De-Escalation

[dvgrn]

EDIT by dvgrn: This post by toroidalet was a really good effort at encouraging de-escalation, The part of the post below got reported (no, not by any of the feud participants!) as being off-topic for the Factorio thread, so I had to do something about the post report. It seems like this post really deserves its own thread, anyway! Since the feud in question started on the LifeWiki, it seems appropriate to give these words of wisdom some space on this board.

Now, on to the more difficult personal problems. I would just like to point out that while I am making some criticisms, I am not criticizing the characters of the people involved, nor am I criticizing everything about them. I am criticizing what I believe what needs to be criticized, and defending what I believe needs to be defended. You both feel you have legitimate grievances, and to some extent you are both right. I know how it feels to be attacked and provoked, then made to look like the villain for responding in kind.

It seems to me that the tensions on LifeWiki have started to metastasize to the forums, and I do not know enough about that conflict to decide who started it, who was justified when or how everyone has violated every rule in the book. It does not matter. You all have to find some peaceful coexistence, some way to deal with each other without creating these violent arguments.

Confocaloid, you have been a valuable contributor, and I share your frustrations regarding the renaming of the logarithmic replicator rule.
But whatever Haycat2009 and the others have done on LifeWiki, you were the one who started this particular argument. You may have just been asking a serious question, but it seems improbable to me that Haycat2009 would not see your question as a personal attack and would instead view it as a well-meaning, rational question. Still, you felt you were treated with hostility for a reasonable comment and responded in kind.

Haycat2009, you are relatively new, but new users especially deserve to be treated kindly. And if that 2009 means what I think it means, then you are probably more mature than I was at your age. You did not start this particular argument, and you felt targeted for a slight mistake.
But you kept the argument going. At first, you tried to respond calmly, given your other "disagreements," but it seems improbable, however measured you tried to make them, that the sentences "Also, do you have to doubt everything I do? It feels like harassment," would not be seen by confocaloid as a personal attack rather than an objective, rational statement. Still, you felt you were treated with hostility for a reasonable comment and responded in kind.

Both of you may see the previous paragraphs as a "false equivalence," but that equivalence is precisely the point. I want to show both of you that however unjustified you may find the comments shouting at you from your screen, those hostile comments are made by someone who is just like you, who is thinking the same things about your comments as you are about theirs. This has nothing to do with the merits of your positions nor with any other concurrent issues.



You are not trolls, neither of you. You are both human beings. That person who is arguing with you is not a troll, either. This is not to say that trolls do not exist on the internet, but we are fortunate to have never been blessed by the presence of any for too long. When you are surrounded by unreasonable trolls, consider that you are being overly hostile. You are not equally responsible for the dispute on this thread, but you both are responsible for its escalation.

I know that neither of you wants hostility, and both of you think you are just responding in kind, but when you presume hostility, it presumes itself. No matter how unreasonable the other's positions, no matter how heated your past exchanges, no matter how unfair you perceive the treatment, you have to be respectful. Don't attack others, and don't try to get other people to respond angrily. And do not prove to the other person that you are in fact a troll. Do not give them the satisfaction, if nothing else.
You are not trolls, neither of you. You're better than that.

Someone else said it better than me:

I seek out people who signal that they want to discuss things honestly and rationally. Then I try to discuss things honestly and rationally with those people. I try to concentrate as much of my social interaction there as possible.

So far this project is going pretty well. My friends are nice, my romantic relationships are low-drama, my debates are productive and I am learning so, so much.

And people think “Hm, I could hang out at 4Chan and be called a ‘fag’. Or I could hang out at Slate Star Codex and discuss things rationally and learn a lot. And if I want to be allowed in, all I have to do is not be an intellectually dishonest jerk.”

And so our community grows. And all over the world, the mysterious divine forces favoring honest and kind equilibria gain a little bit more power over the mysterious divine forces favoring lying and malicious equilibria.

Andrew thinks I am trying to fight all the evils of the world, and doing so in a stupid way. But sometimes I just want to cultivate my garden.

Really, I could have just posted this article and cut out most of my own writing here.

You don't have to become best friends, but if you both want to stay in this community, if you want it to stay a community, you will have to be respectful at all costs. This is the price of tolerance. This is the price of free speech. It is "why do I have to be respectful to these people who are always criticizing me, harassing me, who never seem to respect me? Why can't I only do unto to them what they are doing unto me?" Of course, your opponents are thinking the same thing. This is what you have to accept if you want free and open discussion and tolerance of different views. This is what you have to accept if you want these forums to stay healthy and enjoyable.

So just try it. Try to be respectful anyway. From your next post, try removing those negative words altogether or deleting that last snide remark. No matter how justifiably angry or disrespected you feel, resist the urge to engage. Maybe don't even give a reply. I am not asking for you to resolve your differences or even to apologize, just to be nice. Keep being nice, no matter how mean they are; respect them until they give in. That is the only way to banish the trolls.

I would like to end with some words of wisdom (and I do believe they are such):

Turning a community's focus away from the actual hobby onto unrelated issues and generalities is how you take the soul out of it. (I modified a sentence from an older discussion.) This thread is not about the hobby.

