Ban politics from the discord

[OMJ]

Or at least institute rules against personal attacks for both sides. This type of behavior, if further enabled, will lead to larger fissures in our community like the one that just happened. It isn't a good look for us.

[Ludwig]

I walked into that and immediately walked back out. Definitely not something I want to see in my farty party spacemen chat.

[Flourish]

I don't think we should ban politics from the Discord. Our rules are definitely due for a revision, though, and you're right that we should make it even more clear that personal attacks aren't okay. If you're interested in contributing your thoughts, let me or another admin know. I'd also encourage people to look into becoming a mediator, if they wanna help with conflict resolution and such. The wiki page is still a work in process and needs to be made a lot more accessible, but if that sounds interesting, check it out!

As far as politics and offtopic discussion in your farty party spaceman chat goes, I just made a post in #news which should hopefully help reinforce the idea that #spaceman-discussion is first and foremost for discussion of the game.

Hi friends, public service announcement! If you wanna talk about the game and space stuff in #spaceman-discussion, but other people are talking about other stuff and refuse to go elsewhere and it's making things difficult or uncomfortable, please be encouraged to let an admin know and we can direct them to some other channel.
What this means is you should first try to talk to those other people and say something like "Hey could you please take this to some other channel, we wanna discuss space". If they agree, then it's cool. If they refuse, that's where admins can come in and help direct the conversation elsewhere.

I don't think anyone really wants to fight with their pals, so it's important to let us know early if things aren't working.

[popecrunch]

Here's the problem with banning politics: Absolutely nobody agrees on what 'politics' as a subject is. Me, it's 'politics' if it deals with some form of government. If you're not talking about how a group of people or a region is or should be governed, it's not politics. For a lot of others, it's 'politics' if you're talking about whether or not some areas have enough healthcare access; for others, the bullshit that QUILTBAG folks have to deal with in a basic day in life is 'politics'; for others, discussing the prevalence of antisemitism in our culture is 'politics'; etc etc ad nauseum.

There's also the issue that if you tell people to stop talking about a given topic, that is inherently a political act. There's also also the issue that if you tell folks to stop talking about a given topic, there's a pretty good chance you'll find them trying to find exactly where the line is, trying to figure out exactly how close they can get to it without tripping over it, using allusions or coded language to talk about it while maintaining plausible deniability that they're not, so on and so forth.

Banning political chat is a nonstarter because there's no consensus on what exactly you're banning, you'll end up inviting more of what you're sick of, and the hypocritical act of essentially saying 'nobody's allowed to hit people with sticks, and if you break this rule, i'll hit you with a stick, because it's okay if i do it but not you'.

[vampirate]

Could just say "hey, let's not discuss hot societal issue topics, including governance. in general chat." Like, maybe make a room for those kind of discussions so people in other channels can politely request people take it there.

[bubs]

I've found from years of being an extremely online guy that rules like this rarely work out and become more of a bludgeon people use to shut down discussions they don't like.

[popecrunch]

Let me tell you exactly how that would go down, because it's how it's gone down in basically every chat group i've seen where such a rule has been attempted.

persons 1-5: having a perfectly fine conversation about a hot social issue topic, not getting nasty, not necessarily all agreeing with each other, but keeping it reasonable
person 6: hey that breaks the 'don't talk about hot societal issues' rule, can it

timeline a: persons 1-5 stop. there is no conversation. silence reigns for a while. this isn't better
timeline b: persons 1-5 don't see it or ignore it, so person 6 brings in an admin, who now gets to decide between preserving the LETTER of the rule by forcing a conversation that wasn't causing trouble to cease, or preserve the SPIRIT of the rule by telling person 6 that there's nothing there worth silencing. this isn't better

i *promise* you that trying to ban a subject that deeply effects people's lives will not end well. at best, because it's so ill-defined by necessity, it'll have a chilling effect on all conversation because 'what the fuck is politics, is the latest episode of a popular tv show a hot societal issue, what's okay, nobody knows'. at worst, it'll be used as a bludgeon by some to try and shut up people they do not like - 'they are talking about the city they live in and the city they happen to live in is the capital city of their state, POLITIIIICS', or a different gaggle of assholes will play 'i'm not touching you' with it for weeks while the admin team argues for days about whether or not this or that is 'political' because even though they didn't come out and say anything about a given candidate, they're using all the talking points, their avatar is an obvious reference, zub zub zub.

it's a godfucked mess no matter how you slice it. intentional communities where the community managers / moderators / what have you are actual paid employees and trained by professionals struggle with it, we're a group of volunteers. we don't have a hope in hell of threading the needle and doing this correctly, and we're basically guaranteed to make it infinitely worse if we try.

i really do think the smartest course of action is to come down on people being shitasses, whether they're being shitasses about politics or the relative importance of the oboe in an orchestra. 'no shitasses' is infinitely easier to follow and administrate than 'no politics', i promise you that

[UrsulaMejor]

I've been in discussions and communities where labeling things "politics"  is used as a bludgeon to silence people, especially non-normative folk whose entire lives have been forced into being political.

