FSFblog communication guidelines

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This is a working document. It is intended to hone and revise feminist guidelines for effective discussion, debate, and argument.


Goals

  1. Provisionally, these guidelines should enable and facilitate communication, by providing standards relating to listening, respectfully hearing substantive points, and responding respectfully to substantive arguments. Basically, how to engage in conversation usefully.
  1. However, they also should deal with how to simultaneously engage in meta-analysis of the flow of discussion, so that you can see when inappropriate and nonproductive communication techniques are coming in -- including sexist or racist or elitist language or stances. Basically, how to see when a conversation is being derailed.
  1. Finally, the guidelines should include information about when and how to redirect a conversation to keep it flowing; or to cut it off. This should include information about when it is appropriate to bring up meta-analysis of the conversation -- not responding to a point, but pointing out some characteristic about how another person is arguing. Also, if not appropriate to engage in meta-analysis, how to direct back to appropriate channels. When is it better to do it "offline" in a private setting, and when is it better to engage a behavior publicly. Basically, how to heal or kill conversations.

Other Thoughts: How to protect yourself; how to protect others; how to teach someone else; how to recognize a teaching moment; how to not feel responsible for representing 100% of the time; how to engage in group conversation dynamics; etc.



Prospective Uses

  • At the least, a guide for discussion on the feministsf.net forums -- blog, forums, wiki, and so on.
  • Should be useful as rules for all discussion participants and moderators


Status

  • Right now this is both redundant and inconsistent! But it needs to be rewritten because some people don't know how to argue.


Caveat

Politeness and good communication and civility and respectfulness all depend on political circumstances. The goal of feminism is not politeness, good communication, civility, or respectfulness, but women's liberation from political, social and economic oppression.

Because the incumbents dictate the nature of civility, there is no such thing as a polite revolution.

This Wiki cannot function as a feminist tool if it is divorced from its cause and wedded to abstacted views of interpersonal relations. Therefore, the guidelines below must always be considered in a political context.


Sources

Draft

Communications 101: How to Argue Effectively & Respectfully (title)

Communication styles, like everything else, is a feminist issue. Moreover, having clear, respectful communications makes discussions effective & useful for readers and participants alike. So, here are a few tips & no-nos: (preamble)

Guidelines - need to be organized, clarified, rationalized as a system.

  • Respond to the substance of the argument, not the speaker's identity and not the speaker's style.
  • But if the speaker's identity or style are relevant to a meta-discussion then say so.
  • Be aware when you are leaving the original topic and moving into meta-discussion / processing / pissing wars. Sometimes this is good: Seeing sexism or racism in a discussion and addressing it right then, head-on. But sometimes it's bad: Getting into pointless back-and-forth pissing wars about increasingly irrelevant minutiae, misunderstandings, what was said, etc.
  • If you see yourself going meta, you should understand why you want to, very clearly. And before posting you should make a conscious decision that it is appropriate; it will further the discussion; it is in keeping with feminist principles of full & effective communications for all.
  • Repeat: Self-awareness. Not knee-jerk responses. Anger is good, healthy, strong. Pissiness is annoying. If you have a righteous anger over a wrong that is being committed, express it! Voice your anger. Use strong language if you like or it's appropriate.
  • Respect other people. Saying that a statement, an argument, or a worldview is fucked-up or sexist or racist is different from saying that someone is fucked-up or sexist or racist. Attempting to classify someone else is disrespectful to them.
  • If someone is being disrespectful then don't tolerate it.
  • Engaging in a pissing match with someone who is being disrespectful is not interesting to the rest of the world. Helping them figure out what they're doing wrong is useful. Pointing out to the forum moderators that they are inappropriate is useful.
  • Don't engage in pissing wars.
    • If your only response is basically "You're a --" or "No I'm not!" then you're not adding anything of substance to the discussion. Are you characterizing / defending / explaining your own statements, or are you talking about the subject of discussion and adding to it?
    • If you feel the need to characterize / defend / explain your own statements, then you better understand why they were mischaracterized / attacked / misunderstood. That means understanding how you miscommunicated to begin with.
    • If your response is directed to one person only then it's probably not interesting to everyone else even if you want them to hear it. Think about why you want to respond publicly to the comment. Is it because you feel insulted or aggrieved?
    • Consider whether your response is going to add anything to the discussion, or just encourage the other person to come back with a "yes you are!"? Look down the long path of the discussion: Is it heading into a place where a reader will learn something?
  • A sense of humor is good.
  • A sense of humor is good. But if you're talking only sarcastically then there's a good chance you're over-simplifying the other position or engaging in strawman argument.
    • If you're using sarcasm are you also adding something substantive to the debate?
  • Explain what your point applies to. If your point is about the overall sense or tone then say so. If you agree with part of an argument but disagree with another part, then specify the points of disagreement as well as agreement, before detailing the points of disagreement.
  • Effective communicators are generally not just adversarial: They seek to understand what the other person is saying, and why, and seek for the common ground on which there might be legitimate dispute.
  • Generally, people represent themselves. They don't represent all of a fandom. They don't represent everyone else in a discussion group. They don't represent everyone in their gender, their ideology, their race, their class, their nationality. Don't try to speak for others and don't assign an individual's statements to other members of a group and don't assign other group members' statements to an individual.
    • Don't start talking about "we" think this or "we" said this -- because who is the "we" anyway? And can you really accurately sum them up?
    • And if you start out with "we" or "I" don't switch mid-way through.
  • Don't mischaracterize what other people say: Don't put words in their mouths, don't suggest that they said something they didn't, don't reduce the complexity of their argument.
  • If someone else is mischaracterizing your argument, do call them on it. But don't just call them on it. You should understand and be able to justify your explanation.


