On Pile-ons as a way of enforcing community norms

[alias_sqbr]

Disclaimer: I am sick today. This may be utter crap. But my muse was awoken by this discussion and it Will Not Be Silenced! Anyway, I may suck at replying to comments, since I plan to spend the next day and a half napping.

Also: as per the terms of service, I would like it if you read the whole post and all the comments before making your own. I have no way to enforce this community norm except asking nicely :)

---

So.

There's been a of of discussion on metafandom recently about the use of "dog-piling" (or, less pejoratively, "piling-on"), when someone posts something other people don't like (either for shallow reasons like personal taste or due to serious issues like racism etc) and they get inundated with negative replies, and you get a huge swathe of people posting about it on their personal ljs, etc. See for example Why Is There Not More Shunning? and nice is different than good.

Now overall there are pros and cons to this behaviour, like a lot of people I think it's sometimes justifiable (or even necessary) but other times is over-the-top and a bit mob-mentality-ish. It depends on the context, and the manner in which people "pile on".

Personal posts inspired by a big blow up like this can have several purposes, two common ones being simple venting or using this single incident to illustrate a more general problem. But something which has been brought up a bunch of times is "policing of community norms", and I was struck today by how the way "piling on" often works isn't always conducive to this, as the original transgression becomes so magnified in the purple-monkey-dishwasher of people writing posts based on other peoples outraged posts (not reading the original source) that the "community norm" that gets enforced ends up being something really bland and obvious rather than the more complex issue that started it all. Yet it feels like the only people who complain about this are trying to defend the pile-on-ees feelings/honour etc, rather than caring about the social value of truth per se.

I'm going to use the "Open Source Boob Project" as an example since I got kind of involved and it illustrates my point well. A lot of the posts about the OSBP didn't bother to go into the details of what happened, but were mostly just venting the frustration caused by years of crap from the icky badness of fandom (or society in general). Which is absolutely understandable and a valid thing to do. When other people complained that they were misrepresenting what happened the response was mostly "Sure, you may have had nice rules on paper, but this is what it really meant underneath/what you did at the beginning/what would have happened eventually", and I can certainly see that argument. The fact that theferrett's original post gave entirely the wrong impression didn't help matters.

But... then a second group of people read those posts and made other posts along the lines of "If they had not have made it part of the con signup process/let women wearing green badges say no/had it be run by women/groped men's asses too/etc then it would have been fine, but as it is it's disgusting". One can imagine such people theoretically starting a similar idea at a con where it wasn't part of the con signup process, women wearing green badges could say no etc and considering themselves much more enlightened ..except that's exactly what the OSBP did. So what did that second group of people learn, exactly? That it's not ok for men to explicitly expect random women to let them touch their boobs? I'm pretty sure most people knew that already, including theferrett etc. The community norm being policed is more subtle and complex than that.

EDIT: If you don't have a problem with the OSBP then the argument above won't mean much to you, so imagine I'm talking about some other situation where someone did something you think is really bad, and then they got misrepresented as being even worse than that.

I've seen similar issues with the way history is taught: for example, I always got the impression that 19th Century british colonialists were 100% after money and power etc, and had absolutely no concern for the africans. "Well", I can think to myself "Hasn't society progressed". But learning more about history I discover that the english public was actually quite concerned about african welfare (in a paternalistic, racist sort of way) and that even the most violent, cruel colonialist regime sold themselves to shareholders etc as philanthropic gestures of education and improvement. Kind of like they do now. Which is a lot scarier, and actually makes me think.

So how to combat this? Well, I say: if you are genuinely interested in policing community norms, don't demonise the people you're criticising. Not just because it's kind of mean (although imo that should play some part in it too) but because if you tell people "Don't act like this totally evil, moustache twirling villain" they won't feel any need to critically self-examine their behavior, because they know they're *not* totally evil, moustache twirling villains.

And if you're venting, or going off on a tangent etc, then maybe consider adding a disclaimer, like "This is just a rough description, *insert link here* has a more in depth description of what actually happened" etc. Though I agree that one can't be held entirely responsible for people mistaking a rant for a reliable source of unbiased information.

