Why is SE giving so much attention to the "be nice"-policy?

Question

Recently we have been treated to featured meta posts and blog posts about the importance of the "be nice"-policy, and how/why it should also apply to comments.

This is all fine. Educating each other about how we see their actions is surely the best way forward.

But, it seems to me the efforts of the offical SE are a bit one-sided in this regard. I like to discuss what I see as a cause of the untoward comments. After all, diagnosing and curing the cause is often more effective than concentrating on an isolated symptom.

A bit of personal background (explaining the rant-tag). I served as a diamond moderator on Math.SE for 3½ years. Lately I grew frustrated with the rampant dupe/homework asking/answering. I had, of course, nailed my colors to a mast of the flagship of the caretaker fleet. Eventually I lost my cool, and lashed out at a few repeat offenders. After this happened a few times I decided that rage makes bad fuel for a moderator, so I quit. I think I have counted to ten since - you be the judge.

On with my main point. Many of the borderline rude/abusive comments I have seen (and handled) were in my opinion caused by the commenter's frustration. Directed either at the asker or the answerer (or...). You see, neither group of users of types 2 or 3 pays any attention to site hygiene. Many questions were poorly researched (=the umpteenth incarnation of the same calculus or elementary number theory exercise), many were copy/pasted homework assignments. The answerers reproduced their versions of earlier junk answers, and danced along merrily. They got their 2 upvotes, the asker got their homework done. I'm sure you know the mechanism from elsewhere in the SE network. Sure, we put the question on hold, occasionally even manage to delete it. But, enough of those questions survive our wishy-washy site policies, so the incentive to keep answering them remains. The autocatalytic mechanism invites more copy/pasted homework. The word gets around...

My thesis is that giving users effective tools to stop the flood of poorly researched questions (and answers to such) would go a long way towards eliminating those unpleasant comments.

Sporadic thoughts:

• It seems to me that the effect of the "be nice to noobs"-policy is to gradually throw away all the Burning Man principles Joel Spolsky described as necessary. Is this now the official SE view, or is it just a side-effect of the emphasis on politeness.
• Namely, a 2-minute guided tour is not gonna cut it, if the new asker doesn't internalize the message that they are not entitled to instant gratification with minimum effort on their part. May be this is a generation thing? Reminiscing the days when new kids on the block were cautious, timid even, taking their time learning the local do's and do-not's.
• The caretakes-types may be more prone to Duty Calls than your average user. But, these people got addicted to the SE model early on. They have contributed a lot. They are deeply invested in the well being of the site, and won't let the mob destroy it. Give them effective weapons, please. I'm afraid these outbursts will continue otherwise.
• I concede that targeting the newbie askers here is not really fair, but we should double the effort to educate them. The answerers have more skin in the game, and can be reached. But downvoting answers to sub-par questions is not really a sufficient deterrent. Pity upvotes are a thing here.

I see myself (probably many caretakers feel the same way) as a seasoned art fan in a museum, say, Guggenheim. What's happening is roughly the following (yes, I have tinted spectacles):

1. While having quality time at an exhibition, I spot a hoodlum with a spray can doing their worst.
2. Not forgetting the "be nice" -policy, I ask them to stop, politely.
3. He just laughs at me. A passer-by comments on how nice the sprayed on piece of art looks. They high-five.
4. I call the museum guard, who waves a finger at them, and adds the "painter" to the list of persona non grata. But, first things first, I need to save the true piece of art. So I painstakingly clean up the mess.
5. Next week, the same thing happens. As does on weeks three through six.
6. On week seven, the same things happens again. I've had enough. I tell the next dude with the spray can in unmistakable terms what I think. After escorting the dude out the museum guard comes to me, cleaning up the mess. He then reminds me of the strict "be nice to other patrons" -policy the museum has. You see, this visitor was a noob who didn't have the time to read the instructions not to apply a spray can in the vicinity of the pieces at this exhibition.
7. On week eight. I see yet another dude wielding a spray can enter the museum. I lose it and punch him in the nose. The guard promptly escorts me out. "Sir, that person is a noob. May be they were just starting to read the instructions, and about to leave their spray can in a locker? I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Education, I said? Can somebody educate me, please.

How can we best deal with our own (and each others) frustration?

