It turns out that cranks and hucksters are indistinguishable from confused and vulnerable newbies. And protectors of conversational norms are indistinguishable from bullies. I think others have pointed out that your footnote hides the entire problem, because you don’t actually have a nazi detector.
If you’d said “a given community should be transparent about the norms it’ll enforce”, I’d agree. Even saying “norm enforcement should start out gentle and only gradually ramp up if the participant appears to be working on it” would be totally reasonable. Saying “be nice to all participants, even if they’re disruptive and not fitting in” is much harder for me to swallow as general advice. There are communities where it’d work (mostly small ones where there’s time and energy to more gently bring someone up to speed), but at a certain size you have to decide if you value inclusiveness more than you value the actual stated purpose of the group.
For most such groups, there is always the actual important vote: participation. If you see norms being enforced that you disagree with (or in ways that you disagree with), definitely say something—people will either agree with you or defend themselves against what they see as trolling. If the latter, it’s probably not the place you want to be.
(note: I don’t see much on LW that I’d call bullying, or even incivility. If this is a complaint about a specific event that I didn’t notice, I apologize for your bad experience, but I don’t actually know what happened, so I can’t advise on whether you’re being oversensitive or a moderator was unnecessarily harsh about something. Both are possibilities to consider.)
It turns out that cranks and hucksters are indistinguishable from confused and vulnerable newbies. And protectors of conversational norms are indistinguishable from bullies. I think others have pointed out that your footnote hides the entire problem, because you don’t actually have a nazi detector.
I think that’s just false. If a moderator can’t tell the difference between a Nazi and someone who’s just locally unpopular, they have no business being a moderator. It’s not actually hard to tell—I’ve moderated active communities before and never really had much trouble with it!
It turns out that cranks and hucksters are indistinguishable from confused and vulnerable newbies. And protectors of conversational norms are indistinguishable from bullies. I think others have pointed out that your footnote hides the entire problem, because you don’t actually have a nazi detector.
If you’d said “a given community should be transparent about the norms it’ll enforce”, I’d agree. Even saying “norm enforcement should start out gentle and only gradually ramp up if the participant appears to be working on it” would be totally reasonable. Saying “be nice to all participants, even if they’re disruptive and not fitting in” is much harder for me to swallow as general advice. There are communities where it’d work (mostly small ones where there’s time and energy to more gently bring someone up to speed), but at a certain size you have to decide if you value inclusiveness more than you value the actual stated purpose of the group.
For most such groups, there is always the actual important vote: participation. If you see norms being enforced that you disagree with (or in ways that you disagree with), definitely say something—people will either agree with you or defend themselves against what they see as trolling. If the latter, it’s probably not the place you want to be.
(note: I don’t see much on LW that I’d call bullying, or even incivility. If this is a complaint about a specific event that I didn’t notice, I apologize for your bad experience, but I don’t actually know what happened, so I can’t advise on whether you’re being oversensitive or a moderator was unnecessarily harsh about something. Both are possibilities to consider.)
I think that’s just false. If a moderator can’t tell the difference between a Nazi and someone who’s just locally unpopular, they have no business being a moderator. It’s not actually hard to tell—I’ve moderated active communities before and never really had much trouble with it!