And, most importantly, as much as possible don't base you opinions on second hand reports, especially if you're passing judgement on someone. I also think people should read all the comments on an offending post (or at least the whole post itself!) before ranting at the OP, in case they've recanted or clarified somewhere, but I realise this does involve a LOT of effort once the pile-on gets going(*). And don't be too quick to pigeonhole people who get dog-piled as stock, totally evil, moustache twirling villains, instead look at what really happened, and why they did what they did, and why it's bad, and really ask yourself whether or not it's something you might have done in similar circumstances, and if you'd have known it was bad without having everyone point it out to you. Sorry if this sounds a bit condescending, I get very tactless when I'm sick! And it's easy for me to judge, since my main flaw is not being critical enough.

None of this is to argue against pile-ons per se, or that they can't help people understand what is and isn't acceptable behaviour (individually or as a community) I'm just pointing out an unfortunate flaw that I hadn't seen addressed.

I'd probably have something to say about how this relates to fandom_wank if I read it :)

EDIT: Two things that struck me later.
1)Beyond defining what is and is not acceptable, it is sometimes good to create a general environment of not fear exactly, but one in which people are aware that they can't get away with doing stupid crap, and to this end the exact limits of what counts as "stupid crap" is less important. For example, most people in fanfic fandom would agree, in principle, that racism is bad, but I think it took a whole bunch of people piling-on against individual racist actions to (start to) create a general sense that racism is bad and you shouldn't expect to get away with it, and that criticising things for being racist is a normal and acceptable thing to do.
2)I've ignored the possibility that, eg, the people who misunderstood the OSBP had, in fact, read the original post, and maybe even some of the more detailed and accurate discussion, and managed to still misunderstand the situation all on their own :)

(*)I realise this is veering more into "Don't demonise people because it's mean" rather than my main point of "Don't demonise people because it muddies the message", but I still think it deserves saying.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. I am so totally (and increasingly) in the "Need more sleep, incoherent" place myself right now due to a cold, so I didn't notice :D

I guess...people need to be able to criticise the manner in which a message is expressed without ignoring/glossing over the message itself, or acting as if their criticisms somehow prove the message itself wrong. It's kind of like spelling errors: they are a bad thing, and people should avoid them, and once someone has too many they're nigh incomprehensible, but it's still pretty petty to respond to someone's argument with "It's "they're" not "their" you moron", and an argument can be badly spelled yet entirely correct and clear. On the other hand, if someone's spelling is so bad that they are literally incomprehensible then it is more reasonable to dismiss their argument until they express it better.

And yes, the best approach probably is to remove our own logs before picking on other people's specks. I say uncharacteristically biblically :)

[quillori.livejournal.com]

I think you're quite right that criticisms of the manner of expression need to be kept separate from the debate, because yes, while important in their way, as long as you can comprehend what is meant, that's what it it's relevant to reply to within the bounds of the actual debate. But what there doesn't really seem to be is a good method of saying that you think you may well agree with the conclusion, but reject the given manner of reaching it. That's not really a criticism of the mode of expression, but rather with the type of reasoning used, which is a relevant thing to criticise in an argument. Unfortunately, it can be seen as weakening support for the message. I tend to see it as kicking away rotten foundations in the hope of replacing them with sound, because if the message is right, there must actually be sound arguments that could be used, but plenty of people see it more as giving ammunition to the bad guys.

For some mysterious reason logs, which you'd think would be hard to miss and easy to get a grip on to remove, are instead well nigh invisible, not to mention impossible to dislodge, whereas some sort of vision defect allows me to spot specks with great accuracy from a distance. In fact, the greater the distance, the easier I spot them ... Quite unaccountable, really.

[alias_sqbr]

But what there doesn't really seem to be is a good method of saying that you think you may well agree with the conclusion, but reject the given manner of reaching it.

That's very true, and trying to deal with it has repeatedly gotten me into trouble. Heck, writing this post I was paranoid people would get narky at me for being pro-OSBP, but instead I get people congratulating me for being pro OSBP which... Totally Not My Point. (EDIT: except it turns out that I misunderstood them. And so it goes round...)