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Edit:

Thanks to all for participating. I realize that my analogy was not fair. It is easy to understand that most new askers are a bit confused (also overwhelmed by the site rules). I came out as targeting the noobs, when in reality my words and actions lately have been targeting the enablers (those who answer bad questions without first engaging with the asker) aka type-3 aka [term discontinued]. I walk away from this thread with the following:

• Ignoring the force of human nature is not very wise.
• When serving I often referred to the SE staff as Overlords (when mere diamond powers were insufficient to serve a need). Subconciously giving them god-like powers. Cap'n Obvious called me and told me that they, too, have limited resources, and cannot fix everything right away, and need to prioritize.
• We all need to compromise to coexist (but my mind is still in a place where I don't see the type 3's doing their part...).
• May be the incentive structure needs fine tuning? Incentivize dupe hunting/closing? Disincentivize dupe/LQ answering?
• Or (more radical) ABOLISH rep score altogether. Well, not altogether, but may be only post per tag rep! I don't know about SO, but at least in math the rep user has earned on a relevant tag correlates better with their ability to give quality answers rather than the overall rep. Total score is inflated by the low hanging fruits.
• I realize that the suggestion in the previous bullet also has drawbacks. May be keep the old rep score as a currency for the purposes of privileges and bounties, but get rid of the weekly leagues and such that lead to extreme gamification (I learned that in SO some of those may boost people's job prospects, and that should be taken into account).
• I don't think I should walk away from this thread. Rather I should revisit it periodically.

Answer 1

Maybe it's the drought here in Colorado, but... I've been thinking a lot about water lately. In our society, water is simultaneously essential and a menace, a problem to be dealt with and a treasure to be chased after.

Water doesn't care what you want. No amount of pleading or nicely-worded signs are going to convince water to wet your parched plants when it wants to tear out a gully and carry away your precious topsoil. You can dam it, drain it, redirect it, slow it... But sooner or later, water always finds its level.

One of my earliest memories involved standing out on a freezing hillside helping my father lay out contour strips. Once plowed, the water would catch in the furrows and be absorbed, providing for the young seedlings and slowing the torrent that had previously cut deep ditches into the land. It took years and a lot of work to fully implement, but it worked: the entire farm was altered to accommodate what water wanted to do... Because the alternative was letting water destroy it. And water doesn't care.

^{contour-planted strawberry fields, photo by Lynn Betts, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.}

I once compared the problems of Stack Overflow to intensive farming; perhaps I should've considered permaculture instead:

• Care for the earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply. This is the first principle, because without a healthy earth, humans cannot flourish.
• Care for the people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence
• Setting limits to population and consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles. This includes returning waste back into the system to recycle into usefulness. The third ethic is sometimes referred to as Fair Share, which reflects that each of us should take no more than what we need before we reinvest the surplus.

How might we apply these principles here?

• Care for the site: the software itself is the framework on which everything else is built. The forms for creating posts and comments, the tags for organizing and integrating various sub-topics within the larger field, the infrastructure for finding and exposing each element to those who need it... All must be perpetually maintained. Like a swale across a hillside, the shape of the software itself and the meta-systems built with it (tags, documentation, scope) determine the behavior of users new and old on a fundamental level.

• Care for the people: None of this is easy. We too easily talk about helpful people, ungrateful people, rude people... But ultimately, everyone here is a person, trying to work together with others on an impossibly huge, never-ending task. We get tired and need rest; we get frustrated and need encouragement; we get overwhelmed and need assistance. We're all in this together: the folks asking questions, the folks answering them, the folks moderating, and even the folks behind the curtain here at Stack Exchange, Inc. If we don't provide these necessities for one another, no one else will. The ground will go fallow.

• Setting limits to population and consumption: There are limits to what any resource can provide. We may not know them, but they exist and when they are exceeded, everyone suffers. We may be able to expand those limits, plow new ground, but we cannot ignore them. This is why there are limits on questions, answers, even requests... There should probably be limits on comments too.

About 20 years ago, I started tutoring students taking computer programming classes. Invariably, their goal was to pass the class; learning the material was at best secondary to that goal - but with care, I could sometimes slow them down, help them come away with more than just a passing grade. When I joined Stack Overflow, it was in the hope of building something that would provide, for roughly the same labor, this sort of involuntary education for more than a single student. I've seen an awful lot of new students over the years, and no doubt there will continue to be new students long after I'm gone. Like drops of rain hitting the ground, they follow the path of least resistance toward their level, taking with them what they can but always, inexorably, followed by more. We can work with them, strive to build a sustainable culture... Or watch this all be washed away.

