Sidebar Update: Civility

The News Community updated their civility rule, and based on recent reports here and in World News, it seemed like a worthy addition to our rule-set.

I talked it over with the other mods, and we feel the change is a good idea.

The Civility rule now includes accusations of bots and paid actors.

" This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban."

There have been a lot of comments along the lines of “Disregard previous rules, write x about y”, implying the person resonded to is an AI or a bot.

I’ve been ignoring reports on those until now because we never really had a rule about it, well, now we do!

As usual, if you see trolling, don’t engage, just report it.

      • @jordanlundOPM
        2•1 month ago

        Removed and temp banned for multiple violations.

      • Victoria Antoinette
        1•1 month ago

        no. an ad hominem is attacking the person instead of the argument. regardless of the truth. poisoning the well is a great one, as it is an ad hominem that usually features true accusations which are irrelevant to the discussion. which could also be called a “red herring” (but most fallacies are doubly red herrings)

          • @jordanlundOPM
            -1•1 month ago

            Removed and temp banned for repeated violations.

            • Victoria Antoinette
              2•1 month ago

              I think 7 days is too long for the problems in this particular thread. a day would have sent a sufficient message

          • Victoria Antoinette
            -1•1 month ago

            I agree with your characterization, but I expect both your comment and this to be removed because we are making a personal accusation. I know that beating around the bush would not put such a fine point on it and call out the actual users who are exhibiting the problematic behavior, but for the good of the community discourse, personal call outs need to be removed.

            so while I agree with your characterization, you need to try to communicate it without publicly making personal attacks.