I have a rather idealistic belief that The Truth Will Out if we all just try to stick to the moral high ground and argue logically, clearly, and honestly (and tend to have more fellow feeling with my "opponents" who behave this way than my "allies" who don't)

Yes, there does seem to a be a bit of an epidemic of that log thing going around. I'm 100% immune from it, of course, but the rest of you really should try to do something about it :D

[quillori.livejournal.com]

I have a rather idealistic belief that The Truth Will Out if we all just try to stick to the moral high ground and argue logically, clearly, and honestly (and tend to have more fellow feeling with my "opponents" who behave this way than my "allies" who don't)

What a perfect summation. I suppose it's too long to fit on a flag, which is a shame, because I would definitely rally behind that one.

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. Yeah, any flag/manifesto I produced would have several pages of annendums and footnotes :)

[quillori.livejournal.com]

Which is an interesting point in itself - I generally can't make any sort of argument or generalisation without a little voice in my head going 'yes, but ...' and my only hope of avoiding tl;dr is to go back at the end and edit very heavily, removing most of the counterexamples, digressions, expansions and general miscellany. But presumably not everyone is like this? Which leads to the thought, I don't see anything necessarily hostile about raising 'yes, but' type points, because that's how I always respond to any sort of argument, including ones I make myself; indeed, having forced myself to suppress any number of 'yes, buts' for the sake of clarity, I am pleased if someone brings one of them up and I have a chance to discuss it. So I think of raising that sort of point as a positive interaction, suggestive of a desire to engage in friendly discussion. But if that isn't at all how you think yourself, I wonder if you are inclined to see it as much more hostile, as something obviously intended as an attack? After all, you might think, why would someone who isn't hostile be disagreeing with you?

That might explain something that's been bothering me for a while. I'll read someone complaining about some awful, trollish comment they've seen, and if there's a link, I'll generally go look. Well, plenty of times it is an awful, trollish comment, just as expected. But there are a surprising number of times when it's looked just fine to me: the original post mentions various issues and looks like an invitation for further discussion, the comment seems to raise a valid point relevant to some aspect of the discussion, and yet someone (often not the OP), takes it as indicative not of a desire to discuss one area in more depth, but of some sort of attack on the entire original post.

I imagine my assumption that everyone means to debate reasonably unless there is unequivocal evidence of trollishness does mean there are times I give actual trolls the benefit of the doubt; doubtless either prejudice at times leads one astray. I still prefer my approach though (there's a surprise), on the grounds that it's better to risk wasting time on the occasional troll than rejecting people who genuinely want a discussion.

Some more tl;dr from me :)

[alias_sqbr]

I used to feel that way but had a few bad experiences with that sort of troll and so have more sympathy with people who are paranoid about them. I've had a few situations where strangers mistook me for such a troll and I was very offended..and then noticed where someone else started by saying very similar things to me and then went on to be really offensive and nasty.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt myself (while making sure not to give the sort of ammunition they might use if they are a troll) I find those sorts of trolls give themselves away pretty quickly, if only by quickly ignoring anyone who repsonds politely and focussing on acting all matryred towards anyone who acts aggresively (or trying to pit the two against each other, I once had one misquote me so that people would think I was on their side)

That said, even well meaning but clueless people can horribly derail a conversation. Which isn't that big of a deal a lot of the time (especially with threads on lj), but sometimes I think it's justifiable to go "I'm sorry but that's off topic, and I don't have time to go into it right now", sometimes quite impatiently if the question is innapropriatte and seems to be a sign of being too lazy to look stuff up themselves.

For example, I like helping people with maths, I spent several years as a uni maths tutor and have given free help to lots of friends. But pretty much every maths discussion community I've been on has been inundated with highschool students asking really basic maths homework questions, even though the rules usually prohibit it specifically. At this point I have very little sympathy or patience for them interrupting the more interesting discussion, and had to learn to be quite firm with various students in real life who expected me to help them for free.

