I'm already working on developing an honor system for the Free Culture dedicated site I'm building (which I'll announce more later today). The site is a work in progress, not functional yet, but we have many plans to revolutionize the way things are done, including respectful communication.
In summary, here's my idea: First, our discussion system has a retraction function to hide posts and provide in their place an explanation of the retraction. In our honor system we will specify respectful communication guidelines. No condescension, no defensiveness, and no unconstructive criticism. The trick is: it's a dual responsibility system. Each person is responsible for retracting their *own* posts that violate the guidelines. It is a violation to post disrespectful wordings and *also* a violation to respond to them. You do not call out a violation publicly. Instead, give everyone a chance to save face and we'll have a button to alert someone that their post was flagged as a violation. They are then responsible for retracting ASAP. (there should probably be an auto-retract if a post is flagged by several people). It is also a violation to inappropriately flag a post. If there is a disagreement about whether the post is a violation, then in *that* case, a moderator will step in. In all cases, everything should be as confidential as possible. There is no value in shaming someone if they are willing to change the wording and stay respectful. And it is poisonous to the discussion when people take too much personal offense also. Point is: we value respectful communication as a priority, but reacting defensively or attacking someone after they post something disrespectful is just as much of a problem as the original post. We have yet to flesh out the exact system, but that's the idea. And this is one of many things that people who are interested could help us achieve… announcement about the site coming momentarily… Cheers, Aaron -- Aaron Wolf wolftune.com On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Joshua Gay <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello! > > Kevin's post about the purpose of this list got me thinking about a cool > project/resource that would be fun to create. > > What I'm imagining is some sort of guide that helps encourage healthy > and inclusive dialogue and debate as well as discussions of language and > tactics in free culture. I'm envisioning something that would be more > like a self-help guide, rather than a rules/governance document. It > would be tailored to the free culture movement and useful for those of > us in the free culture movement. > > Since that is a little abstract, I'll give an example of the kind of > thing that would be in this guide. It might have a section on common > false dichotomy that commonly comes-up in discussions about free culture > (e.g., "ideological" vs "practical"). We could then give some tips on > how to avoid using or creating these kinds of false dichotomies in FC > discussions, and perhaps an example of how to gracefully respond to the > use of such a dichotomy without being combative or derailing the > conversation. Along the way, we might end-up linking to resources that > explore the issues in a more general or critical manner (e.g., > dialectic[1], fallacies[2], biases[3], etc). > > Well, I hope that is enough for people to get what I'm > envisioning/thinking. I'd love to hear what others think, and most > importantly if such a project is already under way or has been discussed! > > Cheers, > > Josh > > Footnotes: > [1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic> > [2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies> > [3]: > < > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_decision_making > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss >
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