Forum moderation policy idea: No overly combative debating

[Dukc]

By now, I have years of experience from the D forums. Like most 
forums, every now and then there are people who just don't seem 
to get along with others but refuse to stop writing either.

Of course, other people often feel to need to defend themselves / 
the language / the foundation / whatever. And let's be honest - 
many of us are a bit addicted to drama, regardless of how grumpy 
it might make us. I know I am - it's the same way we tend to get 
addicted to social media. I think a bit of that tendency is just 
natural and unavoidable.

Moreover, it's not always clear-cut who is the troll and who is 
just miscommunicating in mostly good faith. It's basic manners to 
give a benefit of doubt. Thus, the advice to not feed the trolls 
can work only to a limited extent, and the result is sometimes a 
spectacular flame war.

We have a tolerant moderation policy. It has it's problems, as 
many have written the forums tend to make them angry and it's 
just easier to keep off. Terminating certain kinds of arguments 
forcibly would probably help, as would banning some of the 
troublemakers sooner, as has been sometimes requested.

On the other hand, explicit enforcement of behaviour tends to 
feel slightly condescending, and there's always the danger of 
moderation going too far and shutting off legitimate criticism.

I think there is a particular kind of behaviour that is presently 
(mostly) allowed but that we could safely have less tolerance 
for. I call it "combative debating".

### What is combative debating?

Any posting that knowingly angers or annoys co-debators a more 
than what it takes to get the point across.

In other words, you are still allowed to have as stupid opinions 
as you want, and you are allowed to bring them up. What you need 
to do though, is that if you suspect your post will be disliked, 
you need to take a bit of time to put it in a diplomatic form.

If people still get annoyed by what you post even when you try to 
bring it up respectfully, then fine - it was unavoidable. But if 
they get annoyed because you dramatised, exaggregated the pain 
points, resorted to ad homineum, made fun of those who disagreed 
etc, then your post was combative.

Note, there is no specific bad manner that is needed for a post 
to be combative. It might be combative even if if there is no 
name-calling, no foul language, no character attacks, et cetera. 
The only thing that matters is what feelings the post was 
designed to provoke, and whether that was understandable or 
necessary to get the posters opinion understood.

There seem to be people who think that getting the intellectual 
point across isn't enough, maybe because their co-debators 
"deserve" getting hurt a bit. In my opinion, we can and should 
require that people leave that attitude to the door when they 
come here. This forum is for intellectual debate, not for 
receiving your mandatory dose of chastising for whatever thought 
sins you're committing. Plus, who would draw the line what mental 
punishment is justified and what is not? The only line that works 
without making it a battleground is "none of it".

### Examples

NOTE: I do *not* carry these opinions myself!

Okay:
> D is a great language if you're such an enthusiast you want to 
> work with it in your free time. I have to say though, that 
> rarely I would recommend it for professional usage. It's nice 
> to use in itself, but in an actual commercial project there are 
> generally just too much dependencies on all kinds of 
> third-party tools and frameworks. With D, you'll spend too much 
> time fighting your way around the ecosystem problems that are 
> much more rarer in more mainstream languages, say Java or Go.

Too combative:
> No serious developer would ever use D for any serious project. 
> Yes, the language is nice. So what? 98% of your time you'll be 
> fighting your anger when Dub refuses to accept your dependency 
> tree, in the rare case there even is a dub library for what you 
> need. Not so nice, huh? What are you guys thinking? Why do you 
> lie to people that D is ready for commercial use when it's not? 
> *WHY*?
>
> Maybe you just refuse to admit it to yourselves and engage in 
> self-denial. Grow to adults. Please.

Okay:
> I understand the motivation behind the recent push to emphatise 
> the GC is the default, and not the manual memory management. C# 
> and Java, after all do show it's a fine safety mechanisms for 
> your average application.
>
> Nonetheless, I believe the direction is misguided. D is a rare 
> breed - a systems programming language. The world is full of 
> GC-dependand langauges. Those who are fine with the GC are 
> unlikely to pick D since so many other languages have better 
> garbage collectors. D can't catch up because it's garbage 
> collector has to be compatible with raw C pointer and therefore 
> can't be generational.
>
> Therefore, let's focus on RAII and reference counting. That's a 
> race where there is much less competition. We should keep the 
> garbage collector around, as it is a good choice for scripts 
> and CTFE, and one reason why D is easier to use than the other 
> systems langauge - namely, Rust. But other memory management 
> methods should be the focus.

Too combative:
> The programming world was better before C# and Java. Okay, 
> okay, the GC brings safety benefits *when you can afford it*. 
> But those languages turned most everybody to a GC zealot who 
> think that nothing else is needed anymore.
>
> It's as apparent here as anywhere. Never mind D brands itself 
> as a systems language, on it's front page! Can't you please 
> just accept that device drivers, game engines, real-time 
> systems and whatever operating system you're using still need 
> to be maintained. A sophiscated person might even think that 
> humanity might new device drivers for new devices some day. Why 
> am I bothering though? It's not 1990 anymore. Nobody will 
> understand it no matter how clear it is.
>
> Then there will be threads wodering why Rust takes over the 
> world, when it has no GC. You will never know because don't 
> understand when sane people tell it to you. So sad...

### The proposal

Combative debating benefits no one. The discussions end up in 
fruitless spirals that frustate everyone, yet there are not 
necessarily any grounds for moderation to kick in under the 
current policy. It has no benefits for free speech either, as the 
definition explicitly says it's combative only if it is toxic 
without reason. Anything you can write combatively you can as 
well write respectfully.

The proposal, you quessed it: overly combative debating shall be 
forbidden and henceforth grounds for closing of threads, and in 
severe cases bans.

I do not propose a heavy-handed policy on this, quite the 
contrary in fact. There still should be plenty of space for 
normal self-expression, and no expectation to be perfect. In 
almost all cases, the moderator should first warn when someone 
crosses the limit, and employ sanctions only when those warnings 
go unheeded.

The difference to the present situation is there needs to be no 
particular (unwritten) rule broken, such as name calling or going 
off topic. It only needs to be shown that a debator is stirring 
up bad feelings with no constructive purpose, and it can be 
intervened.

What do you think?