RFC, round two: Commenting policy

[denise]

A few weeks ago, I solicited thoughts on an official-community commenting policy, and then (as one does) promptly got eaten by the process of getting the site into open beta. We got a lot of really useful and helpful feedback and commentary on the initial round of brainstorming, so here's round two: a summary of all the issues raised in the commentary period that I feel should be incorporated into the final version. I'm posting so that if any feedback you left on the original RFC didn't get mentioned here, and you feel it should be incorporated into the final version, you can point me to your comment again. (Or, if you want to add something else to the discussion, you can bring it up here.)

The reason I didn't incorporate everything is because I felt a bunch of comments addressed broader issues or meta-issues -- things like "identify who's moderating each individual community" and "should we have different policies for focused posts vs. generalized announcement posts", all the way up to "we need a better way of providing feedback than comments". Most of them are really good process suggestions, and I'll definitely be taking them into account as we shape our communications, but for this specific task I'm trying to focus in on the issues that will help me write up a succinct policy that will cover 99% of what we need to cover in roughly three paragraphs or less. (Without tending to my usual verbosity.)

Round three will be a proposed wording of actual policy that y'all can proceed to pick apart, find all the holes in, jump up and down on, tear into little tiny shreds, and rebuild it bigger, better, stronger, faster.

The major issues that were raised in the commentary period:

• How do we make it clear that we welcome dissent and disagreement, and are completely open to feedback of all kinds (positive or negative), without watching the comments degenerate into either people (on either side of an issue) attacking each other or an endless string of non-productive commentary or disruptive behavior?
  
  
• How, in fact, do we define 'productive' commentary? How do we define 'disruptive' behavior?
  
  
• 'Be polite' or 'be civil' is impossible to define in such a way that everyone will understand what you mean. One person's civility is another person's utter rudeness.
  
  
• We need to come up with some kind of way to identify what our definitions of all of the above are, in the context of DW official journals, without giving offense or making angry people angrier. Examples are good.
  
  
• We also need to make it clear that "stay on topic" doesn't prevent people from asking questions about DW that might not relate to the exact post. (Otherwise known as: OMG my journal is broken, I don't know where to ask about it!)
  
  
• Who gets to say that something violates these rules? How do we keep it from turning into people trying to moderate each other's behavior? (Otherwise known as: sometimes, with friends like these...) We don't want people who are really loyal to DW shouting other people down.
  
  
• Moderating with too heavy a hand will lead to resentment and backlash; moderating with too light a hand will lead to wank, trolls, "First!", and "cry moar, emo kid".

Is there anything else that you feel is important or relevant to the task of writing up a broadly-focused commenting policy for official Dreamwidth communities?

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

I know on the dw-progress list a while back we discussed the possibility of adding a "like" or "clap" button to posts, mimicking the funcion on (forex) Facebook, so if all you wanted to say was "I like this" or "I agree with this" you didn't have to comment but could just click the button. The tentative conclusion, iirc, was that it would be a major change in the social/community function of an LJ-type system and not necessarily the direction DW wanted to go right at the beginning.

I wonder if it might be a good idea on official community posts, however. It would be an easy way of cutting down on the number of comments where people just want to agree/cheer/whatever but don't necessarily have anything to say.

[matgb]

I was actually going to suggest something similar in my comment, but had the same conclusion. It sorta works on Slashdot. Sorta.

Definitely some way of just indicating approval, especially when Suggestions start going properly, comments threads on some of them are fairly pointless (although that could be sorted by an auto-scripted poll or similar I guess).

[beckyzoole]

Absolutely! I like the idea. Ravelry does this very well, I think.

But we still want to have the ability to comment, to make suggestions and give more detailed feedback.

[ardaniel]

A lot of places (Flickr, MetaFilter) use "[this is good]" for this purpose, if you're exploring terminology that could be applied to the concept.

[matgb]

The first one is I think the biggest problem. Some people read legit critiques of a problem as an overwhelming personal attack, others are completely scared of saying anything in case they annoy someone, etc.

Wording a 'play the ball' instruction is a PITA. There are times I think the way Slashdot community moderates everything is brilliant. Then I browse at -1 and remind myself of the stuff that really should just get deleted.

Constructive responses, and on the one hand/on the other type stuff is useful, but bitchfights and LOLcats aren't.

I'm guessing a team of volunteer 'comment mods' might work, but they'd need to rotate in and out fairly regularly—stops both 'power trip' allegations and burnout; I regularly get too invested in forums I mod, never a good thing.

ETA: Second. Damn. ;-)

[eponymous]

I know that there was a lot of discussion of posting images in comments to news posts (in the form of macros, scrolly text, sparkles, etc)... and the concerns that when people are using slow servers, such things can kill their connection and eat up a lot of bandwidth.