Answer 2

I've been trying to do some self-reflection lately and figure out why there's so much drama going on right now. (In truth, the drama isn't new. We've had these sorts of discussions nearly as long as Stack Overflow has existed.) Recently, a friend of mine, who is a psychologist by trade, told me about the Karpman drama triangle:

I bring it up because there are very obvious links between this model and Mysticial's model^* of personas on the site.The drama triangle is backed up by years of research and has been used to diagnose practical interpersonal problems. Since it's a more general model, there are also generalized solutions to break out of it. So, I think it's useful to think about where we all fit in the drama.

It might be easiest to think of the model in a family situation. Imagine a father who has high standards for his children and always makes them do extra chores (persecutor). His wife disagrees with his methods and helps out their children when her husband is not paying attention (rescuer). The children learn to depend on their mother to protect them from their father (victims). In extreme situations, this could be abusive. But let's think of a family that's fairly well adjusted. The father's demands are ordinary things like picking up after yourself and doing the dishes.

It's pretty clear that I and other employees of Stack Overflow see ourselves primarily as rescuers. Judging from your analogy, I'd guess that's where you put yourself too. It's generally the role that's seen as the most noble and desirable to be in. But it's important to be aware that playing any role in the drama means you are adding to the drama.

The rescuer believes they are making the situation better, but can be enabling the victim's helplessness. Rescuers tend to be disappointed when the victim fails to appreciate their help. Rescuers fail to address the problem created by the persecutor, who often feels like they are the victim in this situation. (In fact, the roles are fluid though one is usually primary.) Often rescuers are avoiding dealing with their own struggles by focusing on other people's problems.

I've talked about this idea with the rest of the community team, but it's mostly my personal way of thinking about drama on the network. Many people at the company are sensitive to the people who seem most in distress. Whether consciously or not, we tend to think of new users, first-time askers and non-users as victims of a small number of active users. There's a very real risk the company is enabling negative behavior. It sounds like this is exactly your concern.

Over the years, we've attempted to protect the site from a flood of questions. To quote myself:

Ultimately, we have millions of people visiting the site. While there are many prompts, blocks and limits slowing down questions, the small percentage of visitors who make it through turns out to be a large absolute number. For better or worse, the barriers to asking mean that the most determined (or, perhaps, desperate) users actually post.

Notice that efforts to block askers are seen as persecution by people outside of the community. And it's hard to disagree with that assessment. Along with the spam and unresearched questions, we are certainly discouraging some legitimate questions too. Meanwhile, within the community demanding askers can also be persecutors. I've personally been berated by people who are blocked from asking. They feel it's their right to post on the site. In other words, both new users and seasoned veterans can be victims. (And it's possible we're enabling them both.)

With the mentoring experiment and the "Ask a question" wizard prototype, we are thinking of new ways to coach askers. Similarly, the work we are doing with "be nice" is an attempt to coach answerers who are frustrated with bad questions. We believe we need to tackle both ends of the issue if we hope to make a difference. In these examples, we're not enabling, but taking the role of coach to help users succeed.

Stack Overflow has programmer culture in our DNA. As a profession, we tend to think there are technical solutions to every problem. In the weeks, months and years to come, the company is going to imply or outright say we have solutions to problems on the sites. Don't believe us. At best we can provide the tools users need to address social problems and change the systems behind the site to nudge people in the right direction.

We've said for a long time our sites are "built and run by you". What that means is you have agency to create content and, as you gain reputation, curate other people's content. If you are feeling helpless in the face of vandals (or vampires or other villains), the system isn't working for you. If a new user feels they can't ask a question safely, the system isn't working for them either.

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Footnote:

^* That post uses phrases for users which we no longer use.

Answer 3

Enforcing the "Be Nice" policy is something that is actually possible. Getting people to stop posting bad questions is far, far more difficult. Of course solving one of the root causes would be a great thing, but that's not always possible. There are many real world problems that could be simply solved by creating world peace, getting people to refrain from asking bad questions is probably only marginally less difficult than that.

There is also a significant part of "Be Nice" issues that aren't directly connected to quality issues. The perception that SE is a hostile place is also a barrier to recruiting new, good users. Users that just want to dump their homework probably care much less about hostility than user that actually want to participate.

Answer 4

You're conflating art vandals with users that simply have a question to ask and have difficulty navigating our (admittedly) complicated system. Art vandals are intentionally defacing things that they know others value, nervous programmers are just trying to get their jobs done.

I'm going to answer the parts of your post that don't depend on that comparison, because I just can't answer to it while validating certain parts of your post that I agree with. But let me toss this out:

• New users aren't art vandals, or some kind of malignancy. We're taking pretty broad strides into improving the new user experience through a new guided way to ask questions, dedicating an entire team to make product improvements to help new users avoid pitfalls, and yes - admitting that our culture isn't very welcoming and taking steps to fix that.

