Should you maybe just pretend that every conversation is good faith anyways?
Some communities have “assume good faith” as a rule/guideline and that seems to often work. I think if someone is defensive/triggered, responding in kind tends to make the person dig in more. If you instead assume the person is engaging in good faith, that may draw them into a mode of good faith engagement even if that wasn’t their original posture.
Some communities have “assume good faith” as a rule/guideline and that seems to often work.
What happens if someone actually does not act in good faith?
I think that on Wikipedia you win this game by being the first one who starts explicitly reminding your opponent of the need to assume good faith. (It is important to only remind them. Never to accuse of anything, because an accusation would itself be a violation of assuming good faith.) If you then keep reminding them of the need to assume good faith in every reply, at some moment your opponent will probably snap and get banned. (The beauty of this strategy is that pointing it out would be a huge violation of assuming good faith. Even if it is already obvious to most smart people what’s happening.)
I’m not sure, but at least a few of those communities are pretty actively moderated, so a moderator might step in if someone seemed to be abusing the rule.
I think you want a rule or strong informal standard that participants try to engage in good faith if you’re asking people to assume it. I think LW has that standard and that’s why it’s far better than any other public forum I know of.
Some communities have “assume good faith” as a rule/guideline and that seems to often work. I think if someone is defensive/triggered, responding in kind tends to make the person dig in more. If you instead assume the person is engaging in good faith, that may draw them into a mode of good faith engagement even if that wasn’t their original posture.
Though this is potentially exploitable if the other person never does shift, so you need to make sure you don’t only stay in good-faith mode.
What happens if someone actually does not act in good faith?
I think that on Wikipedia you win this game by being the first one who starts explicitly reminding your opponent of the need to assume good faith. (It is important to only remind them. Never to accuse of anything, because an accusation would itself be a violation of assuming good faith.) If you then keep reminding them of the need to assume good faith in every reply, at some moment your opponent will probably snap and get banned. (The beauty of this strategy is that pointing it out would be a huge violation of assuming good faith. Even if it is already obvious to most smart people what’s happening.)
I’m not sure, but at least a few of those communities are pretty actively moderated, so a moderator might step in if someone seemed to be abusing the rule.
I think you want a rule or strong informal standard that participants try to engage in good faith if you’re asking people to assume it. I think LW has that standard and that’s why it’s far better than any other public forum I know of.