I still advocate for some limitation on the use of images in the comments to news posts, because they can prevent members from being able to participate in the discussion due to the above mentioned issue.

[eponymous]

Also, now that I'm thinking about it... how do those images interact with reading software?

[cleverthylacine]

I am totally okay with no image macros and/or any of that crap in the news community.

Oh oh oh! Brilliant idea!

[beckyzoole]

This would make a great addition to the comments options a user may choose when posting: strip HTML from comments.

If the "strip HTML from comments" option is chosen, then DW would automatically insert an announcement below the post, that "Notice: This post is set to not allow HTML in comments."

In one swell foop, you would get rid of cat macros, scrolly text, enormous sparklies, videos, etc.

It would be ever so slightly annoying, in that it wouldn't allow italic or bold. (It wouldn't allow links, either, but you just post the URL plain then.)

The more I think about this, the better I like it!

[jame_alec]

IMO another thing to consider is keeping the guidelines of commenting short enough to be useful. If you make them long by defining every little term and possibility, you have the potential to drive off people who would like to comment but are afraid what they're saying might be guideline-breaking and just can't muddle through the guidelines to figure it out.

Perhaps a "commenting guideline 101" for the bare basics, and "commenting guideline 191" for a more in depth look at specifics, if it comes to that? I might be overthinking this and pulling an issue out of thin air, but I've seen it happen on forum rules before, so I thought it might be useful to bring up here.

With regards to civility and politeness, I've personally found the only way to define that in a way that can be consistently applied is to forbid personal attacks, strawmen, and things of that nature. To keep things from getting out of hand with threads that look like they're devolving into flame wars, if things are heating up maybe a temporary thread freeze, for people to cool off? I don't know how practical that would be when you have tens or hundreds of threads going, though.

Maybe a good definition of "productive" commenting vs. disruptive would be something to the effect of "don't comment just to whine about how DW isn't exactly like LJ, as this is pointlessly drama-inducing and accomplishes nothing"? Only in a nicer way, hah.

To address the "who gets to say something violates the rules" question, could other mods be appointed to watch the threads and deal with anything that breaks out? Maybe something in the guidelines to the effect of "If you believe a comment is violating the guidelines, PM one of these mods [list here] rather than taking it upon yourself to tell them their comment violates the guidelines"? Again with my experience moderating forums I've found that nipping that kind of thing in the bud (since it's not productive at all and generally leads to following people into other threads and going "you're breaking the rules too!!!") is best.

/super tl;dr

[princessofgeeks]

I'm no expert, but based on my experience in the larger blogosphere, the fanfic community (and I use that word intentionally), and my runins with what you described as the cult of nice and the cult of mean, it's my opinion that broad guidelines about welcoming constructive criticism and robust debate are good, that noting that you don't need loyalists to jump in when someone is negative, and then letting the mods do their job, is the best solution.

You simply cannot offer a comprehensive definition of what behavior you want. I think it will be emergent, and it will be modeled. Most of the misunderstandings do result from the clash of the cults you iterated, at least in my experience. the blogosphere is biased toward people speaking their minds in haste, so getting people to slow down and think is always the goal, I guess.

best of luck. now and always.

[xochiquetzl]

What she said. I'm also going to link to Teresa Nielsen Hayden's post on moderation here. I'd like to particularly point out, "5. Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system."

[ashcomp]

I seem to recall one of the Bittorrent sites has a function where you can click a button to thank the uploader of a particular file--then your id gets added to the list of thanking individuals. There's a different place to add a real comment about the file if you need to.

[mark]

I had a weird idea.

What if we could restrict comments on official posts so that you can only post toplevel? I.e., it's forced to a flat mode, no replying to comments.

Unless you're staff/mods, in which case, you can reply in a thread or something.

[denise]

Hmm. What do you think that would benefit?

[blackbird_song]

My personal take on these things is that less censorship is more, regardless of how contentious things get. (I'm being blunt about that language because I think that it cuts to the chase in this case.) That said, though, something that could be seen as mostly civil discourse is something deeply to be encouraged, so having a moderator keep an eye on things does seem like a good idea.

This is not exactly the sort of comment you were seeking, I think, but I might suggest that whoever makes the initial post should not be the one to moderate the responses to it. It has sometimes seemed cruel to me that we expect someone with a highly vested interest in the thing they've announced that everyone hates to be the voice of reason. However, voice of reason is exactly what people need on posts that could be contentious, so it seems logical that a neutral mod who does not respond to the post in any way except to give appropriate warnings or delete the latest obscene cat macro might have a shot at working.