• Math SE is pale in comparison to what we're observing on Stack Overflow. While math has some fairly complicated issues that are hardly intrinsic, it's simply in a very different place.

• We're ramping up support for, and communication with our community moderators. That's something we've never done consistently enough and I'm determined to fix it.

• Did you miss the part where I mentioned that condescension and snark create a rather bleak self-fulfilling prophecy?

Finally, that we're focusing on areas where we can make immediate headway is in no way some kind of resignation from the others. How we prioritize depends on a vast number of things, not all of them are public (like the chronic valid email complaints of people saying awful things, among other things). We fully know that we need to do more than just influence social change in order to make things better.

But please - examine what led you to compare new users to art vandals because it's a very common bias. I once explained the conflict as an army of giants stepping on a heavily guarded castle and thereby threatening the very existence of the realm, and here's a great image to illustrate that:

You can totally tell that's a castle that's vital to our survival, right?

Being nicer is never a bad thing, and nothing is ever going to come at the expense of what everyone should be doing anyway. And what we're asking isn't new, we're just enforcing it, and clarifying it where needed.

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_{Image credit: BookartXD on Deviant Art}

Answer 5

How can we best deal with our own (and each others) frustration?

Before I answer that question, lets dive into some anecdotes and metaphors, seems proper. Lets start first with two anecdotes, one very recent and another somewhat old and then a study on the cost of stuff.

I was attending to a beginners course for R, in which the facilitator at the end recommended some books and tools to help yourself. One of those tools was "Stackoverflow", which was described as "super helpful". I was flabbergasted. Stack Overflow being helpful? In that same breath, while explaining the usefulness of SO in a quickie, mentioned two things:

• "you can ask questions", to which I almost screamed "NO!" and
• "most likely the answer is already there, so you just have to search for it" ...!? Wait, what?

So, there you have it. SO is not only helpful to beginners, you are recommended to ask questions in it, but not without searching before. Why couldn't people introduce Stack Overflow that way to everyone? Also, although is not the first time I heard about SO in my immediate surroundings, is the diametrical opposite of the anecdotes that many people share about the site.

The other anecdote is about my first question on SO. Is not deleted, and if you see the first revision, other than the first line, there isn't much to improve. I kind of meet all the criteria of Jon Skeet question checklist, and I was trying to mixing three libraries, a framework (which isn't shown) for a small project after less than 12 hours of reading some python documentation. Granted, is not an stellar question, but it got 2 upvotes, no downvotes and no unnice comment (as far I remember).

There's a common theme on both anecdotes: they do the "right" thing that most as veterans SE members have present. I like to think that both individuals involved did for a single reason: respect for the art site and its dwellers.

And this respect, usually comes as a cost for the user, since they are more invested into the goods it has value, since they know it's not free:

Another important element of the distribution campaign is ensuring they are used properly. This means discouraging people from using them as fishing nets or cutting them into bath sponges, for example.

Distributing the nets without charge can exacerbate this problem. "In sub-Saharan Africa, there’s a tendency to look at products that are provided free as being of little or no value,” says Mr Yeboah. “And charging some money is also a mechanism to ensure that one can sustain the supplies – because the donors are not going to continue providing them forever."

For the new user, there's no cost to interact with our sites paid upfront. Usually, when something is free of cost (not necessarily monetary) the value assigned by the users is too low, and the good or service end up being squandered by the users they are supposed to work in their own benefit. And we all know that adding value to the corpus, is not without cost. This asymmetry in costs makes the ones that actually pay frustrated, because their investment isn't being respected and used without care.

So, like in your analogy, informing them before entering that there's a cost and that they should respect the museum and the pieces exposed by following the guidance, would work towards actually improving the situation. Using just niceness is difficult, because most people associate it with pleasantries. Now, respect is more concise among cultures. For that I propose that we replace the "be nice" with "be respectful".

Be respectful of your fellow humans and dog.
Be respectful of the content of the site and maintain it.
Be respectful of the people answering and asking questions.
Be respectful of the site guidance, as that's the only thing preventing us from eating one another.

Answer 6

I agree with most of the post, and know intimately the frustration you are speaking about. Still, I will write a partial answer (by no means a full one!) which you won't like.

One of the necessary conditions for dealing with this kind of frustration is empathy for the noob. Your question, which is carefully written to be very constructive despite the strong emotions behind it, still shows a bias in the way you are framing the situation. You compare the noob to a vandal who deliberately destroys a work of art.