Whole herds of teal dear, galloping free

[quillori.livejournal.com]

Well, I was partly trying to argue myself into being more sympathetic: I am prepared to be very sympathetic if people are too quick to call 'troll' because of a genuine misunderstanding – if a difference in approach and way of thinking makes what I would see as a civil discussion look hostile and aggressive. I'm afraid I have at times begun to wonder if some people just see not being in complete agreement with them as evidence of trollishness. And, really, I would prefer to think that wasn't generally true. (I can think of several intelligent and thoughtful people I would like to respect, whose reaction not only to outright dissent but to almost anything other than unqualified support looks to me uncomfortably like bullying, or even outright abuse. I would be much, much happier to think they were just reacting to what they see as an attack, and that it isn't their normal mode of dealing with any view other than their own. For a start, it would mean it actually is possible to have a productive discussion of their often very interesting views, providing I keep I close watch on my tone, and stress repeatedly all the areas we're in agreement. Perhaps it would reduce the possibility of hurt feelings all round if those inclined to give the benefit of the doubt remembered that that doubt isn't always justified, and those given to assuming trollishness bore in mind that their assumption wasn't always right?)

I can see that previous bad experiences with trolls are likely to make anyone more cautious, and obviously there's nothing at all wrong with managing your normal online interactions with regard to what you're comfortable with. On the other hand, anyone who specifically proposes to have a serious discussion about a serious subject does, I think, take on some further responsibilities, particularly if the discussion is deliberately public, not just between a few like-minded friends. It is in this respect I am most worried by a tendency to see any disagreement as trollishness: to my mind it works to suppress discussion and creates an unhelpful impression that there are clear and absolute distinctions between obviously good and obviously bad views, when the reality is likely to be complex, subject to different interpretations, and generally best approached in a spirit of open-minded investigation.

One risk for those who are in any case inclined to assume hostility is that it is easy to get an ever increasing number of false positives: if you assume wrongly someone is a troll, there is a good chance you won't find out your mistake, so your subjective impression of the number of trolls out there goes up, and next time you're even readier to assume trollishness. In theory, you could end up being convinced that your own experience has proved the only types of people out there are those who agree with you and trolls, although I doubt anyone really goes that far (well, I hope no one goes that far).

Re: Whole herds of teal dear, galloping free

[quillori.livejournal.com]

and for some reason, I seem to be currently incapable of spelling 'deer'

Re: Whole herds of teal dear, galloping free

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

if you assume wrongly someone is a troll, there is a good chance you won't find out your mistake, so your subjective impression of the number of trolls out there goes up, and next time you're even readier to assume trollishness

I also find, watching this discussion :) that if I'm involved in a discussion, and I'm labeled as a troll, or I perceive I'm labeled as one, that I'll either drop out of the discussion altogether, or a perverse side of me will dig my heels in further and will not concede any point. Which probably does reinforce the 'troll' label.

So I wonder how many people are trolls, and how many people are just pissed off at being jumped on, from what they consider a completely justified opinion. If you put a person in the corner, I think there anger, and frustration would lead to some nasty things being said without any initial intent of such.

Re: Whole herds of teal dear, galloping free

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I think it is important to distinguish between deliberate trolls and accidental trouble makers, and I don't think enough people do. The former are a lost cause but the latter can often be rehabilitated, sometimes very easily.

Unfortunately, it's often literally impossible to tell the difference from an initial confrontation, and once you encounter enough trolls it's hard to keep up the benefit of the doubt for everyone else. Stupid trolls ruining it for everyone >:(

That said...

If you put a person in the corner, I think there anger, and frustration would lead to some nasty things being said without any initial intent of such.

I think a big issue here is when people put themselves in the corner, by going into a conversation where they know their opinion will be taken badly, and then blame any defensive rudeness on everyone else's "unexpected" attacks. Even though such a person isn't consciously trying to be a troll that's what they're effectively being.

A while ago I had the nasty self realisation that I do this a bit sometimes, and so have given myself a very strict rule that I'm not allowed to state an opinion I know my likely audience will disagree with unless I feel ready to rationally deal with people taking it the absolute worse possible way. I've had to stop going into internet forums all together, something about them makes me uncharacteristically wanky :(

What's a herd of teal and why are you calling me dear? :)

[alias_sqbr]

There are certainly several people of my aquaintanceship who I've decided to never bother trying to have a serious discussion with unless I'm in a mood to be very non-confrontational and polite after seeing their reaction to other people's contrary opinions. Then again, once more context is important: if they know and like you then they're probably more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt compared to some stranger (conversely, one should expect less lee-way from strangers, even nice ones)

I think it's ok to have public debate which is limited to people within a particular band of opinions if you're up front about it. See, for example, the userinfo of any lj community on controversial topics like feminism etc. In such cases anyone who falls outside the band of opinions has doubly damned themselves by being unwilling to follow the rules. But I do have a problem with people who just assume that everyone (on their friendslist, say) will agree with them and then get agreived if anyone doesn't.