Catherine

[zvi]

Suggestions:

1) For making sure that you welcome criticism of Dreamwidth, can you say something to the effect of "the only acceptable topic of discussion in an official post is Dreamwidth, not your fellow commenters, their credentials, intelligence, ancestry or other personal attributes" and "Dreamwidth does not need defending. If you can pass someone information of which they appear to be unaware, that's fine, but the site's maidenly virtue is doing just fine without you, thanks." Only less Bitter Old Fanfic Queen sounding.

2) I definitely think the people who have permission to shut down conversation should be identified in the body of the post itself, or in the sidebar of the comm, or someplace where everybody can go look and check credentials easily. I don't know if you want it to be anybody on staff, or anybody who does support, or a special comment squad, or what.

[beckyzoole]

I am snickering over "the site's maidenly virtue".

I think I need that in an icon.

[charmian]

I actually... really don't understand very well what you mean by "productive" at all. What is supposed to be produced? Or do you mean "constructive" like in "constructive criticism"? Maybe you could increase the amount of productive comments by making it clearer in the post what kind of comments you're soliciting; like ending it with "are you experiencing any problems?" or "what do you think about XYZ?"

For example, I see in the comments here people are talking about how the proposed 'like/clap' button might help deal with the issues you're talking about. But this kind of confuses me, because while obviously "I like this" is not a disruptive comment, is it one which you wish to discourage in the future as "non-productive?" (Unproductive=totally OT? Phrased in a vague way? Phrased in a needlessly inflammatory way?)

Perhaps one way repetitive/conflict things could be reduced is, if an issue repeatedly comes up, that an eta added to the end of the original post repeating the issue, and adding your response to it?

Also, maybe to reduce the amount of confused people who randomly ask for help, it would be helpful to include a preset list of links to Support, Abuse, Feedback, Customization Guides, etc. at the end of posts in comms there are a lot of inexperienced folk.

[pinikir]

I think a good way to write up a comment policy would be a questionnaire/poll to get people involved again in what they would like to see for the wording etc.

[rydra_wong]

Just a thought inspired by some recent discussions:

If we're leaning towards some sort of "no personal attacks" rule (which seems like a very good idea), I suggest also specifically banning racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc. comments.

Otherwise there's a potential situation (which I have seen happen) where someone makes offensive/baiting remarks about a group, someone else finally snaps and says WHOA RACIST MUCH? or whatever, and the second person gets slapped down for making a "personal attack". Which is obviously problematic.

[ninetydegrees]

About #1, #2 and #3 and I see people in dw_news comments helping each other, answering questions, assisting back and forth, etc.

It seems to me you have your policy right there: be polite, try to stay on topic and to formulate disagreement in a productive way. Technical help requests should go to the Support board for answers from experienced and knowledgeable users but comments asking for or giving help will not be considered as disruptive/off-topic.

I don't think you need to define it further. Trust your users to understand what you mean. Some 'disruptive' comments will require explanations (i.e. pedagogy) and we will all learn from them while others will not and we will not expect them from you.

As other users said:

You simply cannot offer a comprehensive definition of what behavior you want. I think it will be emergent, and it will be modeled.
Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system.

[rydra_wong]

Practical thought:

Mght it be helpful to think in terms of a few fairly specific offenses which merit a temporary ban (e.g. attacks on other users, deliberately disrupting the discussion by spamming it -- whether with macros or 10000 verses of "Row Row Row Your Boat") and then a range of general guidelines (e.g. stay on topic, don't shout down people who are critizing the service) which are maintained by reminders?

That way, mods can steer gently and say, "Hey, I appreciate that you're all having an awesome time discussing the new Star Trek movie in this thread, but that's really off-topic so please take it to a comm".

But it's not going to feel like "OMG if I say anything which isn't deemed 'productive' enough, I will be struck down from on high."

[trobadora]

But it's not going to feel like "OMG if I say anything which isn't deemed 'productive' enough, I will be struck down from on high."

Yes. That. :-)

[beckyzoole]

It seems to me that the best way to handle this, especially as you get bigger, is:

1. Eventually you may need to have an employee whose full-time job it is to monitor and moderate official communities. In the meantime, while the userbase is still too small and sane to need that full-time monitor, be sure the moderator clears the boards and sets aside a full day for monitoring after each news post. The full day might not be needed, but it's better to have too much time and capacity than too little.

2. The moderator should actively moderate -- lots of replies to comments, plus freezing/deleting/banning promptly as necessary. And, this is important, whenever the moderator acts, they should explain why they're doing what they're doing. This is important so that users can better understand what "polite" and "civil" means in this forum. Also, and this is also important, the moderator should not respond to criticisms or critiques of their moderation while they are moderating. Don't get sucked into the meta discussion. You can make a new post saying "There were a lot of criticisms about how I monitored yesterday's post. Let's talk about that here."

3. It is very difficult to set hard and fast rules for "polite" and "civil". Leaving it up to human interpretation may be at times unfair, but is still the best way to go.