I would suggest a reframing. Imagine that the noobs belong to a tribe which grew up in the jungle and never had contact with civilization. And you are not in a museum, but in a garden. Your jungle visitors always take the shortest path instead of staying on the paved roads, pick the prized apples from the trees and spit out the seeds on the benches. They don't do it because they want to destroy the garden, but because they don't even start to realize the concept of somebody planting a garden and keeping it in a certain state.

This reframing might clash with some notions you might have ("They are the ones destroying everything, and now I have to take their side!") but seriously, adopting this attitude reduces your own frustration, making your own day better. And it elegantly interrupts the scenario in which you are escorted out for punching somebody.

This is to be seen in addition to, and not as a replacement, to other efforts directed at reducing the damaging influence that clueless noobs have on the sites and their regulars.

Answer 7

I agree with pretty much all of the points in your question. I think "be nice" is an odd topic at the moment, and there seems to be a lot of debate around what "be nice" even means.

It should be a general rule to be nice, but a lot of focus seems to be on comments for some reason, as if they're the problem. But it's not the case IMO:

• Comments should "be nice" and explain the rules and requirements of this site in a more welcoming way rather than short and blunt. This may make "some" people feel welcomed and more likely to improve their question/answer.
• Question askers should "be nice" and recognise their question is site content which can be bad and thus harmful to the site in various ways. Questions produce much work and resource usage, by bringing about the need for edits, comments, votes, flags, and answers. This is a lot of power, and with it comes great responsibility.
• New users should "be nice" as they're new to a site, and should take some time to learn its ways. E.g. when someone informs them their question has an issue, they should look to fix it. They should be nice and not want to come to a new site and expect everything to be their way, on a site that's been here for many years with specific ways. Once a new user posts their question there is no "us and them" they're entirely part of the "us", and should care about the site and the quality of that question.
• Answerers should "be nice" and recognise that answering poor questions may well give that one person information they wanted, but the site repeatedly makes it clear this is not what it wants. It adds poor content, which in turn attracts more poor content. We have millions of questions and answers, and it only needs a small percentage of those to be bad for it to be fairly noticeable and have a negative impact.
• Stack Exchange company should "be nice" and recognise that those arguing over the poor and lazy questions, and those who answer them, have to heart the very interest and goals Stack Exchange declares it has.

Some return points on what I've seen debated so far:

1. Site rules cannot only apply to those who have read and understood them! This would be unfair, so even new users without knowledge should be expected to learn, or need to be issued any relevant penalties.
2. Being a new user is not an excuse to not fix a poor question once learned of that requirement. They are getting all the benefits of the site's resources, functionality, and people's time, and it is therefore only fair that they uphold the requirements that make the sites great in the first place which is providing them with the aforementioned goodies!
3. "Be Nice" is great, but should not mean "leeway to let the rules slip by". That includes bad question after question after... and nothing done about it.
4. This should be about "all users" being nice, and regardless entirely of any particular action taken. So rather than focussing on commenters being unkind, also see that poor questions are unkind to both people trying to help and quality of the sites.

Most importantly:

5. If question quality rules were perhaps a bit stricter, but definitely enforced much sooner so bad questions don't stand a chance, then there'd be much less of a problem with people not being nice, because there will be much less to not be nice about!

There are many ways to fix (5), but they're risky so the site won't take the risk in case it backfires.

If we could make a ton of bad questions not happen, and more go away quickly, it would greatly reduce bad comments and people not being nice, because laziness and no care for the site's quality is where a lot of "not being nice" comes from.

Answer 8

Based on my observations, it is more like the opposite: SE is not giving enough attention to the “be nice”-policy.

It has been almost six years while I observe them trying and I've seen about handful their attempts but things only seem to get worse (not much worse mind you but still). Quoting self,

how come that after years of plugging users' mouths and twisting their arms with summers of love and hunting the snark, the second-highest-voted question at MSO is Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?

Frankly these repetitive fruitless crusades for nicety start more and more looking like smokescreen serving sole purpose to pretend that they care. I would very much appreciate if they put more effort and achieve real improvements at last.

From this perspective your idea of giving users effective tools to stop the flood of poorly researched questions^* looks worth pursuing. The sad thing is, it seems to be quite effort consuming and difficult to get right, and because of that I am really unsure if SE considers matters of keeping the network nice serious enough to invest effort into stuff like that.

Answer 9

I'm fine with being polite to everyone. But if I went to the CDC because I had a stomach ache, I'd be politely told to see my personal physician first. Important facilities and important people have polite but firm gatekeepers. Could we not have something similar here?