Yes, there is a negative spiral with these things, I've seen it a lot on polarised discussions about politics or religion. If you start by saying "All -blah- are rude and stupid" you're unlikely to get a whole lot of polite reasoned replies...

It is, unfortunately, possible to play quite subtle games with relevance, unilaterally trying to frame the terms of debate to exclude anything that could be said against your position

Hmm, that's not something I've noticed but I shall keep an eye out for it. There are so many different varieties of dodgy argument it's easy to miss some :/

Incidentally, on the subject of tone and understanding where other people are coming from and so on, I hope I don't come across as arguing with you (particularly given that your views and your behaviour, so far as I've seen them, seem models of fairness and balance). I'm just … thinking it through in your direction, so as to speak.

Heh, yeah I realised that. And given that we agree that people should be more open to honest disagreement, it would be hypocritical of me to complain even if you were :)

Re: What's a herd of teal and why are you calling me dear? :)

[quillori.livejournal.com]

if they know and like you then they're probably more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt compared to some stranger

I agree with you. It's unfortunate in a way, because one of the especially good things about public discussions is that you can can interact with strangers, who may have points of view and reasons you would never have thought of or understood yourself, whereas it's in the nature of things that your friends probable think in roughly the same sort of way as you do much of the time - most probably you choose to associate with them because you have something in common. So anything that tends to reduce the chance of a profitable discussion with strangers is rather a shame. But I don't think there's anything to be done about it - it's hardly unreasonable to be more sure of someones good faith when you know them than when you don't. And the very fact that strangers may think about things differently from you means you can't be certain that one of the things they think is that civil and reasoned debate is good and trolling bad.

Hmm, that's not something I've noticed but I shall keep an eye out for it.

It's something I only noticed quite recently, although I don't know if I've just missed seeing it in the past. The first time I noticed I was actually mentally going along with it, and then it suddenly struck me that the only reason I thought the comment off topic was that I'd somehow come to accept there was only one proper way to approach the subject. And yet, given that the subject had only just been raised, in the middle of a wide-ranging discussion, who had decided that there was One True Approach? ... Oh dear, reading back over that, it's far to vague to be helpful, and yet I'm reluctant to give an example, because I've only ever seen it done on topics that are absolute lightning rods for wank. I think what happens is that various well known ljers post on a subject, wanting to look at it from a particular perspective and not unreasonably rejecting comments not from that perspective; sometimes other people who admire said posters conclude either that there is just something inherently wrong with comments of that sort, regardless of context, or that there is only the one perspective from which the subject can be examined. To assay an example (one I absolutely haven't seen): there are plenty of discussions in which 'but men can be raped too' is irrelevant (and indeed, would attract much suspicion of trollishness) because what is being discussed is women, and rape is being looked at with regards to their experience; on the other hand, it would be very wrong to think that any time rape is mentioned, it must automatically be talked about in the context of women's experience or that it is automatically wrong and off topic to make any mention of male victims in any discussion of rape. Well, perhaps that example is too good: I wasn't thinking of something as serious as ignoring the existence of one group of victims of a serious crime, just the damage to the general intellectual climate that comes from any practice that encourages the treatment of objections not as things to be rebutted but as things to be dismissed.

Re: What's a herd of teal and why are you calling me dear? :)

[quillori.livejournal.com]

continued from previous comment

What made me elevate it from a dodgy argument to a strategy, even if probably an unintentional one, was the thought of someone of my acquaintance, quite eminent in her field, and generally intelligent and reasonable: she is a keen feminist and very concerned about the abuse of women and the conviction rate for rape¹, which she feels should be improved by reversing the normal presumption of innocence. She also has a habit of framing every discussion as being about the experience of women and how they are oppressed. This allows her to dismiss most objections to her proposal: those at risk of false conviction are men, not women, and abstract principles of justice or the rights of the state against the individual are just that, abstract, and not relevant to lived experience of most women. Thus she neatly sidesteps ever having to defend her position. (Not that there aren't arguments that could be made for her position: it's just that she never makes them.)