It's not that I think our community would do that, I just don't trust those kinds of rules to begin with. in my experience, the rule itself has only ever been used as a tool to use against people, not for people. It's also never once worked to actually make things safer or more pleasant.

We should be focusing on the parts of these conversations that actually cause harm, and not "politics

I promise you that we recognize the difference between good faith and bad faith conversations. if you feel a conversation is going a bad way, inform the admin team.

[vampirate]

I still think there would be value in having a channel to take it to, so people get to have a choice in whether they take part in or around these conversations. Rather than suppressing it you have a place to redirect it.

[Sundance]

I went ahead and scrolled back over the discord chat to see what this stemmed from.

Politics seems to devolve into name calling and antagonistic behavior. That's the part that needs to be tackled. 

The problem is that there is oft a holier-than-thou attitude that individuals seem to take when the topic would (in their eyes) be in their favor, particularly regarding social issues.

To quote breaking bad "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole".

I would recommend keeping tabs on people who immediately spring to antagonistic behavior. To touch on what Urs just said above, there's people with mostly decent views, but arguing in very poor faith. "I can't get this point across without literally looking like i'm faceplanting against the keyboard" kind of faith. 

Name calling because you disagree that person's view on things is never ok, no matter what. Yes you heard me - no matter what. It only causes further schisms, as OMJ puts it. In truth, as is with online personas, you never truly know that person behind the screen and their motivations in life. 

Political discourse should be orderly. If someone says something like "I think bisexuality are just suits who are still in the closet" (I pulled that out of my ass, but it's actually been directed at me once) the correct approach for this discourse is to question it, or if you're not willing to engage with this person, simply state why you think that is wrong, or why you think that's hurtful. 
Not call someone a shitstain facist. As soon as that happens, an admin should doot a whistle, or something that makes people aware that y'all should chill. A chill hammer, if such a thing could exist. 

It's not about mandy being right and billy being wrong. Truth is - nobody really cares after a certain point. Only mandy and billy.

It's about mandy and billy both engaged in dumb argument while the onlookers watch from the sidelines, bored off their tits waiting for it to end so they can talk about something else. Preferably about the great diversity of cheese, or better yet, spacemen.

[popecrunch]

creating a channel to take it to just moves the problem, it doesn't solve it or even really try to. if someone's a shitass, let the admins know, and we'll make them stop being shitasses or make them stop being here.

[UrsulaMejor]

I think that your example, sundance, is something I think should be brought to admin attention. I don't think there is such a thing as a civil discussion that has one party othering or generalizing people over their identity like that.

Civility is for discussing budgets and taxes and economics, not the validity of someone's gender/sexual/ethnic/racial identity. I wouldn't personally start a big fight over it, but deff get the admin team involved asap if that kind of thing comes up

I agree with the overall sentiment, but not with your example.

[Sundance]

I think that your example, sundance, is something I think should be brought to admin attention. I don't think there is such a thing as a civil discussion that has one party othering or generalizing people over their identity like that.

Civility is for discussing budgets and taxes and economics, not the validity of someone's gender/sexual/ethnic/racial identity. I wouldn't personally start a big fight over it, but deff get the admin team involved asap if that kind of thing comes up

I agree with the overall sentiment, but not with your example.

I'll steadfast with my example, if only to make a point. 

That insinuation, while quite hurtful, still warrants civility. This is not turning the other cheek. This is you saying firmly, to the other individual, that you feel what that person said was incorrect and hurtful. That's not weakness, that's resolve. 

And yes, in these situations an admin could be invoked. This is not mutually exclusive. You could be civil to someone and call an admin to look into something in the same instance. 

Immediately launching into emotive tirade is exhausting for everyone and drags conversations into places that need not be dragged.

[vampirate]

But what happens when the're admins part of that discussion? I'm not being obstinate, just genuinely what is the procedure? OMJ even pointed it out in that conversation today. What do you have us do when there are admins actively not intervening, or even contributing? With the wizards gone the only tippytop person to go to would be Wire, but I don't think he wants to be bugged every time.

This might be a better question for a town hall, if this is out of place I apologize

[bubs]

Admins are people too, and when I say I dont like shutting down politics talk they're included. If you think an admin is being nasty you can PM a different admin to make a complaint and we'll discuss it