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.
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.
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.