Now I think about it, there may be a somewhat different thing going on here? Perhaps in her case, the issue is that while you can choose what sorts of conversations you want to have, if you are advocating something you have a duty to consider (maybe not in any given conversation, but at least at some point) objections relevant to what you are advocating, even if they aren't relevant to the specific conversations in which it normally comes up. Which isn't quite the same as the first thing, which was more people assuming that there's only one sort of discussion to have on a given subject.

¹ Not to keep harping on the topic - it was writing about her that gave me the idea for the (not entirely satisfactory) example I added to Part 1.

Re: What's a herd of teal and why are you calling me dear? :)

[alias_sqbr]

Ah....when you put it like that, yes I have seen that attitude. I think it blurs into "Everyone I've seen say that (in and of itself unobjectional) opinion is an idiot/troll etc, so I shall assume you are and idiot/troll based soley on the fact you have that opinion", and is often another symptom of a polarised debate.

I did actually once see pretty much the example you give: the OP was talking about "ways for men not to be sexist idiots" (or something like that) and had "Don't ever say 'Men can be raped too'!". A male rape victim piped up saying "So, what, I'm not allowed to ever mention it?" and the OP immedietely apologised and changed the post to be less ambigious, but some of the other commenters started with knee-jerk "Don't you understand how derailing it can be" without really acknowledging that this guy had legitimate reasons for wanting to bring it up and not feeling deeply sympathetic to female non-rape-victims who ignored his opinion.

I've also seen lots of examples of white, middle class feminists assuming that anyone who disagrees with their analysis is sexist without acknowledging that there are more perspectives than just the "male" and the "female", ie POC feminists arguing that a "tough on crime" attitude to rape etc is less helpful to women from groups who have a problematic relationship with the police (poor urban african americans, for example)

..but then generally 90% of people who argue against a given feminist statement are sexists who are going to oppose anything which challenges their privilige, so it's an understandable mistake to make.

Tangent:
I actually have a post burbling away in my brain on the way that when group A fights against injustice from the more privliged group B (women against men, POC against whites etc) there is a huge danger of the main deliterious effect being on those who are also less priviliged: either becuase they're on the boundary between A and B, or in some other group, or are technically in B but lack the relevant priviliges. Thus the sometimes unfortunate relationship between feminists and GLBT people (who don't fit into the relevant, sometimes very narrow definition, of "woman")

Which isn't to say Group A should throw their hands in the air and give up on fighting against the very real injustice they suffer, but it's definitely something very important to keep in mind.

Herds of teal deal, part two

[quillori.livejournal.com]

The question of derailing conversations isn't entirely straightforward either. At least, sometimes it clearly is, as in your example. But I have reluctantly come to realise it can stray into more difficult territory: who, after all, is to decide what counts as off topic? Sometimes the conversation has clear parameters set out by the OP or the community rules or similar, which makes it a simple matter. But quite frequently on lj there has been no agreement beforehand by the participants as to what shall be discussed and the discussion develops organically, at which point the whole question becomes less clear. It is, unfortunately, possible to play quite subtle games with relevance, unilaterally trying to frame the terms of debate to exclude anything that could be said against your position. I wish I hadn't ever seen people do that, and to be fair, I think it's normally done unintentionally, but it's a somewhat dishonest tactic, and perhaps particularly dangerous if it is unintentional: wanting to talk things over with people who hold the same views is quite understandable, but if you're under the impression that you've had a number of proper public debates when they've really only been rallies for the like-minded then you are likely to end up holding increasingly extreme and poorly supported views.

Incidentally, on the subject of tone and understanding where other people are coming from and so on, I hope I don't come across as arguing with you (particularly given that your views and your behaviour, so far as I've seen them, seem models of fairness and balance). I'm just … thinking it through in your direction, so as to speak.