Stack Exchange has a reputation system that rewards contributions to the site and offers privileges to those who contribute more. One of those privileges could be that high rep users could opt not to be confronted by unfiltered questions. For example, if a question has fewer than N upvotes, then it is invisible. Each high rep user gets to choose her own value of N. There are other cutoff possibilities, such as the cumulative score or the number of downvotes.

Answer 10

My experience as a user and a moderator seems to have been somewhat different from yours. This all resonates with me as crucial work.

I have seen negative attitudes, ranging from put-downs with questionably plausible deniability, to snark, to rudeness, to blatant hostility, directed at all kinds of people, all the way from brand new people, to people who've found their footing, to sites' longest-active members. It's not just new users that bring out the worst in us.

Sure, there are certainly issues with low-effort, poorly researched questions (and answers!), whatever the specific variety. I truly do believe that efforts related to Be Nice can help here, whether it's coaxing a new user into the community, or providing feedback in a way a post author can comfortably hear and act on, or simply avoiding escalating ugly situations. And I do also believe that there are other promising ways to address, as evidenced by all the meta discussion across the history of the network. I'm happy to see effort spent on those.

But there are also issues with being nice, being friendly, being kind. These issues are also well worth addressing. And honestly, I think we've all dropped the ball on this a bit, including me. I've posted and discussed my fair share of bug reports and feature requests, all those ideas for how to improve various technical and UI aspects of the site, and I've seen plenty of more of that from others in chat and on meta. I've seen and participated in huge discussions of the minutiae of what is and isn't on-topic, of the best thing to do about one single post. But there's been relatively little simply about how to better live up to what's always been a core value: being good to each other.

This work is hard, but it also really, truly matters. It affects who decides to go beyond their initial efforts to joining the community; it affects who sticks with it long-term and who leaves. The more issues we sweep under the rug, the more good people we lose. The more welcoming and fulfilling of an environment we build, the better off we all are.

Answer 11

Why is SE giving so much attention to the “be nice”-policy?

I'd say that a significant number of people believe that the "be nice" policy threatens to lower quality by being soft on bad question askers, and by making it harder for moderators/answerers to enforce "the rules". Enforcing rules and maintaining quality does not have to be mutually exclusive with "being nice".

I really like reading comments, and don't consider them to be "second class citizens" at all. Having read all the comments on this page, I've noticed a recurrent stance: that being nice isn't going to be this magic bullet which solves all our problems, and that we should focus our effort elsewhere on a more promising course of action. The flaw in that line of reasoning is that being nice is the end product of some process that requires a constant expenditure of energy and consumes an unreasonable amount of the limited resources at our disposal.

Ahem, being good natured does not sink energy, it sources it! A good deed is its own reward; perhaps a bit corny, but if examined and embraced is ultimately very powerful.

This backlash I've noticed may in part be due to phrase "be nice" itself. The word nice doesn't bother me, but sometimes it has the connotation of being soft or lacking in resolve. "Nice" has an unappealing tone when use in the phrase "nice guys finish last". I don't recall hearing anything uncomplimentary about the term "civility". I think that having a "be civil" policy would be more neutral and palatable than "be nice", given the prevalence of self-centered haughty attitudes today. To clarify, I'm not suggesting that this attitude characterizes us (the SE community), but that it affects us.

Another school of resistance that gets support is that we are at war with an endless sea of solution mongers who will ultimately overwhelm us with their growing ranks of henchmen, and that we must deliver some massive blow to their nerve center that sends them scurrying once and for all. This makes it easy to dismiss "being nice" as an inadequate defense given the scope of the threat. Let's not forget the story (fable, was it?) of the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race. Kill 'em with kindness. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Niceness might be a lightweight compared to this behemoth we face, but why not just dust off what we already have lying around and steadily build at a sustainable rate. Keep brainstorming one morsel at a time. And don't be surprised at who shows up for dinner.

After reading all of the answers, I'm a bit disappointed at the unity. It seems like all the answers came from the same team. One might conclude that we're all in agreement. Why haven't any of the commenters who have expressed opposing viewpoints tried to reach a larger audience on the stage that answers provide?

P.S. I find it interesting that the lowest rated answer here got the highest volume of comments. I wonder if motivation behind the production of these comments is coming from the same place that is "giving so much attention to the “be nice”-policy".

Answer 12

There's a few practical considerations here.

There's almost certainly a PR angle. I'm sure folks in SO Corp are hearing a lot of voices we don't about how SO feels hostile towards new users - not just the really loud ones we notice. In a sense we're in a bit of a blind spot. We have a clear idea of what we want, just not always the perception someone who hasn't had 6 months or a year or 8 years on the site has.

