Rhetorically speaking, "I don't want to sound rude" can have the opposite effect as the one intended by the writer (when I'm on the receiving end that's almost 100% of the time). It basically states, from the get-go, that the opposing argument is so deeply flawed, requiring such a strong, ruthless counter-argument, that there's a good possibility that you might offend your interlocutor's sensibilities. Even if you're so fucking right that your answer erupts from the depths of your logical mind with the power of a thousand volcanoes, that's not a good way to create rapport. At this point, no one knows your reasoning yet. You may sound like a douche bag. You may be right, but not as right as you think. You may also be very wrong, and in that case you not only promised something you couldn't deliver, but you also made it hard to take the conversation forward. Because, by belittling your interlocutor, you created an environment where getting it wrong is not admissible, and he/she will apply the same rule to yourself. Even in the case that you're right, your behavior discouraged further questions. All because you wanted to be nice! Communication is hard.

A Short Summary and Introduction Before the Actual Content of This Post:

A site—especially a small one, like Tildes—is going to have growing pains. That's natural. It's also natural, and to some extent, necessary, for users to raise issue with remedies for these growing pains. However, there's a spectrum of correct ways to do this, and a way to not do this. If you aren't interested in—or think you already have a firm grasp on the subject of—this post, you might want to skip it.

Tildes has reached its first major streak of growing pains, as I'm sure everyone active or lurking's noticed. We've also reached our first few incorrect methods of handling these. There are a few obvious things you shouldn't do, and everyone knows that—tantrums, slurs, personal attacks, etcetera—I'm going to be discussing a less realised one, and ways you could handle it instead.

Now, onto the good stuff.

Repeatedly, when handling issues, Tildes has seen a recurring circumstance. User makes post, upset. User namedrops and or subposts a user (the most apt description I could think of for a term lifted off of Twitter—subtweet—for example, "I'm not saying it's Garfield I'm talking about, but there was a suspiciously large orange cat with a mild food addiction with a fondness for lasagne who really pushed my buttons!" and etcetera). User hits "send." The targets of it feel offended, and the poster gets yelled at by the community for hurting people. No one wins.

The trick to fixing this: stop going out of your way to call out users, directly or indirectly. If you have issue with something someone said, either take it to an administrator, or directly message the user in question (politely, of course.) There's no reason to air dirty laundry in public, and there's no reason to bring personal grievances into the public eye for minor things.

If you notice an issue, do the above, and nothing changes, wait a short while before making a post on it. There's a fair chance it will resolve itself. If you end up feeling the need to make a post, do not mention individual conversations. Do not give examples from actual conversations; make an analogous example and put it into quote blocks. Never name a name or names, don't allow hate to be directed at anyone.

We're all (presumably) adults (or close enough,) here. If you have any desire for Tildes to flourish, act like an adult. Passive aggression isn't the behaviour of one. Aim to have better behaviour than the docs recommend; you might slip up sometimes, but you'll never fall too far if you keep that in mind.

Anyway, if you ended up reading this; thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. I've spent a lot of time handling large forums, and in comparison to most of you, fairly small, incredibly high-volatility subreddits with immeasurably close communities. If you can't get a community to do the above, or something close to it, it's more or less going to be a death warrant for it. We'd all prefer not to have that happen to Tildes, so I—and presumably, most of us—would really appreciate if people made an effort to stop that from occurring.

Hate to copy reddit's slogan, but really:

Remember the Human.

Thanks again,

Eva.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker on a truck in front of me. It said "Ecology is not a religion", my first thought was this guy is an idiot, etc. etc. Then I began dismantling the entire bumper sticker in my head while I drove. "Of course ecology isn't a religion, it is a science! -ology denotes a field of study!" I don't know why, I guess to reassure myself the world wasn't falling to pieces. This brought up a question that often crosses my mind but I've never had an answer for: How do you discuss open minded topics with close minded people?

This doesn't necessarily have to focus on ecology and environmental issues, any "controversial" issue that one side might become completely close minded to could qualify. Homosexuality, gender identity, gun rights, and privacy all come to mind. If you spend any amount of time on Internet forums and boards, you've come across someone like this. No matter how much scientific fact, evidence and truth you show them, they simply deny it. They cherry pick what you presented to make their point, they pull the fake news card, etc. How does one deal with this?

In my mind, I don't think there is any way one can deal with it. How do you reason with someone who is explicitly rejecting reason? I'm not asking "how do you change their mind?", doing such a thing is quite difficult and shouldn't be the primary goal of a debate (though it could be a byproduct of a healthy debate). I don't like to attribute one's opinions on some topic to their entire personality. Just because I disagree with them doesn't make them bad, nor I to them. Sometimes, this is a hard pill to swallow. How do you a) converse or debate with these people with an end product being improved mindsets on both sides, and b) swallow the proverbial pill?

In the end, we all need to talk to each other, or else we end up in 2018 where the sitting president rejects scientific fact, politicians are being elected on planks of homophobia, racism, and denial of science, and intolerance is the new norm it seems.

I'll level with you right now: I hate both of these terms.

"Political Correctness" is a term that gets used by a lot of people to talk about what I would consider to be basic politeness ("don't intentionally offend someone if they've made it clear they don't like a word, or would prefer to be referred in a certain way; just try"). I have suspected for a while that what these people typically really mean when they talk about political correctness is a fatigue with feeling like they're being forced to meet standards of politeness that are decided by others, and which they do not share.

"Civility" is a term that gets used just about every way you can imagine. It can mean politeness, it can mean "nonviolent protest," it can mean voting, it can mean only certain kinds of protest, and it can mean meeting decorum (which is a more formal way of saying politeness, but it has its nuanced differences, so I suppose I'll list it, goddamn, twist my arm why don't you). The range of possible meanings makes it pretty annoying, and borderline useless to talk about directly.

The title of this thread is an intentional play on one of my frustrations with a munk debate which was shared about a month ago. I believed the terms were too dependent on who "you" are in the statement. So rather than have them redo the munk debate, I thought we could have one of our own.

I definitely have my own views on this claim (that I'll be sharing below), but this has been such an awkward issue on this site that I think it's worth exploring directly. So explore with me:

1. Is there a difference between "political correctness" and "civility"?
2. Is either term valuable to society?
3. Why the hell are so many people so hot and bothered about these two terms, and also seemingly unable to interact meaningfully with anyone else?

So, where do you draw the limits on what constitutes as a sandwich?

I am kind of fond of this alignment chart as a starting point.

I think I fall somewhere around True Neutral-ish. While I think everything in the structural purist row constitutes as a sandwich, I do not consider Choctacos, burritos or poptarts sandwiches.

Speaking of poptarts, potential spin-off debate: Is a poptart a ravioli?

For the past few months I felt less and less inclined to engage in conversation on Reddit and other discussions platforms. The risk of any expression being met with a (severely) negative response is just too great. I don't know if it was always like this and that I just don't find it worth it any more or if there is an actual trend of people being more of an asshole more of the time to each other online.

I've only joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and enjoy most of my time here. I've also noticed that I'm now more active again on other platforms. It's made me want to express myself again. I put more effort in my contributions. I'm not necessarily getting more pleasant responses, but there are fewer negative ones, I think.

Does this sound familiar to any of you?