I came to this forum in part because I’m getting tired of arguing with ignorant people on Reddit. I wish there was a way to find a community where people have some basic understanding about how the world work (or recognize when they are talking about something they don’t understand) – and we can agree on a definitions for our discussion. For example, I recently got into fruitless arguments with people on reddit who 1. insisted that ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are the same thing 2. insisted that ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘sexual assault’ are the same thing. Do you think it’s productive to even debate with those people (in online forums). I feel like the best discussions must come from some shared frame of reference… so maybe they would be best centered around some recorded/written content.
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If arguing with such people is not productive, how can we establish discussion fora/community where willfully ignorant and argumentative people don’t take up space/attention?
I’m going to start from the assumption that there is value in having these online discussions. If not, what is the alternative (short if full detachment from society)?
There are a variety of options. Here are some I can think of:
Enforced moderation. See the rule list of gtio.io. Ask why these rules are chosed. Of course, this means very little if left unenforced. See the next point, lots of overlap.
Banning. The bottom line is, someone who won’t constructively engage with a community is a useless distraction at best and harmful at worst. There is often no benefit to tolerating them. Banning should be done with care, as it can easily lead to controversy if ban reasons are vague or gray, which may lead to allegations of political bias or personal interest.
Ostracisation/Neglect. A community that successfully builds a strong culture can self-defend by simply not engaging with worthless or malicious content. This is harder on politically diverse or larger forums, and requires new members become aware of the culture. Requires a consensus and social enforcement when violated, so it’s not common to see it working. Silently voting down posts can be a related concept. “Don’t feed the trolls” and other old memes are a demonstration of this.
Gate-keeping. If a forum has prerequisite knowledge and isn’t just an open general forum like this, it could be useful to require new members to prove they’re knowledgeable enough to constructively contribute by some vetting process. This makes sense for more specialist communities.
I think I may be most partial to 2 & 3… but of course, I’m probably not willing to jump through any substantial hoops required by gate-keepers… unless I was confident that I was joining a really productive community.