How to deal with antisocial people in communities
Each community sooner or later faces the fact that personalities are introduced into it that have a bad effect on the general atmosphere. They may be incapable of cooperation, rude, self-confident, or unpleasant. For example, a too smart person who suppresses others with his intellect. Often, he doesn’t want to harm anyone, he just has such a character. How to identify and expel such a person so as not to violate the democratic principles of the community? This topic is covered in a lecture by Google Tech Talks.
In their lecture, Google programmers talk about Open Source communities, but most of the rules they formulate are absolutely applicable to any other type of community. The fight against "poisonous" people is carried out in four stages.
Understanding the community
Attention and focus of the community are the main resources in any Open Source project. Due to inadequate users, these values can be lost. They can be distracting, and worse than that there is nothing. Unpleasant phenomena such as a decrease in the general level of politeness and mutual respect, or, for example, the desire for perfectionism, may manifest themselves in the community. Due to perfectionism, the whole project can become bogged down in discussions.
Parkinson’s Fourth Law states that interest in a topic is inversely related to its complexity. People like to hang up their labels, and it’s easier to do this on a simple topic than a complex one. Accordingly, the simpler the topic of discussion, the easier it is to slide into a destructive discussion with the participation of antisocial personalities.
Community Strengthening A
healthy community must be built on four principles: courtesy, respect, trust and restraint. Most problems arise if one or another principle does not work well enough.
It is necessary to set a task, a mission for the community, set a direction for development, and establish a certain framework for this.
Editors (moderators) do not have to constantly answer all questions. Instead, you need to collect all the answers in large messages and publish them periodically. This guarantees sustainability, while "poisonous" people can answer each question individually to prevent a common opinion from being worked out. They can reply to each letter in the thread without missing a single one. Accordingly, it is very important to observe the etiquette of mailing lists in groups where discussion is ongoing.
If necessary, you must edit the community rules and state them very clearly. The fewer the votes, the healthier the community. Voting is the last resort because there are always winners and losers after it .
Identification
Suspicious people can be identified by many signs. For example, they raise closed topics, use uppercase letters or an excessive number of punctuation marks, have strange email addresses or ridiculous nicknames. Those who behave aggressively, paranoidly or abusively deserve your attention.
Pay attention to people who are unable to understand the mission of the project, ask too many RTFM questions or cannot catch the mood of the community. Inappropriate jokes or destructive sentences (“you must rewrite everything from scratch!”) Are clear evidence of a “poisonous” person.
There is no need to focus on the number of community members; you should not bend down and attract people at any cost. True, new participants must be given special attention, even if at first they behave annoyingly.
Disinfection
The reaction should be proportional to the attention that was able to attract a harmful person. Do not try too hard if everyone doesn't give a damn about him.
When disinfecting, stick to facts, not emotions. For example, a person seems annoying. You cannot say this directly, but you can conduct a statistical analysis of the participant’s letters to the conference and calculate the total amount of discussions initiated by these letters. These specific figures can be used as an excuse for the most polite expulsion of a person from the community.
Extras:
Video recording on Google Video (55 minutes).
Lecturer information: Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, Google programmers with many years of experience participating in Open Source projects.
via ballpark.ch
In their lecture, Google programmers talk about Open Source communities, but most of the rules they formulate are absolutely applicable to any other type of community. The fight against "poisonous" people is carried out in four stages.
Understanding the community
Attention and focus of the community are the main resources in any Open Source project. Due to inadequate users, these values can be lost. They can be distracting, and worse than that there is nothing. Unpleasant phenomena such as a decrease in the general level of politeness and mutual respect, or, for example, the desire for perfectionism, may manifest themselves in the community. Due to perfectionism, the whole project can become bogged down in discussions.
Parkinson’s Fourth Law states that interest in a topic is inversely related to its complexity. People like to hang up their labels, and it’s easier to do this on a simple topic than a complex one. Accordingly, the simpler the topic of discussion, the easier it is to slide into a destructive discussion with the participation of antisocial personalities.
Community Strengthening A
healthy community must be built on four principles: courtesy, respect, trust and restraint. Most problems arise if one or another principle does not work well enough.
It is necessary to set a task, a mission for the community, set a direction for development, and establish a certain framework for this.
Editors (moderators) do not have to constantly answer all questions. Instead, you need to collect all the answers in large messages and publish them periodically. This guarantees sustainability, while "poisonous" people can answer each question individually to prevent a common opinion from being worked out. They can reply to each letter in the thread without missing a single one. Accordingly, it is very important to observe the etiquette of mailing lists in groups where discussion is ongoing.
If necessary, you must edit the community rules and state them very clearly. The fewer the votes, the healthier the community. Voting is the last resort because there are always winners and losers after it .
Identification
Suspicious people can be identified by many signs. For example, they raise closed topics, use uppercase letters or an excessive number of punctuation marks, have strange email addresses or ridiculous nicknames. Those who behave aggressively, paranoidly or abusively deserve your attention.
Pay attention to people who are unable to understand the mission of the project, ask too many RTFM questions or cannot catch the mood of the community. Inappropriate jokes or destructive sentences (“you must rewrite everything from scratch!”) Are clear evidence of a “poisonous” person.
There is no need to focus on the number of community members; you should not bend down and attract people at any cost. True, new participants must be given special attention, even if at first they behave annoyingly.
Disinfection
The reaction should be proportional to the attention that was able to attract a harmful person. Do not try too hard if everyone doesn't give a damn about him.
When disinfecting, stick to facts, not emotions. For example, a person seems annoying. You cannot say this directly, but you can conduct a statistical analysis of the participant’s letters to the conference and calculate the total amount of discussions initiated by these letters. These specific figures can be used as an excuse for the most polite expulsion of a person from the community.
Extras:
Video recording on Google Video (55 minutes).
Lecturer information: Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, Google programmers with many years of experience participating in Open Source projects.
via ballpark.ch