Sometimes, especially after antagonistic flareups on these blogs, it certainly feels that way.  That's not to say that non-virtual, offline, "real" communities are by any means necessarily better, or less conflict-filled, or anywhere near perfect, because we all know that that's not true.  But because much of my job here is to try to figure out not only how to make things "work better" in this online community, but to figure out what that even means, these flareups and disagreements weigh on my mind.

Often, the root issue is a fundamental disagreement over how we should treat each other.  When I first started working here and exhorting community members to engage in civil dialogue even when they disagree, I was told by many veterans that that just wasn't a reasonable expectation.  That's not how things were in the blogworld, I was told; get used to it, grow a thicker skin--If you think it's bad now, you should've been around when....  And then, of course, there was the ever-popular retort that it would just be too boring without personal insults and namecalling.

But in between flareups, I've been buoyed by occasional shout-outs, in comments or via email, from even those who warned me to cut out the wishy-washy goody-goody stuff in the beginning, that things were better than before, by whatever standard.  And I've been gratified to watch community members take the lead, unasked, in engaging their neighbors, building community, even asking the tough questions and getting us all to participate in some self-reflection about what we're all doing here.  And I thank you for that.

But even still, it seems that some of us are unable, for whatever reasons, to leave insults and namecalling, however veiled or inocuous we think they may be, behind.  Some, when called on such behavior, are amenable to change.  Others slip back into bad habits.  And still others refuse to agree to try to follow the rules, and resort to changing identities, using IP proxy servers and newly created email addresses to prevent us from identifying them beyond a shadow of a doubt as previously suspended users, even when it may be obvious on the surface to other users.

As usual, politics and religion remain contentious flashpoints in this community.  And though some of you still refuse to believe me, I don't care what side of what argument you're on--all I care about is that you make your case without resorting to cussing, namecalling, and personally insulting your opponents.  I know that many of you think that I am unfair and unbalanced in the "discipline" I dole out--but remember that yes, this is subjective work, done by one person with one pair of eyes and limited time, in need of your help in identifying potential problems and understanding why you may think it's a problem, and that I try to keep much of this behind the scenes, without publicizing what happens to which user and why or when, in favor of users' privacy.

It's fascinating to me how often both "sides" of an escalating argument employ the same strategies against each other, and both accuse the other of being unfair in its use of said strategies, and both accuse me of being unfair in my handling of the other side when it uses those same strategies (but of course doesn't see anything wrong with what it's doing and doesn't want to be chastised for its similar actions).    But let me lay this out as clearly as I can:  if, instead of arguing your case, you resort to tarring your opponent by, in so many words, dismissing them as inherently stupid because of mental defect, mental illness, drug use, or other disease, saying that this is why they believe what they believe (and of course they're wrong and you're right because of it), that's an insult.  That's an attack.  That's not making your case.  That's not building an argument.  That's dismissing what another human being has to say, what another human being believes.  So you don't believe what they believe, you don't agree--explain why.  Don't just say, well, you think that because you're stupid/mentally ill/deluded/high.  And please, don't think I'm addressing this just to "one side" or another, because all sides have done and continue to do this, and it needs to stop.  And, of course, if this doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you.

I've been reading and rereading this post about online social norms since it was posted in December by danah boyd, a leading scholar of online communities and social networks, especially as used by teenagers.  She digests and puts together all of this much better than I could, and so I'll leave you with her words.  Thank you all for continuing to be here, continuing to work to make this a "better" community, whatever we all decide that means.

"musing about online social norms"

by danah boyd, social media scholar

Since the earliest days of Usenet and email, people have complained about how much easier it is to be mean online than offline. If you spend enough time on public forums, it's hard not to run into mean-spirited rhetoric: defamation, hate speech, flaming, etc. The latest story of helicopter parenting turning deadly highlights how easy it is to deceive to be cruel. Discussions of using mediating technologies for the purpose of bullying often rely on arguments about how technology aids and embeds malicious acts by reducing the consequences of breaking social norms. Governments often seek to ban technologies because of mean-spirited interactions that take place.

Of course, what's at stake is fundamentally a philosophical question, the precise one that got me kicked out of my 9th grade English classroom: is "man" basically good or evil? (I argued that man was basically evil, but apparently this was the incorrect answer and I wouldn't back down.)

