Avoid This Behavior in Any Group.
Most communities, online or offline, have rigid boundaries: no hate speech, no threats, no harassment. But the good community also recognizes more borderline behavior – things that are not so blatantly horrible but can still slowly eat away at the discussion, scaring off (or annoying) good participants until the jerks are left behind. And it can destroy any social group, from a book club or group text to, say, Reddit.
That’s according to community expert Jeff Atwood: Atwood is the co-founder of the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange forums and the Discourse discussion platform. Back in 2014, after the release of Discourse, he asked, “What if we could use empathy as a weapon?” He described six types of behavior that can disrupt group discussion. While he mainly describes their appearance in online communities, they appear in all types of real-life social groups. And if you recognize them, you can direct the bullies towards better behavior or direct their behavior to the right place.
For example, “sharpening an ax” means bringing up the same topic regardless of what the main discussion is about:
Part of what makes the discussion interesting is that it is flexible; a wide variety of topics will be discussed, and these discussions can naturally deviate slightly in the context defined by the site and any categories of discussion allowed on it. Ax-Grinding is when the user keeps coming back to the same pet problem or topic for weeks or months in a row .
We all bully sometimes – this is my biggest hobby – and we need others in our social groups to tell us to stop or postpone it for the right time and place. (Like therapy.)
In fact, it’s helpful to read Atwood’s entire list of gray areas of behavior, paying attention to your own behavior. Were you “this guy” for drinks after work or in the D&D group? Take responsibility and watch yourself. First, it will give you a leg to scream on to everyone else.
But in reality: respecting people will help them grow and avoid ostracism. So you help them. And if you don’t see a problem with the behavior that Atwood describes, or think that “supervising” such behavior would violate your right to freedom and free speech, you may be committing one of the five social misconceptions of computer geeks . Consider this your continuation of reading.
What if we could turn empathy into a weapon? | Horror coding