I’ve published a page of our online Participation Guidelines. You might want to check them out, as we have two that are unusual:
- Avoid sarcasm
- Avoid addressing a person indirectly when disagreeing with them
I’ve included these as I’ve learned over the years as a moderator that incivility tends to rear its ugly head when people are sarcastic with each other and when they don’t ‘talk’ directly to one another when disagreeing.
Most people avoid these when discussing issues face-to-face in small group settings. But the lack of eye contact and audio tone of voice in online venues make the setting seem impersonal. And that tends to make people a little more uninhibited with their conversational manners.
If you’ve got questions about the guidelines—especially if you disagree—feel free to attach a comment below. We can then fight about it.
Last October, the StarTribune published an article titled Putting the civil back into war of words that featured the Politics in Edina Facebook page.
I’m interested in how the civility guidelines for PIE are working so far and how they differ from the Participation Guidelines I’ve drafted here.
Our rules over at PIE are in this note. Click on any of the five photos at the top of the PIE page to learn more.
Your no sarcasm rule is close to our no cheap shots rule. Also, we ask people to back up their opinions with information so that we can all learn something. I really like your two very practical suggestions. The nice thing about Facebook is that it requires real identities. We’ve had a couple fake ID’s attempt to participate and we’ve asked them to not comment unless they use a real ID.
Some days we do pretty well, but not every day. The group of regular commenters is fairly small. One thing I’ve noticed is that with time even people from opposite sides of the political spectrum are getting to know each other (to the degree that’s possible in an online forum) and seem willing to give and take a little when it comes to friendly banter.
Tom, I agree, real names is a non-issue with Facebook. That’s why many blogs are using the new Facebook Comments System (explained here and demonstrated on TechCrunch).
It tends to be less of an issue for a geographically oriented blog. I’ve not had much of a problem with the community blog I run in Northfield and I’m hoping it’s a non-issue here. Comments won’t get posted unless first and last names are included.
I am looking into a plugin that let’s me add a street address field to the comments for those times when we’d really like to just have only Edina residents commenting, much like open mic at City Council meetings where you’re asked to state your name and address before commenting.
I’m curious: how do you intervene when someone violates your civility guidelines?
There are 4 potential things that happen. The best is when other community members gently ask the person who is crossing the line to play nice. In the perfect world, that’s what I’m hoping happens. Second, a moderator might gently make a public statement that helps reframe an overly harsh comment. Third, a moderator might message the the person to ask him or her to participate in a more respectful manner. Fourth, I will occasionally add a process-oriented post and ask for feedback about how we are doing. This is usually in response to a run of testier than normal comments.
In rare cases, I might yank a comment. I think I’ve only did this 3-4 times in a year and half. When I have done it, I usually get some negative feedback about having done so. I’ve never banned someone from the site for playing too rough. I believe a couple may have left on their own after I provided them with some private feedback. The only people who have been immediately banned are obvious spammers.
Mostly, it doesn’t seem we have too many problems from what I see. I know some have left the site because they believe it is still overly partisan and filled with too many harsh comments.
That’s pretty close to what I do on our Northfield community blog, Locally Grown. Nobody likes to be publicly reprimanded but I find it’s best to do it that way so that everyone learns… and it encourages the lurkers to participate as they can see there’s ‘adult supervision’ present.
Once a culture of civility has been established and is consistently enforced, the problems become fewer and far between.
Do you ever invite local Edina politicians or other community leaders to participate? Do they accept?
We have a few local politicians as members. Only one has been an active commenter.