There are all sorts of forces that limit social behavior in everyday life: fear of legal consequences, fear of social consequences, fear of damage to our bodies, lack of functional capability, whether potential gains outweigh costs, etc. Our legal system takes these forces into consideration and this is where punishments like jail (or the death penalty) operate at disincentives. Likewise, we often try to regulate structures so that it is functionally impossible to commit an act that is perceived to be collectively "wrong" (legal or social). Yet, in truth, we rely primarily on the things that are essential to humanness: desire not to face physical harm and desire to fit in socially.

Mediated environment throw these forces for a loop. I can say anything I want here and you can't punch me. At least not while you're sitting on your computer reading this. And I have a reasonable expectation that your potential anger will dissipate before you see me again. Furthermore, this fear of bodily harm is very ephemeral - we are much worse about evaluating whether or not an act will result in _future_ bodily harm than determining if it will result in immediate harm. The lack of immediate harm is key here.

The bigger issue has to do with social consequences. I have no way of determining if you're nodding along or scrunching your face in disgust and violent disagreement. I have to imagine your reaction as I write this (and I'm imagining the nods). I have no way of adjusting the next paragraph according to your implicit responses while reading this paragraph, both because I can't see you and because you're reading this in a time-shifted manner. Furthermore, unless you explicitly provide feedback (like comments), I have no real understanding that you're out there let alone what you thought of my post. The lack of social feedback sucks, but the lack of immediate social consequences can be far more dangerous.

Impression management is a core process of human participation in social situations. I try to present myself in the way that I want to be received and based on your feedback, I adjust my presentation. This is not easily learned and teenagers often struggle with this (thus, an "identity crisis" is when one's imagined self doesn't mesh well with how one is perceived) but adults are by no means perfect at this. We all learn through experience which is why social interaction is crucial.

Yet, in mediated environments, impression management is stilted. There's no implicit feedback and explicit feedback is minimal at best ("nice picture" isn't really informative). The immediate social consequences are also not there because there's no way of knowing if someone just walked away. As a result, social norms aren't really enforced online and without this re-inforcement, it's easy to break them without even knowing it.

This gets even trickier when you remember that networked publics bring together people from all sorts of environments with fundamentally different sets of social norms and expectations. Many imagine a melting pot where a new set of collective norms evolves, but because it's hard to provide social feedback, that doesn't happen. It's more like a rotting salad bowl.

Now, add in the fact that people regularly seek attention (even negative attention) in public situations and that public forums notoriously draw in those who are lonely, bored, desperate, angry, depressed, and otherwise not in best form. Mix this with the lack of social feedback and you've got a recipe for disaster. There are few consequences for negative behaviors, but they generate a whole lot of attention.

The question remains: is this the fault of the environment? In some sense, yes because the architectural underpinnings of these environments don't allow for social feedback or meaningful social (or bodily) consequences. This is where legal folks get into a tizzy because they think that legal consequences will solve everything. For this reason, they often argue against anonymity, viewing it as a barrier to regulating social behavior online. Unfortunately, this argument is flawed. While legal consequences certainly limit some people from some acts, they certainly do not limit everything. If they did, we wouldn't need jails and murder would be a thing of the past. More problematically, most of what needs regulated in social environments online is not a rupture of law but a rupture of social decorum. "He's being mean" is not something that the law really wants to involve itself with.

So then how do we fix it? Is it a matter of design? Do we need to bake in social feedback loops and consequences into the core of our technologies? If so, how?

Alternatively, is there a way to socialize people into an environment where they do "what's right" simply because it's right? Of course, this question extends beyond the internet. I fear that as a society, we are relying more on legal regulation and less on social regulation and I can't work out why. But, perhaps the problem is not the internet but a general lack of collectively understood everyday norms. Older people certainly spend enough time bitching about "kids these days," but there are all sorts of contributing factors for building and maintaining collective social norms is hard: age segregation, class segregation, homophily more broadly. We can blame overworked adults, cars, lack of public spaces, single family social units, and other such bits on contributing to homophily and the lack of collective social norms.

But here's where I think that there's an interesting sociological puzzle. What network structures result in strong collective norms? What forces are needed to create those kinds of social network? (This is a classic question of tolerance... we know fairly well that diverse networks have higher levels of tolerance, not surprisingly.) Given that universal unitedness isn't really going to happen, what are the structural changes that increase norm maintenance?

As for the internet, mass media hype aside, I bet that the internet is statistically nicer than it was when I was growing up. While many public forums and community sites like Slashdot are still bogged down with crud, most people are going online to interact with people that they know. There's only so much you can get away with when you're going to see the person the next day. Time delay might not be ideal for social feedback, but it certainly helps.