It’s possible that Alan’s friends do not believe either his sincerity in declaring Crocker’s rules, or his ability to abide by his declaration. This is a problem for them because they are Alan’s friends; it would be less of a problem for them if they were commenters on Alan’s weblog who do not otherwise have a relationship with Alan.
It’s possible that you’re not really disagreeing with jmmcd, but rather interpret “politeness” differently. Compare:
a) Hey, this is pretty good! I think the writing could be slightly improved in this sentence, and this metaphor is perhaps a but unwieldy. Great work so far, but keep tweaking—there’s always room for improvement!
b) Sorry, I didn’t like it. It’s evident that you put a lot of work into it, but I just couldn’t connect to this metaphor, and this sentence was hard to understand.
c) It’s rather badly written. The argument’s a mess and very hard to follow. The metaphor is bogus because of this and that reason, and this sentence, for example, makes no sense. Nothing short of a complete rewrite is likely to help.
d) It’s the stupidest piece of trash I’ve seen this week, and yes, that includes 4chan. You can’t put together a coherent thought to save your life, and your entire line of argument somehow manages to be both incredibly banal and refreshingly novel in its idiocy. Quit writing essays and look for something to do where you can hope to one day actually contribute meaningfully.
The same essay could elicit any of a)-d) from different people, and Crocker’s Rules allow all of them. However, different people will see c) differently, as either polite enough (given a Crocker’s declaration), or too impolite. Someone who won’t give up politeness even given Crocker’s may really be saying that they’ll never go for d), but c) is fine with them. I do not see such a scenario as harmful to Alan.
Perhaps we need a numerical scale of politeness, from +10 to −10. Up at +10 the speaker sometimes fails at being a good friend by not speaking up when they should, for fear of being rude, and other times fails at speaking up because their necessary disapproval is phrased in such excruciating polite terms that it is mistaken for approval. Meanwhile −10 is the kind of vulgar abuse whose real aim is to sever a social connection that is no longer desired. Zero is an all-business neutrality, poised between being cold and brusque (at −1) and respectful of the listener’s lack of time and need for boiled-down, to-the-point critique (at +1)
If “Hey, this is pretty good!” is a lie (the speaker thinks it pretty bad, but is trying hard to be polite) then a = +8
b = +4
If “It’s badly written.” is understood as including some actionable hints on how to improve the writing c = +2. If negative judgments lack the kind of explanations that point to how to improve the writing c = −2
d = −9
My thought is that when some-one declares Crocker’s rules the outcome that they are hoping for is that politeness gets dialed down from +9 to +3. I think it would be rude to ignore this and carry on at +9.
Perhaps when jmmcd writes “I’m still going to attempt to be polite.” his main point is that it is important to keep ones sharp tongue in its scabbard and not go negative. And since it is easy to come across as 3 points less polite than one intends his practical advice is to respond to Crocker’s rules but still stay above +3, to avoid accidentally going negative.
It’s worth noting explicitly here that the zero-point isn’t global.
That is, if you are operating at +10 politeness relative to my baseline as a listener, I may be unable to figure out that your “excruciating polite” disapproval is actually disapproval; but the exact same behavior might communicate perfectly clearly to someone else whose baseline is 8 (relative to whom you would be operating at +2) and might be so rude as to inhibit clear communication for Sam down the street, whose baseline is 17 (relative to whom you would be operating at −7).
Two remarks re: your scenario.
It’s possible that Alan’s friends do not believe either his sincerity in declaring Crocker’s rules, or his ability to abide by his declaration. This is a problem for them because they are Alan’s friends; it would be less of a problem for them if they were commenters on Alan’s weblog who do not otherwise have a relationship with Alan.
It’s possible that you’re not really disagreeing with jmmcd, but rather interpret “politeness” differently. Compare:
a) Hey, this is pretty good! I think the writing could be slightly improved in this sentence, and this metaphor is perhaps a but unwieldy. Great work so far, but keep tweaking—there’s always room for improvement!
b) Sorry, I didn’t like it. It’s evident that you put a lot of work into it, but I just couldn’t connect to this metaphor, and this sentence was hard to understand.
c) It’s rather badly written. The argument’s a mess and very hard to follow. The metaphor is bogus because of this and that reason, and this sentence, for example, makes no sense. Nothing short of a complete rewrite is likely to help.
d) It’s the stupidest piece of trash I’ve seen this week, and yes, that includes 4chan. You can’t put together a coherent thought to save your life, and your entire line of argument somehow manages to be both incredibly banal and refreshingly novel in its idiocy. Quit writing essays and look for something to do where you can hope to one day actually contribute meaningfully.
The same essay could elicit any of a)-d) from different people, and Crocker’s Rules allow all of them. However, different people will see c) differently, as either polite enough (given a Crocker’s declaration), or too impolite. Someone who won’t give up politeness even given Crocker’s may really be saying that they’ll never go for d), but c) is fine with them. I do not see such a scenario as harmful to Alan.
Perhaps we need a numerical scale of politeness, from +10 to −10. Up at +10 the speaker sometimes fails at being a good friend by not speaking up when they should, for fear of being rude, and other times fails at speaking up because their necessary disapproval is phrased in such excruciating polite terms that it is mistaken for approval. Meanwhile −10 is the kind of vulgar abuse whose real aim is to sever a social connection that is no longer desired. Zero is an all-business neutrality, poised between being cold and brusque (at −1) and respectful of the listener’s lack of time and need for boiled-down, to-the-point critique (at +1)
If “Hey, this is pretty good!” is a lie (the speaker thinks it pretty bad, but is trying hard to be polite) then a = +8
b = +4
If “It’s badly written.” is understood as including some actionable hints on how to improve the writing c = +2. If negative judgments lack the kind of explanations that point to how to improve the writing c = −2
d = −9
My thought is that when some-one declares Crocker’s rules the outcome that they are hoping for is that politeness gets dialed down from +9 to +3. I think it would be rude to ignore this and carry on at +9.
Perhaps when jmmcd writes “I’m still going to attempt to be polite.” his main point is that it is important to keep ones sharp tongue in its scabbard and not go negative. And since it is easy to come across as 3 points less polite than one intends his practical advice is to respond to Crocker’s rules but still stay above +3, to avoid accidentally going negative.
We might be in complete agreement.
It’s worth noting explicitly here that the zero-point isn’t global.
That is, if you are operating at +10 politeness relative to my baseline as a listener, I may be unable to figure out that your “excruciating polite” disapproval is actually disapproval; but the exact same behavior might communicate perfectly clearly to someone else whose baseline is 8 (relative to whom you would be operating at +2) and might be so rude as to inhibit clear communication for Sam down the street, whose baseline is 17 (relative to whom you would be operating at −7).