GeekNights Community Code of Conduct

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21

We can’t possibly call out every single dangerous group. A good person who would be welcome in the community should be capable of telling apart which groups are good or bad. A few examples suffice. Someone who is not capable is akin to someone who can’t tell a phishing email apart from a real one. They are probably not welcome in the community.

Likewise if someone is constantly finding new dangerous groups to promote and then using the defense of “they weren’t on your list!” That person is defying the spirit of the code, and is violating the rule of acting in good faith. They also would not be welcome in our community.

That’s also why it’s important NOT to provide a list. By making a list you are saying these are the banned ones, and everything else is OK. By specifically not making a list you are making it abundantly clear that things not listed are still not permitted.

This is a lesson learned from the US Constitution. They were afraid when they made the Bill of Rights that by listing the rights it would be implicit that the listed rights are the only rights. That’s part of why the tenth amendment exists.

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22

Does the list of “dangerous groups” happen to include every US political party other than the Democrats?

23

Ikatono, I’m going to be blunt. You post in bad faith. You are one of the most reported members of this community.

You are, honestly, the kind of person we are trying to drive away. Your behavior is toxic. You are the reason a lot of people have left this forum. Your posts are literally serving as examples while I work on updated drafts of the CoC.

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24

Of course not. There are plenty of chill parties. Ever hear of the Working Families Party? DSA?

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25

For what it’s worth, I do think the green party is a good example of a group that should be on this list. Unlike most of the groups on the SPLC’s list of hate groups, they’re actively a scam. One component they have that others don’t is they try to fool people into believing that they are legit.

Having an example be a group trying to pass itself off as something other than it says on the tin would likely be good to have as one of the few examples.

If not the green party itself, some other scam would be good to have made explicit in the code of conduct.

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27

See, posts like that are exactly the kind of behavior we want to discourage.

What are you trying to accomplish? What action do you expect someone to take based on reading your post? What do you think they are going to do? What possible positive impact could that comment have? What purpose? What do you want to achieve?

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28

You should elaborate on that in the code of conduct, then. “Good faith” can mean different things on context and you didn’t provide very much.

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29

What are you trying to accomplish?

Show people an example of disingenuous solidarity with the left, which is actually meant to prevent criticism of left-liberals while offering no little to no support in turn.

What action do you expect someone to take based on reading your post?

Examine future interactions with left-liberals so see whether they’re being genuine. Do they not only ask for concessions from the left, but also offer concessions to the left? Do they sooner side with the left than with “centrists”?

What do you think they are going to do?

Realize that the left gains nothing from making concessions to left-liberals, because nothing is offered in turn. Rather than achieving a half-victory, the left weakens its position by failing to distinguish itself from its establishment competitors while failing to move the positions of the left-liberals. The Overton window then shifts right and the left is once again asked to compromise.

What possible positive impact could that comment have?

Recognizing that left-liberals will not cooperate, leftists seek to establish their actual demands, rather than the watered-down versions we’ve long been told are acceptable compromises. With their ability to accurately point to the systems causing suffering in people’s lives and to improve their material conditions, the left is able to gain enough power (local electoral and on a larger scale non-electoral) to cause real change, rather than the pretend shifts in party policies that currently is all we can hope for.

What purpose?

Once leftists start moving away from left-liberal politics and towards organizations that actually share their goals, the left will be able to build the local structures necessary to actually threaten capitalist hegemony, rather than waste their time and effort on controlled opposition.

What do you want to achieve?

Communism.

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And do you understand why all of your engagements not only fail to further any of this, but actively harm your goals?

Do you understand why you drive people away here? Why I’m trying to write a code of conduct that prevents your style of posting?

Do you understand that your response has not furthered your case?

Why are you still here?

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31

What part of the CoC am I violating? Whom am I driving away from the left.

32

Yeah… I rest my case.

Why are you still here?

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33

Anime, mostly.

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But why here? Don’t you have anywhere else to go on the Internet? Aren’t there other communities more suited to your interests? Do you even listen to the show? Do you honestly find your interactions here useful, enriching, or valuable?

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35

I’m closer politically to the average forumite than to the average anime fan elsewhere. I never really saw a reason to leave. Plus I’ve been here since like 2011 and until a couple years ago listened to every episode of the podcast.

If you’re going to ban me stop with the failed Socratic method and just do it.

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37

I’m not going to respond to any posts that say I’m in bad faith until they choose a post and explain.

38

This clearly falls under “contradiction” while the CoC requires “counterargument” or better.

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40

I placed the bar on the floor and you tripped. Pick a post and explain.

