The problem is that these communities are not an utopia of civil adult conversation. You’ll get everything from kids to kids-in-adult-bodies to Internet trolls… even the occasional arrogant, asocial programmer. “Can’t we all just be friends” doesn’t work well as a site design strategy 
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To be clear: the use of “hate speech” in the CoC isn’t intended to include “disagreeing with someone else’s worldview”. I also disagree that it’s come to mean that, but that’s beside the point. Clarifying it is no bad thing.
Building on @luap42, @cellio, and @Scortchi’s suggestions now: if you look up the dictionary definition of “hate speech”, it comes back as something along the lines of “abusive or threatening speech expressing prejudice against a group”. What if we used something like “[…not okay:] • threatening, abusive, or prejudicial treatment of a person or group”?
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Or worse: “the fact that you do it that way shows you really are stupid.”
To the point, though, that’s also not constructive or prescriptive criticism – which itself might be frustrating and pointless.
It’s probably also true that some people won’t partake of or receive an insult – except possibly, “it appears that you’re trying to insult me” – and at least to that extent whether you feel insulted is partially up to you and your training. As a moderator I’m somehow expected to care about this kind of topic nevertheless.
I actually wrote a new FAQ topic recently about how to comment without conflict. My previous advice included avoiding the word “you” (to focus on the content instead, just as celtschk suggested above here), my new advice included posting one-and-only-one omment (to avoid extended argument), and possibly phrasing the comment as a question e.g. “what did you mean by X?” or “what about Y”?
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I find that wording to be much more preferable as its meaning is much less likely to be abused by being construed to mean differences of worldview.
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That’s a good choice. Would you mind/consider putting it into a new question for more visibility?
I don’t want to have users getting the impression of repeatedly changing the CoC without feedback (there was a lot here, but some might not see it!). 
Some of the comments in this thread are scaring me a little, not going to lie.
Sorry to have to write this while you’re already scared, but: That wasn’t helpful in that form.
If you would at least say what you are scared about, it would be community feedback that people could work with. I personally only see a civil discourse here and it’s not obvious to me what would be scary to you.
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I find this post (for example) “scary” – including the fact that it has 5 “likes” – though of course I’m not genuinely scared and see it’s an opinion.
And as a long-time netizen that kind of doctrine isn’t at all news to me, see e.g. http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
This whole topic probably discusses example of less-than-welcoming behaviour – and includes perspectives from former moderators, who have hopefully if they’ve been doing their jobs right seen (and deleted) more and worse or more extreme examples of that than any regular or casual users have.
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You can’t just speak for @heather, though?
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What? No I don’t know for sure what heather was saying, nor read what they’ve ever posted previously. What I posted was me saying that.
Was what I wrote incomprehensible? Because I didn’t understand the two replies to it, i.e. yours and Dustytrash’s.
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Well, heather said some posts are scaring her.
However, she didn’t say what was scary, so I asked.
Then you post next and say what you find scary.
With nothing else here mentioning scary, do you see how your post can be interpreted as trying to answer my question?
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Ok I didn’t understand the grammar, i.e. “you can’t just speak though” – now I guess I do.
Re: “hate speech”: My views are exactly in line with Monica’s here, and I would strongly suggest getting rid of that phrase. You have a very nice minimal code of conduct there. I doubt there is anything that you have in mind as falling under “hate speech” that wouldn’t already run afoul of one or more of “rudeness, harassment, or ad hominem attacks”. And again, different communities can and should offer more specific and relevant addenda to that code of conduct. The minimal code of conduct seems like a perfect fit for technical topics (physics, math, engineering, computing, etc), but a community devoted to exploring genocidal ideologies might need a much more detailed code.
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The problem behind SE being unfriendly is that the COMPANY is too friendly. They allow ANYONE in without any requirements at all. You can register an account and ask a bad question within a minute. Then it becomes up to us users to educate them. And we need to to educate about 99% of the users. Without us who educates these users, everything would collapse. But for obvious reasons, it becomes extremely annoying to educate people the same way over and over again when they have not even done a single bit of research on their own. After a while, we who do that work don’t have the energy to be extremely kind and polite.
I understand that it’s not a good thing calling people lazy all the time. But many people deserves it.
I think that barrier of posting your first question should be much higher. Suggestions:
- You cannot post a question within 24h of registration. Will prevent people from registering just to get a quick answer. During these 24h, you have time to do background research and learn the rules.
- Before posting your first question, you should have some kind of mandatory quiz that teaches you how to ask a good question.
- Your first question (or maybe the first few) should be reviewed by peers before it’s published.
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So simply provide a way to get rid of the bad question instantly. They’ll not get an answer even if one is posted, if the whole post gets deleted for not living up to the site’s standards. This will also discourage people from writing answers to no-effort questions.
Being able to get an answer quick is useful though. Suppose you are an established user, but for one reason or the other you aren’t able to access your account from where you are currently. You know how to ask a good question but still can’t, because of an artificial 24h restriction.
Wizards, tests etc before posting are good and definitely something to explore, even though SO’s wizard only improved quality marginally (but it still improved it some).
Peer review by questions before they hit the site is something I’ve been preaching for at SO for many years. It sounds like a great effort, but it isn’t compared to 5 people doing close votes+reviews, then lots of people doing various low quality/edit/reopen reviews after that. Stopping the crap before it hits the site is the ideal.