For me, the actual hobby means CA patterns, CA evolution rules, anything else directly connected to Life/CA (e.g. ideas for algorithms/software to explore CA, posting completed searches (either positive or negative results), creating physical models of Life patterns, etc.)

What kind of forum do you want? You know the choice you have to make.

[confocaloid]

EDIT by dvgrn: This post by toroidalet was a really good effort at encouraging de-escalation, The part of the post below got reported (no, not by any of the feud participants!) as being off-topic for the Factorio thread, so I had to do something about the post report. It seems like this post really deserves its own thread, anyway! Since the feud in question started on the LifeWiki, it seems appropriate to give these words of wisdom some space on this board.

I object to this moderator action. By moving part of their post here and removing the original, dvgrn puts the post out of the original context where it actually made sense, and made it practically impossible for the author to correct later any errors or to reword the post.
Prepending the irrelevant green text adds insult to injury, by creating a new irrelevant context.

[haaaaaands]

ughhh i thought we had settled this confocaloid

[azulavoir]

By moving part of their post here and removing the original, dvgrn puts the post out of the original context where it actually made sense

The context of it being in that thread is irrelevant - this post is not specifically about Factorio disputes, or t-HighLife, or conditions or transitions.

This post is about forum behavior as a whole - putting it literally anywhere on a forum is correct. And since the core of all forum disputes at the moment seems to be between you and Dave here, you posting in this thread that he started, and once again using the exact tone that warranted the post in the first place, has once again put it perfectly in context.

EDIT by dvgrn: I've corrected a misspelling of confocaloid's user name in the quote header above. Everyone should please remember to follow rule 1a. Deliberate misspellings are neither kind nor respectful.

[C28]

i'm gonna rip my hair out

[toroidalet]

As the person who made the original post, I would just like to say that I agree with the decision to move it. I am not bothered by the loss of editing powers nor by the green text. And while some context is lost here, I think that continuing discussion about it in the Factorio thread would lead to derailing that thread as well. Unless a large number of people disagree, it shouldn't be an issue.

Of all the bad responses I worried about, I never imagined the cruel irony that other people would start an argument on my behalf, over how I "would" have responded to an action that has nothing to do with the content of the post.

Also, it feels like none of the other commenters has really understood my post. To me, every one of those posts, however justified, is in some way "poking the bear:"
Confocaloid, why did it have to be you who objected to the moderator action, knowing that you were involved in an active dispute with dvgrn? You could have let someone else make those comments (e.g. me), and just by it being someone else, that would have calmed things down.
Azulavoir, I don't know if you are involved in the LifeWiki feud, but you responded to someone involved in a number of feuds in a way that seems likely to create another. What kind of response did you think "...you posting in this thread that he started, and once again using the exact tone that warranted the post in the first place, has once again put it perfectly in context" would receive?
As for the other two comments, what purpose did they serve? I am genuinely curious because I cannot see anything good that could come out of them.
Every one of these posts was a choice. What are you choosing to happen?


"But if you refuse to poke bears, they will run around and wreak havoc and say, 'Please don't poke me,' whenever you try to stop them." This is fair, but the "bear" here is not a person but the possibility of hostile argument. That does not mean that we should sweep disagreements under the rug, nor that people should be able to shut down discussions with accusations of "hostility," but that when they are debated they should be debated in a way that is more civil and does not lead to accusations of "trolling."

I suppose there is a trollish reply one could give to me, something like: "You said the price of open discussion was that people would get to do things you didn't like, and you would have to grudgingly tolerate them. So why are you spending so much time writing rambling posts on this issue?" That is a misreading; what I said the "price" is is that one has to give the opinions and actions of opponents more respect than they "deserve". When someone is wrong on the internet, you have to pretend they are a smart person with reasonable opinions rather than a complete idiot. That may not be true everywhere, but it is true here, and I want it to be true here.

What kind of forum do you want? You know what choice you have to make.

[HerscheltheHerschel]

I object to this moderator action. By moving part of their post here and removing the original, dvgrn puts the post out of the original context where it actually made sense, and made it practically impossible for the author to correct later any errors or to reword the post.
Prepending the irrelevant green text adds insult to injury, by creating a new irrelevant context.

I object to you objecting to this moderator action. Also, toroidalet himself said that he doesn't object to this moderator action.

[Sokwe]

By moving part of their post here and removing the original, dvgrn puts the post out of the original context where it actually made sense, and made it practically impossible for the author to correct later any errors or to reword the post.

while some context is lost here, I think that continuing discussion about it in the Factorio thread would lead to derailing that thread as well.

Perhaps not everyone is aware of this, but there is a small arrow after "toroidalet wrote:" that is actually a link back to the original post where context can be found. The part of the post that was moved was off-topic for the thread, so it's not unreasonable to move it. I don't think there's a way for moderators to split a post, so quoting it was the next best option. The quote would also give toroidalet a notification so they could find this thread and comment any corrections they had in a reply if they felt the need.

ughhh i thought we had settled this confocaloid

i'm gonna rip my hair out

I think these are maybe not great posts in a thread about de-escalation. I think you would both agree that these posts aren't really constructive. Please try to avoid such posts in the future when discussing anything contentious.

