A Code For Conversations
I’ve had this great idea.
It will make the world a better place. If you’re up for it, that is - I don’t want to impose anything.
Scenario 1
You’re at a bus-stop, minding your own business, and a stranger comes up to you and begins a conversation. They say something that indicates they have no sense of reality. You could choose to ignore them. Or you could choose to indulge in a little banter for sport.
Or they say something quite offensive, unprovoked and irrelevant. They don’t even tell you who they are, the anonymous nobodies. Again you could ignore them, you could even ignore them by walking away to the next bus-stop if you felt it was necessary.
Or they say something that sounds quite threatening. You could judge it to be not really a threat, and ignore as above. Or you could think that large knife being flashed in your direction is actually quite threatening and is a reason to run away. And if the knife-flasher follows you, you might consider shouting for help, or even calling the police.
Scenario 2
You’re at the same bus-stop. You bump into an old friend. In talking he comes out with some extreme views and language that makes you uncomfortable. He invites you to wrestle naked in the mud with him.
You could tell him politely that you’re uncomfortbale listening to him, and ask him to stop, and then have a conversation you’re both comfortable with. Or you could squirm for a few minutes resolving never to speak with him again. Or you could just go straight to Scenario 1.
Scenario 3
You’re at the bus-stop. Your body language clearly indicates that you’re anti-social, so unsurprisingly nobody talks to you.
But you can’t help but hear some very unpleasant stuff in the loud conversations very near you. You could do nothing. You could turn up the volume on your iPod. You could phone a friend. You could hail a taxi. You could walk for the exercise. You could judge that an interjection by you might be well received and acted on - and if not, well you know you can just revert to Scenario 1.
Or you could just physically assault the offending conversationalists though you’re aware this option is against the law.
Scenario 4
You’re not at a bus-stop. You don’t even like buses. But other people do and they are at bus-stops and they are talking about you.
Some of these people vaguely know who you are. Most are strangers. False claims are being made, about you, your business, your friends, and your county. You are being defamed.
You could gather up witnesses and bring your case of slander to a court. Or you could carry on watching the horse-racing because you don’t think your reputation is any better than being falsely made out. Or you could drive around prowling by bus-stops to see if anybody is talking about you, and then go straight to Scenario 3.
Proposed Solution
Obviously engaging difficult people in discussion, argument or even conversation, isn’t ideal. Neither is ignoring, whether passive or more active. And who wants to go to court when you don’t even want to go to a bus-stop?
So? How about shiny gold merit star-shaped badges proclaiming I Talk Nice worn proudly on your lapel? Think of it. You can walk up to strangers and confidently strike up a conversation with them knowing they won’t abuse you or your mother.
It would be voluntary of course. Those who don’t like the idea can always wear an alternative dark Anything Goes badge - with a bolt of lightning. And when you get to your bus-stop you can decide there and then based on the ratio of Gold Stars to Lightning Bolts whether to even stay at that bus-stop or to move on without having to wait for anyone to speak - either nicely or unreasonably.
And there wouldn’t be any court cases because none of the Gold Star sneetches would choose to be around the Lighning Bolt sneetches long enough to hear any defamation.
And yes although it’s not the intention, it is possible that the bus company might empower their drivers to stop only for Gold Stars, saying the safety and comfort of drivers is paramount if the system of transportation is to be effective.
And it’s not the plan but maybe the company might purchase the right to build better bus-stops and totally enclose them, putting doors and bouncers on them which only Gold Stars and Bono can get past.
But even if that happened, those wearing the Lightning Bolts wouldn’t be treated as criminals. Oh no. No, they would be free to associate together and to form their own bus company and converse in whatever fashion they feel.
Of course those who choose not to wear a badge of either hue wouldn’t be left behind either. No, these satirists would have their own special mini-buses, nipping and imping around the neighbourhoods in a cavalier and freeform manner, with sirens and the word ’satire’ printed backwards across the front.
It would be a new world. A brave new civil world. With the bus service replaced by the civil service.
Need To Know More?
• The Guardian
• AFP on Yahoo News
• The New York Times
• Michael Arrington
• Damien Mulley
• Twenty Major
And of course:
• O’Reilly’s Radar - the Lessons
• O’Reilly’s Radar - the Draft
• O’Reilly’s Radar - the Call
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Masterful! I wonder will O’Reilly read it? Understand it? Take heed of it?
In fairness to him Primal, and much as I disagree with him, he has read tons of responses on the subject and already taken many of them on board.
He accepts the badges as designed were a crude and negative idea though he does equate any text link about comment policy or terms of service with badges.
He realised quickly that the language was powerful and so “Code of Conduct” was a bad choice believeing that “Terms of Service” or something else people are already used to would not have created so much fuss.
He also realised fairly quickly that his draft was way too simplistic if it was to cover the multitude of communities that blogosphere contains, and so would require a modular approach and the look over of attorneys. Funny how the more you try to ligislate for real life the more complex things get.
And he’s now mostly wording his plans as working towards making available to bloggers better moderation mechanisms. You know we all use moderation mechanism already - even if we don’t, if you know what I mean - and in the fight against spam and attention trolls and irrelevant commentors I wouldn’t say no to having better tools at my disposal. But that’s a long way from aligning any comment policy with a general standard decided by a mob, however modularized that mob’s standards may be. And I think if he just did that without his clarion call and draft, he’d have been just fine.
Somewhere deep in O’Reilly’s comments someone finally suggested the comparison with handing a person a Code of Conduct before having an actual conversation with them but Tim didn’t accept the situatins as being totally analogous.
Worryingly though he doesn’t accept that it would be problematic if blog hosts, and blog tool providers were to start controlling what they offer to who based on bloggers’ choosing to sign up for certain standards (even though he states that’s not the situation he’s trying to create) - as he believes they already do to some extent. Saying he only believes in a voluntary programme, while being okay if it becomes effectively compulsory, is disingenuous at best.
Really I think all he should have done out of the Sierra incident was change his own comment policy - as he did, and then quietly work towards creating those mechanisms that he admires like the way comment threads work at Slashdot and comments can be shielded rather than absolutely deleted at LibraryThing.