Alternate [shorter, more general] Draft

1. Read carefully before you respond to a post or comment. Are you sure you understand what the other person is saying? Are you reading anything into the post or comment that isn’t there? Are you confusing the commenter with someone else in another thread or discussion?
2. Think before you comment. Are you saying what you mean? Are you saying it clearly? Does your tone match what you’re trying to say? Are you implying anything you don’t want to imply? Are you using language that could be offensive or inflammatory? Remember, no one can hear your tone of voice or see your body language.
3. Make your comments meaningful. If you disagree with someone, explain why. Name-calling is boring and pointless.
4. Remember the difference between criticism of a person’s work and criticism of the person. Criticism, as in “literary criticism,” is analysis, not attack. Critically discussing gender in an author’s work is not the same as accusing the author of being a sexist. Pointing out concerns about a work isn’t the same as calling for that work to be banned. Bear this in mind both when you are criticizing and when you feel criticized.
5. Try to keep to the original topic. If there’s a topic you’d like to see discussed, put it on your own blog and point to it in the comments, or write to one of us and suggest it. Or take the conversation to email.
6. Take responsibility for keeping discussion civil. Treat others respectfully, even (especially!) if you disagree. Try to be constructive. If a conversation is growing heated, think about what you can to do calm things down. Apologize if you make a mistake.
7. If you don’t understand the conversation, educate yourself. We have lots of resources about feminism and feminist sf. Please make use of them! They can help you strengthen and refine your own positions.

--JL

warn once then ban (Dec 2006)

I agree with Janet's suggestions. --Liz Henry 21:03, 19 December 2006 (PST)

Here is a suggested "warn once, then ban" policy to establish norms of respectful communication:

  • No cussing people out directly
  • No name-calling
  • No racist epithets
  • No criticising the person not the ideas in their writing

When this is violated by a blog author or commenter then any blog author can call it to a vote. We vote on the warning and in a second instance vote on a ban (or temporary suspension).

I would like to encourage openness and debate on the list. Maybe we can agree on this as a minimal group standard for responsibility in behavior.

Towards that end I propose voting first on whether to implement this policy or one like it.

--Liz Henry 21:02, 19 December 2006 (PST)

votes & short descriptions

  • I VOTE YES to implement this one or one like it --LQ 06:55, 20 December 2006 (PST)
  • I also VOTE YES. --Therem 15:38, 20 December 2006 (PST)

longer discussions

  • Honestly I like all of these. We do need a statement of First Principles (FPs) by which we all operate, I think, so that none of us feel undue frustration. Then, I think there can be different views of the First Principles; different interpretations and applications and spellings out and case studies. So the other versions can also exist and people can be referred to any of them. The FPs are the basic groundrules for process under which we operate. (A fractal system where you can spend more and more time thinking about smaller and smaller pieces, because there's not enough of that on the Internet already. <g>) --LQ 06:55, 20 December 2006 (PST)
  • Oh - I think one thing that might be good would be if we bloggers each filled in the biography, or wrote a "page" about ourselves; I can link to that for the person's name. We can each explain our take on feminism, SF, communications styles, etc. That doesn't get out of the FPs, but allows us to implement our own interpretations. --LQ 06:55, 20 December 2006 (PST)
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