I object to you objecting to this moderator action. Also, toroidalet himself said that he doesn't object to this moderator action.

Probably also not the best for de-escalation. I think toroidalet's post speaks for itself here.

[Haycat2009]

And if that 2009 means what I think it means, then you are probably more mature than I was at your age. You did not start this particular argument, and you felt targeted for a slight mistake.
But you kept the argument going. At first, you tried to respond calmly, given your other "disagreements," but it seems improbable, however measured you tried to make them, that the sentences "Also, do you have to doubt everything I do? It feels like harassment," would not be seen by confocaloid as a personal attack rather than an objective, rational statement. Still, you felt you were treated with hostility for a reasonable comment and responded in kind.

Just to confirm: 2009 is a random number from an online random number generator set to 4 digits. It looks like a year but is not. Anyways, there is about a 1 in 90 chance of it looking like a birth year.

Also, my real age as of 2023 is 168.

[Haycat2009]

Note: Ok, no references!

I understand that nobody has bad intentions and all want peace. I am willing to completely submit to moderator’s actions. While I understand that everyone has opinions, some stronger than others, I will halt all edit warring and make up with every party that I was involved with.

This is an apology by Haycat2009. I apologise for this chaos and will stop now.

[toroidalet]

Here is a PM I sent to Haycat2009 last night; they requested permission to post it here. I have not changed anything, not even the deleted sentence.

(I wrote this PM before seeing that you had deleted your last post. I decided to send it anyway because I think it will be helpful. If you have any concerns, you can ask me.
EDIT: I am also in the process of writing a similar PM to confocaloid.)

Hello Haycat2009,

You expressed interest in making the forums a nicer and more peaceful place. [deleted sentence]

The whole point of my rant was that if you want peace, you have to be nice to people who are being mean to you, especially to people who are being mean to you. It is not easy, but you cannot make exceptions. You cannot make exceptions to not making exceptions. No exceptions at all.

You may say that this is an unfair restriction, and why should you keep at it if confocaloid is unwilling to do the same? That is a good question, but I will just keep saying what I have always said:
It may be unfair, but you have to do it anyway. If you want not to get involved in pointless arguments, then you have to choose not to start pointless arguments, not to join pointless arguments, not to continue pointless arguments and to resolve pointless arguments in a peaceful way.
That's easy to say but harder to do. But you cannot make confocaloid stop. You can only make yourself stop, but they will certainly not stop if you do not. (Plus, if they are being mean and you are clearly not being mean, you make them look bad )

It is very hard to resist the urge to respond with equal bile to a hostile post (indeed, I recently impulsively wrote a very long rant in response to certain hostile comments ). But if you resist, you will be better for it. You will be happier for it. And the forums will be better for it too.

It is very hard, and you will not succeed every time, but if you try then it will become better. I know you want to avoid these situations, and I know how hard it is to avoid them. Just keep trying.

Of course, if others insist on embroiling you in pointless arguments, it becomes even harder. If they are being malicious, then calmly explaining your disagreements will make them lose interest. If they are not malicious, it might be better.

Here are some exercises you can try:

• Show your next post to someone you know to see what they think of it. Is it furthering peace? (And if you are unwilling to show it to someone else, why post it?)
• Write your next post without negative words at all. Not even words like "troll" or "accusation."
• Read the next confocaloid post as though it were written by someone who does not hate you. Spend as much effort as you can into twisting each comment and reinterpreting it in a non-hostile way. (e.g. "teachers can be dyslexic too")

I do not mean to suggest that you should completely eliminate disagreement and become a passive, smiling punching bag. Rather I am saying that disagreements should be expressed in a polite manner to avoid escalation into personal attacks and the development of grudges. There are also benefits to you personally, but those are just a bonus.

You asked confocaloid this question: if you were a troll, then whom were you trolling? You are not trolling confocaloid nor any other members of the forum. You are only trolling yourself. Do you want to be trolled by yourself? You can choose to stop trolling yourself. You know what choice you have to make.

[GUYTU6J]

Here is a PM I sent to Haycat2009 last night; they requested permission to post it here. I have not changed anything, not even the deleted sentence.

Thank you. Although I have not been editing LifeWiki (and getting involved in arguments) for a while, I do appreciate genuine de-escalation effort like this. On the community's side, by the way, how are arguments resolved these days?

[dvgrn]

On the community's side, by the way, how are arguments resolved these days?

We're testing out some formalized LifeWiki:Dispute resolution rules. We haven't had a lot of practice with them yet, but so far it looks like they'll probably work pretty well ... eventually, when everyone gets used to them.

The persistent problem that we've been having lately is with prolonged and pointless LifeWiki edit wars, so LW:DR rules are focused on providing a clear alternate path to avoid those.

The same general ideas -- discuss, disengage, escalate to a moderator but only if it still seems important after a week or two -- could easily be applied to hypothetical future prolonged arguments that are only related to the forums. But for now the forum rules seem to be adequate. The LifeWiki is where the difficult disputes tend to happen.