Kindness between users sets the foundation for an inclusive, safe environment where people want to interact with each other. When users treat one another with respect, it creates positive connections not only between the users who are directly involved in a joint activity, but also everyone who sees the activity from the outside.
The common factors that cause users to be rude:
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Imbalance of users. There will always be more newcomers than old-timers. Not all new users follow the rules, they ask simple questions, and initiate topics that have been discussed many times before. Regular users might react negatively to such things from time to time.
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Depersonalization and lack of non-verbal communication makes our innate sense of empathy blind.
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Misunderstandings between users experiencing a difficult life situation (for example, problems at home or at work) quickly escalate and develop into conflict.
The larger the community and the older it is, the more difficult it is to maintain a welcoming environment in the community. Here are some suggestions on how to maintain the culture of welcomeness on a platform
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Delete all rude content. Contact the violator. Explain why you have deleted their content and talk about the importance of treating each other with respect no matter the circumstances. Motivate volunteers to do the same.
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Identify critical points in the community where most rudeness occurs. Prepare a set of templates that users can use when facing a situation that causes them to feel negative emotions. Templates should be both for content (what to say) and for behavior (what to do). Constantly talk with regular users that rudeness causes new users to leave the community, and never leads to a change in one’s behavior.
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Help users experience empathy and compassion. Prepare a series of stories that show how users whose behavior causes negativity see the community. Show that these users have good intentions and would like to learn about the topic of the community.
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Encourage regular users make edits when they see any issue with the content. This helps to show what is expected from users in a particular situation.
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Initiate discussions about new rules, help pages, templates, etc related to welcomeness on your platform. It is impossible to be too kind, especially online.
Reacting negatively to some content or behavior is as natural as posting content without knowing all the nuances of the rules of a community. When discussing negative behavior, do not blame the users. Your task is to motivate users to be welcome and kind. Remember to provide them all the necessary training information and tools.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.