Be nice has also been a bit of a cornerstone of interactions on SE from the start - the only difference I suppose is that every so often folks go "We could be doing better on this front"

As an early, but not so early user of the network - well, I've had the benefit of growing with the rules. Some of my early posts probably wouldn't pass muster these days.

And well, a lot of old users are eventually going to leave. Some get bored, find other things and so on. Sites are going to rely on a core of new users.

I used to be part of a small community that was a little on the fringe, and sometimes attracted even fringier folk. It was in a interesting situation where it needed some quality control to keep out the crazy folk to keep the slightly saner and interesting ones. At some point, the admin went on a bit of a power trip. He ended up chasing off one of the mods, and her friend. There was no real new blood. Eventually people left, or even died. Last I checked, there were two idling people left in their chatroom, their website was gone...

So its a balance. Quality is important. On the other hand, some of the newbies you chase off might end up being folks who're engaged and willing to contribute in future. On the other, we're here for the challenging posts and the imaginary internet points.

There's always going to be some folks who're primarily going to see SE as a place to ask questions, and not really make an effort. There's going to be the folks who dump misformatted code, or use it as ELIF as a service. Its ok. We can still be civil, and just close, DV or delete these things. On the other hand, its not really healthy to see it as a "us vs them". To see new users as vandals - rather than, well, people who haven't had the same experiences you've had is divisive

In a sense, the be nice policy, and helping onboard new users is a good strategy for the long term health of a site. Helping them get up to speed and maintaining post quality isn't orthogonal to it.

Answer 13

Honestly, I think that having frustrated mods and overlords doesn't help anyone. After reading your question I've found it is mostly a fault in communication and information.

Following your analogy, if a museum has a big sign telling visitors: "Any art is acceptable here! You are welcome!" it is logical every kid with a spraycan will try to come and submit their art. But a museum isn't a gallery, so among the Mona Lisas, the Last Suppers and bunch, there isn't space for new artists to show their work, so they come with the basic idea that the whole space is their playground. And then you have the results you mentioned.

What I think is necessary here to reconsider is 4 points of view that are independant, coherent and non-exclusive to each other:

• The Museum's point of view: A museum works as long as it has something new to show. To have that it must constantly invite new people to the museum to create and to stay relevant.

• The Security Guard's point of view: Security guards are employed by the museum to keep visitors happy, in order to keep them there and have revenue. As long as no one is actually making irreversible damage, the guards don't care.

• The Curator's point of view: Curators are there to educate and guide new and old users. Curators can give old users some depth and to interest new users in new things.

• The User's point of view: Users want to spend their time the best way possible, they want to contribute and be part of something bigger than themselves.

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And each and every point of view is valid and it is coherent. So where is the frustration coming from? Well the main problem is in sign - it doesn't hold much information. Sign is made by museum for the users without any communication between two and without any input from Curators and Guards. To distance myself from allegory, I will now try and explain real issues that generate such frustration without any contemplative allegory.

SE thrives on users, as long as there are users SE gets payed trough job offers and revenue. So main focus of SE is that it has constant income of new users. But having new users doesn't mean that those users will stay and be part of community. SE needs a way to keep them here - so SE doesn't sell knowledge it sells community. But it doesn't have where to put that community and doesn't have means how to animate them. So instead of placing "you have to be this tall to drive!" it says "...come! lets hang out! You will drive eventually!". So any new user that comes upon this website hears "SE is great way to fix your problems!" from payed webcomics, news articles...

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So from the users' point of view "It must be some community that help people in need! That is awesome! Can't wait to grow so I can help other people!", where main point here is grow. But SE doesn't have kiddy pool, or a system where users can be redirected in their early stages of growth into question that can help them, but instead prompts them to ask a question. And normally if a new user ask a question it will use a "spraycan" approach since that user doesn't have the technical vocabulary or knowledge to formulate a question correctly and not to mention to follow all the SE rules. So coming from low-knowledge standpoint, "awesome community to grow in" becomes behemoth of cold shoulders and opinionated ...... But that isn't in fact the reality, it just seems like that to the new user, and SE needs them. If SE stops growing, it stops being relevant and therefore stops generating revenue.

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From the non-diamond (ND) moderators' points of view, they are there to answer any questions they know answers to, and to keep SE clean and relevant. So when a user [new or old] encounters an ND mod, old users don't get hurt because they know it is business as usual. But new users didn't read any disclaimer about business and for someone that expects a hug and get a shrug it is unwelcoming, and only because new user expects "open arms warm community" it was advertised to him/her. Which in turn frustrates ND mod since there is sudden overflow with "hoodlums". ND then becomes more focused on self defence towards new user tantrums and therefore distancing themselves from other users.

