that example is that some may consider something as basic as pronouns as non-religious, but it most certainly can be if we are asking two people of differing backgrounds to communicate. (how they address each other). We should strive to find a way to guide communication without requiring either person to go against their beliefs, and without being insulting, so that they can have the civil conversation they want to have on subject X instead of getting hung up on initial engagement.
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Absolutely. While the powers-that-be at SE may disagree, there are ways to communicate politely with other people without using any gender-specific pronouns. That is a useful skill not just for people trying to avoid gender situations that they are uncomfortable with but also those where they simply have no idea. I won’t refer to you as “he” or “she” because I have no idea what “BuckyBadger” is supposed to be. And my first name is (traditionally at least) totally unambiguous (two famous men named Manasseh in the “Old” Testament), but every so often I get something addressed to “Ms. Manasseh Katz” from someone who is trying to be polite but is totally unfamiliar with my name and guesses wrong - I chuckle at it and get on with life.
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I’ve been thinking about the nature of “unwelcoming” behavior on Stack Exchange.
For some time I have thought that some of the complaints of that kind are simply disagreements about what those sites are suppose to be, some are comments about how the sites could be what they are but better, and some are about ways the network is failing to police itself.
My notion being that we need to separate those issue which must be fixed from those that must not be “fixed” (and those that could use fixing but maybe it isn’t highest priority).
The interim results of my musing are too lengthy for dropping into this thread wholesale, so I slapped them onto my new (that is, post-Stack Exchange) blog. Frankly this is all opinion, but I like to think it is somewhat informed by my long participation on Stack Exchange.
Short-short version:
- Q&A requires quality and topicality judgements about content.
- “Fun” pollutes technical Q&A, but may be appropriate in other contexts that can still use the same engine.
- Allowing (or disallowing) rank-beginner level content is a choice that affect the nature of a Q&A site but doesn’t switch “success” on or off.
- The system that notifies users of quality-control/moderation actions taken on their posts needs to be as accurate and helpful as possible.
- Support for welcoming-ness and cultural-sensitivity in human-to-human interactions about quality-control/moderation actions would help.
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I don’t want to spam you folks but look at the Moderation policies for Questions which the community came up with on the meta-site for Buddhism.SE
As a new moderator (but an experienced SE user) there when the site was new, I was getting ready to implement the usual SE policies – but the community said “no, that’s not what we want” and that FAQ topic is the result.
Many types of question (that would usually be closed on an SE site) are permitted, even including:
- Too broad
- Unclear what you’re asking
- Too theoretical
- Too practical
- Too controversial
- Too obscure
- Too easy
There are still several types of question that aren’t allowed, including several varieties of trolling.
Anyway. Some of the “unwelcomingness” of SE might be baked into its close reasons. That’s not a matter of the software design, but think twice about the mind-set or preconceptions, expectations, which you might be bringing from SE.
Even then you can’t please everyone, the fact that the site welcomes beginner-level (even pre-beginner) topics might make it disappointing to someone who hoped it would be used especially for expert-level Q&A.
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I think the core of the problem is that the bad/disallowed question doesn’t just get silently deleted as I described here: How to introduce newcomers successfully? - #28 by Lundin But instead that debate and critique is allowed to be published live in public for all the world to see. No matter the actual rules of the specific community. If you use public shaming as part of the moderator policies, then people get defensive and aggressive as a result.
So it isn’t about what a specific community allows, as much as how you present feedback to someone posting a question which is bad/not allowed.
As for the case of SO specifically, there was also the problem with veteran vs new user expectations. Old users signed up for programming Q&A for professionals and enthusiasts. New users signed up for “teach me programmming”. This situation was caused by the incompetence of SO upper management. Once Atwood left, Spolsky tried to slowly and silently change the scope of the site (to increase traffic/income), without getting the old community on board with that idea. These kind of problems hopefully won’t exist here, as long as there’s some sort of democratic community behind the design decisions.
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(Devil’s advocate)
Interpreting something personally is an issue of the user, not something anyone else can control. The critic can sugar coat it if he wishes, but it’s ultimately up to the receiver to choose a response. If someone takes critique personally, that is a personal problem, and the receiver is not ready for a civil adult conversation.
Imagine how impossible a site like code review would be with someone that takes critique personally.
(End Devil’s advocate)
Should critique be unnecessarily abrasive? Of course not, and we should avoid doing that as much as possible without altering the underlying message or fact that’s being conveyed.
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I have to say threatening to verbally harm someone, or even just verbally harming is quite baffling to me, whereas I’ve some notion of what hate speech is getting at.
“Threatening to verbally harm someone” wasn’t my suggestion. My suggestion was to replace that with “threats against a person or group”.
The problem with “hate speech” is that it means different things to different people. For some, something is only hate speech if it’s a direct attack or incitement. For others, it’s “hate speech” if you accidentally use a wrong word once. More fundamentally, “hate” ascribes intent but we usually don’t know someone’s intent. Instead, focus on the behavior – personal attacks, threats, and rudeness are unwelcome on our platform, and this list is indicative not exhaustive because we have moderators who will apply human judgement.
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I’m not sure I agree with this. While you of course cannot absolutely exclude someone taking things personally, you can decrease the likelyhood dramatically by formulating carefully.
For example, the sentence “you are wrong” is far more likely to be taken personally than “this is wrong”. After all, the first sentence has the “you” right in the sentence! Indeed, I guess minimizing the amount of “you” already goes a large way in preventing people from taking things personally (of course within reason; sometimes the “you” simply cannot be avoided, as in “what have you tried?”).
In that generality, I disagree with this as well. There are certainly expressions of critique that cannot reasonably be taken anything than personally. For example, “the way you do it is outright stupid” is a very clear attack at the addressed person, and in that case, the receiver is absolutely entitled to take that personally, and it is the sender who is not ready for a civil conversation.
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Agreed. Especially your use of “likely” and not “will.” Even this shows it is still ultimately up to the receiver.
I disagree with that. The phrase is clearly “the way you do it” and not “you.” I see that difference, but I suppose not everyone pays as much attention to the actual words before reacting. It’s still unnecessarily abrasive, though, and should be reworded to avoid being an unclear negative. Is it stupid because it’s inefficient? Say inefficient instead of stupid.
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Sorry, I missed that you were quoting @luap42. “Threats against a person or group” is better. I don’t think it would hurt, & might reassure some, if “abuse” were included— “threats against or abuse directed at a person or group", perhaps—even if it would arguably be redundant given the proscription of rudeness.
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