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41

Trying to argue a technicality on a Code of Conduct violation is a clear sign that someone is not a good fit for a community.

Many conventions treat that, or similar situations like continuously pushing the boundaries but not technically violating them, as a removable offense.

You have illustrated why.

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42

There’s nothing more good faith to me than

  1. Regularly framing other people’s opinions, whether political or culinary, as disingenuous or (a word you use frequently) “dumb”.
  2. Often veering into straw man & ad hominem territory.
  3. Acting the martyr when called out about it, while maintaining a hostile & argumentative posture.

I’m not fooling myself that replying isn’t a waste of my time. I called out several of your posts, in thread, as bad faith & your response indicated you were uninterested in actual introspection and constructive criticism. You’re completely righteous, we’re all idiots who put you on ignore, so why are you here & what do you have to prove?

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44

The question of “bad faith engagement” is important and I think it’s worth discussing, but I think it’s also important that it start at the very beginning.

What is the point of an online community? Of a community at all, really? We all have different purposes, but speaking for me, my main purpose in seeking community is to find like-minded people with whom I can grow and also to whom I can provide help in their own journey of growth. We use different vehicles to achieve this, be it shitposting hilarious memes or engaging in earnest navel-gazing discussion, but ultimately my personal goal (and I suspect the goal of many) is to truly connect with someone else in an effort to understand and be understood.

So rather than talk about “bad faith,” I think it’s important to define what “good faith” is. If we accept the above premise about seeking connection and growth, then generally it involves honestly representing yourself and what you stand for to others. We compartmentalize discussions as a way to focus our values through a specific lens, and in having many such discussions we can discover many facets of each other (and ourselves in the process). Engaging in good faith means that you are forthright in that representation, because we are proceeding from the assumption that each person here wants to be known to others and wants to grow - and that won’t happen if you aren’t honest in what you’re about.

So then “bad faith” engagement is anything that isn’t an attempt at “good faith” engagement. The question you should ask isn’t “what should I not do,” it’s “what should I do to honestly represent myself?”

Not all bad faith engagements are equally bad - see the above commentary about sarcasm. Sometimes that’s what we do to express ourselves, but we have to understand the consequences of the conversational tools we use and where they’re appropriate. That’s part of emotional and intellectual maturity. And this isn’t about being perfect in your engagement - we all have our moments and step a little too far, but when one displays a pattern of consistent misrepresentation, we now have an issue. That is a person who does not subscribe to the fundamental premise of the community, and believes that it should be proceeding from a different premise.

A simple example of common problematic bad-faith engagement is playing the devil’s advocate. I know for a fact that almost everyone on this forum is guilty of doing so from time to time, and it’s worth it to interrogate why it is you feel the need to present an argument to which you do not subscribe. What purpose does this serve? What are you trying to accomplish? Could you accomplish this in another way? Someone who persistently advocates for the devil is obfuscating their personality and motives. It creates distrust in a space that is ostensibly about building trust, and when it becomes a pattern it means the person doing so is trying to sow distrust and discord.

Persistent off-topic commentary can also be a common method of bad-faith engagment. Up above, Ikatano displays this flagrantly. This is a discussion about a code of conduct, and within that code of conduct we got an off-topic comment about calling for “unity.” This is a fine conversation point - for a different discussion. Why then, in a topic about something else, would you bring up an unrelated point? Further down, the answer is laid bare: the poster has another motive that they are bringing to this discussion. The off-topic comment reveals that they don’t care about the topic at hand - they want to talk about something else they think is more important, in this case a continuation of political discussion into a topic that is not about that.

The problem is that doing so in an unrelated topic dismisses the importance of that topic to others. The persistent off-topic bad-faith poster is saying that the opinions of others are unimportant to them, and that we should be talking about the thing they think is important. A community is a give-and-take exchange, but that type of bad-faith engagement demonstrates that the person is uninterested in giving up any part of their ego to the community.

Emotional maturation comes as you realize that a community is not all about you nor is it about your pet issues. Different people are motivated by different things and come to different conclusions, and not only is that okay, that’s actually a good thing. It means that if you engage in good faith, you will be exposed to ideas that you may not have otherwise had that can give you insight into your own journey. When you proceed with disingenuous arguments, you are saying that you are done growing, that you are right and don’t need to hear other perspectives, and that others are wrong and should come over to you. Does that sound like an attempt at building community? No, it doesn’t. It sounds like an attempt at dictating community, which is an inherently flawed premise.

So the tl;dr is that defining “bad faith” is pointless. Instead, focus on “good faith” by honestly representing yourself and what you believe in a discussion, instead of bringing in unrelated points that betray your motivation.

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