wordsmithing on the login agreement

Discussion in 'The Undercity' started by seebs, Apr 2, 2017.

  1. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Okay, so, one person pointed out that they have headbugs with regards to Agreeing To Things, so I'm trying to find wording that allows people to not have to specifically say anything that sounds like promising to do the thing.

    Initial draft:

    Kintsugi is based on the premise that nothing anyone can do or say makes it okay to shit on them. By logging in, you affirm that you understand this to be the foundational premise of the community.
    • Agree x 2
  2. Aqua Vitae

    Aqua Vitae put some honey and sea water by your bed.

    Would suggest that you could redirect the statement to be more about the concept behind not banning anyone? "Everyone is free to be here without harassment" or something. "You can't shit on anyone" gets the idea across but it's a little crass.
  3. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    Hmm. *thinking*

    So part of the issue is I really want the thing to be super short. And it's crass, but it's also terse, which is a big win. It's not just "harassment" that's at issue, it's any kind of thinking it's no big deal if someone gets hurt.
  4. rigorist

    rigorist On the beach

    Do you want people to promise to do things or not?

    It seems to me that going round and round about specific words will do no good if you have people who will not pledge to act or not to act in certain ways. Or, even worse, you are just trying to trick them into agreeing when they don't want to agree.
  5. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    So, I want people to promise to do things, but it turns out (1) at most one human has ever done the thing, and that's debated, (2) some people have headbugs such that they cannot promise to do a thing even if they are capable of doing it and wish to do it. So I can't fix that. But I can at least prevent the "no one told me" problem and create a common understanding of what the community is.

    If everyone understands what the community is, then even people who are opposed to that are still working within that framework. Their actions will still be perceived within and by comparison to that framework.
    • Like x 2
  6. devian

    devian Well-Known Member

    "shit on them" is also a really vague statement that doesn't get across what the actual frowned-upon behavior is. Like I can "affirm I understand [the preceding statement] to be the foundational premise of the community", but that doesn't mean I actually understand the preceding statement or what it's trying to get across.

    Is the full charter and guidelines going to be accessible before having agreed to the login thing? Because if not, that seems like it's going to lead to a lot of people "agreeing" to something they don't entirely understand, which doesn't really fix the problem at all.
    • Agree x 3
  7. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I'm not even sure the thing frowned-upon can be meaningfully called a "behavior". And we've had a bunch of smart people poking at this for ages, and I have not yet found any words that seem to actually communicate the thing consistently to everyone, so.

    And yes, the longer posts will be generally-visible.
    • Informative x 1
  8. rigorist

    rigorist On the beach

    Well, then you are just giving notice.


    YOU WILL PLEASE TAKE NOTICE THAT if you act badly, Staff will do things.

    You don't like that? Probably not. But if you will not have an agreement/covenant/mutual promise system, you are going to be stuck with a purely one-sided threat system. I don't see much of a middle ground no matter how you try to make the language pretty.

    Choose wisely.
    • Informative x 1
    • Useful x 1
  9. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I think it's more complicated than that, because this is explicitly not backed by any threat or enforcement. It can't be. It's completely impossible to try to enforce it or impose it.

    And yeah, I'd probably prefer an agreement, except... Well, mental health forum, full of people who have been seriously fucked over by "agreement" language, and that's a compelling reason to not try to use words that carry the implication "and if you don't you've fucked up and someone can punish you".
  10. Chiomi

    Chiomi Master of Disaster

    'makes them an acceptable (or okay) target'
    • Like x 1
    • Agree x 1
  11. thegrimsqueaker

    thegrimsqueaker 28 Moribunding Mouse Aggravates the Angry Assholes

    "you don't have to agree to always do x, but we're putting this up to make sure that you understand why this is a thing here" might serve as a compromise between making ppl agree and giving them the information
    • Agree x 5
  12. Xitaqa

    Xitaqa Secretly awesome

    What about treating the "Welcome Read This First" as being sort of like a Terms of Service, with a really important exception I'll point out in a moment. If the login affirmation includes a link to it directly that people can follow without logging in, it will be a little like the way many sites have the "I affirm I have read and agree to the ToS" thing, but again big exception right about to mentioned

    Don't ask them to agree to the terms of service. Maybe don't even require them to claim to have read it. Like:

    "I affirm that either I have read the first post on the Welcome thread [link] or I have chosen not to but I am being told that the gist of it is that there is nothing anybody can do or say or be that will make it okay to treat them like trash, and this includes treating other people like trash. I understand that I'm not being asked to agree to anything, just to acknowledge that I've been told the above."
    • Like x 1
  13. Maya

    Maya smug_anime_girl.jpg

    "By using Kintsugi, I agree to adhere by the standards of not treating other users with undue abuse [maya note: abuse meaning abusive, like screaming at someone they should fuck off and die] and that such actions may warrant moderator intervention, whatever that may include."

    I figured you'd want to go for concise.
    • Like x 1
  14. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I want to specifically avoid tying "standards of behavior" and "moderator actions", for various reasons. They're not really the same thing; there's things which don't meet the community standard but which moderators won't touch, and there are things which do meet the standard but which moderators are likely to have to do something about.
    • Like x 1
  15. rigorist

    rigorist On the beach

    Is your reach exceeding your grasp?

    I don't think you can make the community be a certain thing by having certain words in the signup statement. And it seems you are trying to get just the right words that will create the proper Kintsugi. Like a kind of magic spell.

    I'm being kind of Debbie Downer on this, I know.
  16. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    I think you're misunderstanding my intent. I have words I'm okay with, I just wanna tweak them a bit because some users have specific headbugs that make particular terminology a problem for them, so I'm trying to maximize for "people get what it means and aren't freaked out by specific triggers that I can easily avoid".

    I can't make the community be something, but I can tell people what it's intended to be and that will give useful framing.
  17. Maya

    Maya smug_anime_girl.jpg

    "By using Kintsugi, I agree to adhere to the best of my ability, the standards of not treating other users with undue abuse. I understand that, if Kintsugi staff deem something I post inappropriate and harmful, that Kintsugi staff may intervene."
  18. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    It looks like I never migrated the change from elsewhere, but I want to stick with "nothing anyone can say or do..."

    "Kintsugi is based on the premise that nothing anyone can do or say makes it okay to treat them like trash. By logging in, you affirm that you understand this to be the foundational premise of the community."

    The problem with "undue abuse" is that, in practice, everything I've seen people do that other people thought was horrible, the people doing it thought was perfectly reasonable at the time when they were doing it.
    • Like x 1
    • Winner x 1
  19. Xitaqa

    Xitaqa Secretly awesome

    I guess the big thing is, is "treating people like trash" an unambiguous phrase? I wouldn't expect it to pass the Gaze of Rigs as an actual rule, but since that's not the intent, does it convey enough meaning to just about anybody?

    I was going to ask, "Does it seem plausible that anybody is going to question what it's supposed to mean? Is it likely that there could be an argument about whether someone's behavior constitutes treating someone like trash?" but I don't think those questions really matter because, if I'm reading seebs correctly, even if those things happen, all participants are at least discussing events in a shared paradigm, so communication is possible. Even if people are unclear about the phrase, they can converse about what behaviors are not cool.

    So maybe in this case ambiguity is a feature not a bug.
    • Like x 2
  20. seebs

    seebs Benevolent Dictator

    That says it better than I've managed to.

    I don't need people to agree on exactly which specific things do or don't count. I just want people to be working within the shared framework that we're assuming that no one "deserves" to be treated like trash, even if they themselves treat other people like trash.

    It's fine and even really good for people to have those arguments about what that means.
    • Like x 1
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