Example:

Let's say a new manager is brought in, and quickly makes a boneheaded move that shows that he obviously does not understand the zeitgeist of the community. To make matters worse, he publicly comments (elsewhere) that he's pretty sure the users won't mind because this new policy will make things "less confusing" for them. It is important as a clue-by-four for the manager that the full amount of the users' outrage be expressed. Otherwise he might dismiss it instead of learning something. Also, when the anger is so intense, capping it just turns it into depression and users deciding they just don't care about the site anymore. So a chorus of "I hope they fire your ass and send you crying back to Google!" might be appropriate comments to let stand.

On the other hand, if a there's an announcement that a once-popular layout is no longer supported, then "I hope they fire your ass!" is over the top and rude. The moderator might respond to that with "I have deleted your comment, which was rude to XYZ who made the decision to drop this lay-out. Please feel free to comment again with a productive criticism of the decision."

4. In the end, disruptive commentary must be like porn, something that you can't really define but you know it when you see it. What does have to be clear, though, is who is doing the defining. The moderator should be identified. If the moderator is not denise, then it needs to be made very clear that denise backs the moderator 100%. Dreamwidth is denise's vision. It needs to stay that way.

I think that when Brad was very hands-on at LJ, users accepted quirks and small injustices because they were dealing with a human being. It was when the people who made the decisions stopped dealing directly with the userbase that things fell apart and official posts drew lots of disruptive comments.

[cleverthylacine]

Becky is right 100 percent of the way on this.

[archangelbeth]

Anyone answering the above questions (in the post) might want to check out http://ozarque.livejournal.com -- she's very good at doing definitions, I think, of politeness, etc. (Check her tags, mostly, and Memories -- she's recently had some personal stuff so the most-recent posts won't be as helpful.)

[ajatshatru]

Add 'Please stay on topic. No pointless discussion/behaviour allowed. And no fighting with each other, kiddies' at the end ? XD

Well, dw is yet to reach this level yet, and I hope that'll not happen.

Btw, thank you so much for the code :) :) :)

[chris]

(I support the above request for "no images", and its strengthening to "no HTML".)

Commenting on a post is a privilege, not a right; people can choose to turn off comments to their post if they don't want to receive comments. Therefore, perhaps posting a comment on the "first page" of a post to an official / high-volume community is also a privilege, not a right, and one which might be denied without denying the right to comment altogether.

Pros: gets abuse off the first page, a very graduated sort of sanction, punishment fits crime for frist p50ters

Cons: needs additional coding, doesn't eliminate abuse but hides it under the carpet, potentially a bit fiddly

[triadruid]

Really, REALLY fiddly in fact. Stripping out some abusable HTML tags is perhaps useful, but removing links to problems, support, user/community names, italics, bold, quote, code? Overkill, and it won't really help in the long run. The community will just adopt clunky old (or new!) workarounds, like /italics/ or SHOUTING.

[chris]

This is really just a bump to see if there was a conclusion reached on the issue.

I was reading the LJ news community yesterday, and, grief, it was a pit. Even the people whose views I agreed with seemed, so frequently, to express them in really a-hole-ish ways. That hasn't happened yet with DW, and part of the reason why I love DW so much (and am so out of love with LJ) is that people do seem much more constructive over here. Why is this?

It could be because the userbase is smaller, and more of the users are relatively tightly connected to the staff.
It could be because the need for invite codes is the right sort of barrier to entry.
It could be because you treat us with respect and love, and not even the spiteful joke-fake-hatey sort of love, and you haven't annoyed us yet.
It could be because, well, early vocal DW users are just nicer than the LJ ones.
It could be because for whatever reasons, though possibly mostly #2, DW users skew older than LJ ones.

However the above factors are blended, I really appreciate it. The sparkly HTML in comments to dw-news posts was funny once or twice but possibly needs to be nipped in the bud before it becomes an unwanted tradition. (Admission: I once posted 300-column-wide Figlet-produced ASCII art text within <pre> tags to a popular user's LJ to futz with her page width as a joke).

[denise]

Yeah, this fell off my do-list for a while with the other stuff I've had going on, but I will make a note and try to get back to it again.

I know exactly what you mean about the culture over here being less toxic, and I adore it. I think part of it certainly is that we're still in the honeymoon period, but I'm hoping we can keep as much of it as possible as we grow. (I think it's less that DW users are more nice than LJ users (after all, many of them are the same people) as that there's a very strong sense that we're all in this together and everyone's expected to do their part to help make DW awesome, and more than that, that everyone can do their part to help make DW awesome; if you have an idea, there's much more of a sense that you can get that idea into the right hands and get it implemented/done than on LJ.)

Ponder, ponder ...