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From the diamond moderators point of view, they are there to moderate the website and make sure that everyone can find what they need. Filter out duplicates, handle flags, etc. They are caretakers/curators of this "museum", and old users see them as persons of credibility while new users see them as extension of oppression. In reality, user interaction isn't part of their job. Diamond moderators are there to guide users, not to handle new ones. So frustration of ND mods translates to diamond moderators and then they have opposing force of some of ND mods trying to be "as advertised". Which is, pardon my french, a clusterfuck.

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From SE point of view, its job is to advertise and generate revenue to stay relevant. It has passed some of responsibility to ND and diamond moderators, and they don't care what happens in the bull pin as long as it works. I've sent an bunch of emails across several years and still to this date no answer - which is ok. They are busy governing the public appearance of website more than controlling it (from their point of view it is mods job).

How can we fix frustration?

First, we need a new "mod" type; in museum analogy it would be PR. Someone who would say to the museum "Stop! Don't put that sign out there! If you want to invite kids to play, you first need a kindergarten!".

PR would then say to the ND mods, "If you see a kid going around, place them in the kindergarten. Any kid that doesn't fulfill these requirements needs to have a spray can and a free wall."

And to diamond moderators: "Don't let other users be snobs. If you see a kid, introduce him/her to other ND mods and let them point it to the right place, before that kid graduates to a Q&A mindset".

And to users: "Hello! Nice to meet you! You can find free spray cans and walls in the yard. If you have any questions, first ask the ND mod to point you to an already-asked question in a similar manner. Enjoy our community!!"

But SE doesn't have anyone for community management.

So miscommunication is bound to happen. Expectancies of advertisement and of community don't hold up. And you have bunch of new teenager hoodlums with spray cans spraying everywhere.

Please don't think that issues are in "Guards" or somewhere else. Each and everyone of you does splendidly their job, but there isn't any communication about plans of SE and the community. Keep strong.

Answer 14

I don't know why SE is giving so much attention to the be nice policy, but I know why I want people to be nice to me and respectful toward each other on this site and elsewhere:

Because it makes me feel good.

And incidentally, when I am happy because I have received the help that I need, I feel motivated to give in return and contribute to the community that I have become a part of.

In other words:

If you are generous and help me with my duplicate question that is lacking even the most basic research effort, I am grateful and the love that you gave me motivates me to give something in return. To you, or to the next person in my life that I meet.

How can we best deal with our own (and each others) frustration?

Do you have children? I have a son. He is now 12 years old. He has driven me to insanity more times than there are stars in the universe. And yet I love him more than life itself.

I try not to drive him away so that I can peacefully follow my obsessions. I try not to suffocate his personality and stifle his development with rules that force him into my way of life. Instead, I accept his needs, his immaturity, his differences from me – the often painful disturbance that he is and try to love him as best I can.

Erik Erikson called this generativity.

I have grown and matured a lot since the birth of my son. I'm still a long way from the person I want to be, but generativity is a stance that I want to take on towards all the people that I encounter in my live. I try my best, but often I fail.

Answer 15

Hide answers from bad questions

If bad questions still get answers, there is little incentive for questioners to write better ones.

To be more specific the idea is that in questions that are likely low quality(new user/low reputation user) the answers are automatically hidden and only shown if they are determined to be good questions(upvotes?/reviewed?)

Answer 16

I think you're making a common mistake that even art museum curators make, from time to time: forgetting why we're here.

Stack Exchange sites aren't here for us to have a nice pretty museum that has a lot of things we like in it. They're here for the users, those folks who come and ask questions. And while some of "us" do ask questions, for the most part the "established SE users" are the answerers, not the askers. The way we get new questions is by getting new users.

Imagine a museum curator whose taste is a bit behind the times, and is making a nice museum that they like, and insulting the tastes of the "new" people who don't like their exhibits; soon enough the number of new visitors drops to the point the museum closes.

We need a site that fits what the potential new users need. It needs to be welcoming. It needs to cater to their needs, be that by finding ways to help them ask better questions, or adapting to what questions they want to ask.

This doesn't mean we abandon all hopes of quality, nor does it mean we don't protect our nice exhibits. What it means, though, is that our attitude has to be positive. We have to think "how do we get these new users to stay here and contribute useful information" rather than "how do we get rid of these annoying new users". How, in fact, do we change StackExchange for the better, to suit the changing needs of its customer/user base?