Can kindness lower the quality of a discussion forum?
How this is not impossible, at least in theory
If you make a comment here, it had better be either true and necessary, true and kind, or kind and necessary.
That’s the comment policy of
(ACX). Quoted from here. But the host, Scott Alexander, has not always been completely happy with the quality of the comment section, at least in so-called Open Threads, and has been experimenting in this regard: see here, fourth item. Furthermore, in an important trilogy of posts around the turn of the year, he highlighted how the media, even something as bad as Infowars, usually mislead by saying true things in a deceptive way, as opposed to by saying untrue things. Although I haven’t seen it discussed, that insight would seem to have repercussions for the viability of truth as a comment filter.The following thoughts are hopefully of somewhat more general interest than just in the ACX case; and for the sake of provocation, I shall let them end with a theoretical scenario of how having one’s comment forum unkind could actually raise its quality.
In the previous SBP post, quite a while ago, we managed to design the perfect poker format, so as a little throwback let me adopt (tongue-in-cheek, I hasten to add) a convention from poker forums. When asking for advice how to best play a hand, many do this on behalf of “Hero” and call the opponent “Villain”. As in, for example, “Hero bets $240, Villain raises to $700, Hero ?” (after providing relevant details of the situation). Here we have Hero and Villain clashing, not at a poker table, but in an ACX comment exchange.
Let’s imagine an Open Thread specifically, as that’s what Alexander referred to. Hero jumps in with a correction of something Villain says in response to a top-level question. Villain disagrees, and the two exchange further comments. Hero is not happy with how Villain conducts the exchange, and ends up writing the following:
Nothing but bad faith left on your side. You didn’t make your basis for comparison clear at all (did you really mean nominal v real — more likely that was just my charitable attempt to rescue any sense from what you wrote); you just tried to obfuscate, and I didn’t let you get away with it. Now you’re reduced to using most of the content-bearing part of your latest contribution to construct a particularly silly claim on my behalf (“admittedly you could simply claim [...]”) and revel in its silliness. What I meant in my last, added sentence was (obviously) that ... [In line with our general quest for bird perspectives, I omit what was ostensibly meant. This is a post on the “meta” level. The actual content of the argument is not relevant here.]
That’s not exactly an effort that satisfies the ACX kindness requirement.
The best that can be said for it is that having nowhere to go in terms of further escalation might now help Hero to finally abstain from putting in the next reply. But from the start of the whole exchange, in fact, Hero has not been as kind as one could have been. Hero called out Villain’s initial statement bluntly, and then did not look for compromise but worked to prove that Villain’s contributions were contradictory.
For the purpose of discussion, however, let’s assume that what Hero says is true. In particular, let’s assume Villain really did argue in bad faith and employed techniques like obfuscation, deflection, etc. Then, unlike poker “villains”, this Villain would deserve to be criticised. Notice also the power of deterrence that someone like that enjoys: others may think twice before challenging Villain, even if they possess the wherewithal to do it in a kinder way. Now, this present post is not ground-breaking but what I find noteworthy here is that Hero may quite possibly have violated the kindness criterion more obviously than Villain has violated the truth criterion. That’s the power of obfuscation, deception, evasion, and so on, that the media uses also. Going by this particular exchange, Villain looks like the superior ACX commenter in terms of truth and kindness.
And then one way to hopefully raise the quality of a forum is obvious. Pivot away from truth and kindness and remove those instead who argue in bad faith.
Here is a counterargument. Kindness can prevent the sort of “fight” where each side feels threatened in their status and forced to revert to obfuscation. Avoid harsh challenges, and everyone can show their best side and contribute to the collective quest for truth and understanding!?
Is it in the situation or in the commenter’s character? My own intuition would be that hardly any situation will elicit blatant bad-faith obfuscation from someone who is apt to raise or maintain the quality of a decent forum. And it is only blatant cases that should lead to disinvitations anyway, since admittedly there is subjectivity in such assessments (more, I guess, than in kindness assessments). I further admit that I am more confident in this when it comes to judgment rather than originality. That is, I find it hard to imagine a blatant bad-faith arguer contributing good judgment; when it comes to them contributing original ideas, that may be easier to imagine. And in any case, this is merely the speculative intuition from someone whose own participation in forums has been rather sporadic so far.
To close with the promised scenario of how kindness could actually be less than helpful (in theory): if those types who are apt to revert to bad faith tend to lower the general quality even on occasions when they don’t do that, then a harsh, direct tone might “flush them out” more quickly, by triggering their bad instincts so they make themselves known and can be removed. (And then, after they’re gone, could the tone even possibly, eventually, improve a bit by itself? Speculation is cheap . . .)