Wait, isn't Capito for civility?

OT, but about civility (4.00 / 2)

Kos just tweeted about updating the DailyKos rules... thoughts I'd repost the key ones here as we tend to more or less follow these community standards:

Some Rules Regarding Participation in Diaries and Comment Threads

Do not make threats or calls for violence. Threatening to beat up or kill someone, or suggesting that people should kill themselves, or saying that poison should be put in somebody's crème brûlée, or making similar remarks, even as a joke, is prohibited and can lead to banning. This does not mean that all forms of cartoon violence, literary references, metaphors and the like are barred.
Admin Moderation: A single warning. Second offense: Banning.

Revealing the real identity or other personal information of a registered user who has not him- or herself made that identity known at Daily Kos or otherwise given permission for such information to be publicly revealed will result in summary banning. Among other things, such revelations include, but are not limited to, phone numbers, addresses, including email addresses not publicly available at Daily Kos, places of employment or clients, gender, sexual orientation, and the identities of other family members. Asking hostile outing questions such as: Do you work at such and such a place? when research has shown this to be true or likely to be true is a form of outing and will be dealt with as such.
Admin Moderation: Summary banning.

Registered users working in paid (or unpaid positions of authority) for political campaigns must disclose their affiliation when it is relevant to the conversation.
Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning and, in an exception to the outing rule, exposure of the paid person's real name.

Registered users who write GBCW diaries - saying they are leaving and never coming back - will be banned after their diary's 24-hour recommendation period has expired. A user who changes their mind may return to Daily Kos under their pre-ban moniker and user identification number only after appealing for reinstatement to the Director of Community or Markos. Users who write diaries saying they are taking a temporary hiatus from posting at Daily Kos are not banned.

This is a site for adults and language is not generally policed here, in terms of "shit," "fuck," "asshole," or any of those other family-unfriendly words. Avoid "fuck" in headlines to avoid triggering browser filters of users who log on at their workplace. Anti-semitic, anti-Arab, racist, sexist, ableist and heterosexist language, however, is unwelcome.
Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning.

Thread stalking is defined as having three requirements:
On multiple occasions, one or more commenters follow a community member into diary threads; and,
The commenter(s) posts comments that include false information, personal attacks, lies, or implied/express disclosure of private information; and
The commenter(s) engages in this conduct with the intent to harass, harm, humiliate, frighten or intimidate another poster. This intent may be inferred from the number of times that the commenter follows a community member into threads and/or the nature of the comments posted.
Stalking does not include the mere expression of disagreement, seeking out diaries or comments of favorite diarists or simply frequent interaction on the boards.
Accusations of stalking should not be made on comment threads but emailed to Meteor Blades or another administrator together with relevant links to evidence that comports with the requirements cited above. Repeated accusations of stalking in the comment threads will lead to a suspension of posting privileges.
Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning.

Dealing with trolls
Trolling is a sad reality of internet life. Most trolls tend to be blatant, posting comments or diaries that are clearly intended to provoke an angry response. Other trollish messages are posted simply to disrupt the conversation in a diary. But some people like to label others trolls who aren't. This is typically done to stifle someone's point of view or to deflect attention away from a real troll. Such promiscuous use of the term muddies discussions and is just another form of name-calling that reduces productive interaction on the site.

Be judicious in calling someone a troll or in treating someone as such.

Directly responding to an argument a troll makes is a waste of time; trolls tend not to be interested in actual debate. The community relies on a number of other methods to keep the community as troll-free as possible.

Primary among these methods is hide-rating comments. Trusted Users can give comments a rating of Hide. If a comment has been hide-rated by two users and recommended by none, then that comment (and all replies to it) are automatically hidden. If a comment has been recommended at least once, then Hides must be applied to the ratio of 3x+1 (where x is the number of recommends) in order to hide that comment (again, all replies to the comment will also be hidden). Hidden comments and their responses can only be seen by Trusted Users.

There is no mechanism for hiding trollish diaries. The most common alternative is to post a comment to the troll diary containing a recipe for a tasty dish. (This alternative can be used in replies to troll comments also.)

Plenty of examples can be found in the Troll Diary tag (note: Most of those examples will probably be old, as the use of the "Troll Diary" tag is currently discouraged). An entire cookbook of recipes has been collected and is being sold as a fundraiser.

Another alternative for trollish diaries is to post completely blank comments, or comments with a single letter or symbol, as a way of filling up the diary without actually rising to the bait of the troll.

Being a much smaller site we don't have to deal with these things with nearly the same formality. From the conversations I've had with other frequently diary writers and commenters, I think these rules do a decent job of capturing the spirit, at least, of how the community tends to handle things.

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by: Clem Guttata @ Wed Jan 12, 2011 at 22:37:41 PM UTC