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If it was, we literally would not be here right now.
They allow ANYONE in without any requirements at all.
Oh, that kind of friendly. So why is that a bad thing?
You can register an account and ask a bad question within a minute.
Yes, having few barriers to the asking of questions to be answered is important to a Q&A site.
Then it becomes up to us users to educate them. And we need to to educate about 99% of the users.
Why?
Without us who educates these users, everything would collapse.
Why?
But for obvious reasons,
Hmm? I don’t see any obvious reasons here.
it becomes extremely annoying to educate people the same way over and over again when they have not even done a single bit of research on their own.
That’s because most people on SE aren’t scholars. They’re not coming to the site “to do research”; they’re coming because they have a specific question that needs answered, and Google tells them this is the place to get answers to questions. And if our site fails to acknowledge that – if the only way it can work is by requiring users to fundamentally rewrite human nature – then it will fail.
There’s no question that Joel Spolsky understood that; just read his blog and see how many times he talks about interacting with users and making your product easy and intuitive to use, and that if the user isn’t able to pick it up because they haven’t read the manual (or in this case, done the research), it’s not their fault for not reading the manual; it’s your fault as a developer for having functionality that isn’t discoverable without recourse to a manual you know nobody is actually going to read anyway. That’s the mindset of the man who built SE, and it’s become incredibly successful despite the perennial rantings of elitist users about “low quality.”
A better perspective would be to acknowledge that multiple different types of users exist, and build a system that can work with that reality rather than struggle against it.
Then we never get new users, because that’s how everyone starts. Literally everyone. Can anyone here honestly say that their first post to SE was anything other than a desire “to get a quick answer” to some question? If you shut bar the only gate by which people come in, no one will come in.
- Before posting your first question, you should have some kind of mandatory quiz that teaches you how to ask a good question.
Worst case scenario here is, again, no one comes in. Best case scenario, if we somehow, in spite of such an overtly newbie-hostile system, build something that’s so awesome that everyone wants to use it anyway, is that sites spring up that give away the answers to the quiz, and anyone who Googles how to pass the quiz will immediately know how to do so, with no effort or learning required on their part. (And we’re still turning away the folks who don’t care to do even that much.)
People who just want a quick answer to a quick question aren’t just important to the community, they are the community. Every last one of us started out that way, and then over time grew to understand the community norms. That’s the way it works, and almost certainly the only way it ever can work. Trying to put the cart before the horse will strangle our fledgling community in the cradle.
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So simply provide a way to get rid of the bad question instantly.
Getting rid of bad questions quickly is paramount. Not only does SO encourage bad questions. They also cause arguments between more established users which often results in downvoting. Not because the answer is bad, but because the question should not have been answered. Whether this is good or bad can debated, but the very fact that it is being used is evidence of a toxic culture.
Being able to get an answer quick is useful though.
While what you’re saying is true, I think it’s chasing corner cases that does not really matter. How about the situation where you need an answer, but you only have access to the Lynx web browser? Do we need to adapt to that too? I don’t mean to completely shoot this down, but for me it sounds quite rare.
Nice to see you here btw. You have done a great job at SO.
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What evidence? Again, you’re assuming some extremely specific things and giving nothing to back them up. It could just as easily be said, by assuming some different axioms and providing exactly as much evidence to back them up as you’ve given here, that the existence of close votes at all is evidence of a toxic culture. (I’m not actually making that claim; just pointing out that different points of view can and do exist, and you can’t go around asserting your own as an article of faith without any support for it.)
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I don’t think this is something that needs overthinking - unlike SE who cut off their nose to spite their face.
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It can be a bad thing if you just open the gates, but do nothing to prepare people for what will come.
Yes I agree, and I will not say that I have a perfect solution. Barriers comes with both pros and cons. Cons are fewer questions. Pros are better questions on average.
Why?
Because most new users have no idea how to write new questions and breaks many of the rules.
You have some really good points here. I will not deny that. Will need to think about it for a while if I should address this.
I can honestly say that I did not join for that reason. My first answer is 3 months before my first question, and I wrote about 30-40 answers before posting my first question. However, I’m aware that I’m the exception in that regard.
Yes, I do see the potential problems. But just to compare, I’m discussing a lot on another forum that has THREE days before you can make your first post, and that actually works well there. Granted, it’s not a Q/A, it’s a discussion forum.
One drawback on having it so easy to ask as it is on SO is that some punishments they have is virtually completely pointless. For instance, if you get too many downvotes, you are prevented from asking questions until you have improved your reputation. I don’t remember the exact details on how it works, but my argument boils down to that if that happens you can simply just create a new account.
What evidence? Again, you’re assuming some extremely specific things and giving nothing to back them up.
Are you asking for evidence that some users are voting down good answers, because they think that the question does not deserve to be answered? Well, I have seen that very motivation for downvotes in comments. However, it would be hard to find an example since such comments usually gets deleted. If you ask me to motivate that these kind of downvotes are evidence of a toxic culture, then my answer is that it is my opinion.
And I can admit that some of my comments are influenced by my frustration of SO. Thank you for challenging my thoughts.
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