I want to go on the record rule 5 (yes it’s rule 5 not 4) is a bad rule. Let me quote it:
”Be nice to one another and enjoy chatting with others. We encourage conversation and respectful debate; please be aware that individuals may give opinions which are not shared by other members. Insulting posts or comments making personal jibes will not be tolerated. ”
its exactly the sort of rule I’ve had to call organisations out for in the context of discrimination against autistic people. Why? Because it’s subjective and vague? What is nice? How do you define nice? It’s one of those words where 2 people can have quite different views on what is and isn’t nice. In fact often people struggle to define what nice is without contradicting themselves 5 minutes later when you point something out that doesn’t fit with their interpretation. Peoples approach to nice tends to be ‘I know it when I see it.’ And when you get a rule that requires a highly subjective judgment it’s a huge issue for autistic people.
- autistic people are put on the position of having to ‘mind read’ a decision maker (in this case the mod) and guess how they will interpret a word in a given case. And autistic people are bad at this sort of mind reading.
- Because there is no public record of how the word (nice) has been interpreted in the past, and because no rule forced the decision maker to act consistently, the decision maker (mod) can change their mind or the person making the decision may change and the autistic person has no way to know how the rule will be interpreted by looking at the way it was applied in the past.
- Because the word (nice) is interpreted on a case by case basis it opens the door to unconscious bias against autistic people. The double empathy problem is well established and there is evidence to suggest that autistic people are viewed as less likeable because of the double empathy problem. I think it’s obvious that a person seen as less likeable is likely to be viewed with greater suspicion, to have their actions interpreted in a less favourable light. If it’s easy to come up with competing arguments as to whether something is or isn’t nice the temptation will be to pick the arguments based on whether you view the autistic person as nice.
Now small organisations that don’t have a lot of resources to spare on resolving disputes love rules like this because they are catch all rules. The definition is so wide and flexible they can use it to justify just about anything they do. And because their dispute resolution process in internal and behind closed doors there is no way for anyone to challenge them over inconsistencies. It means in practice they can just empower a bunch of people (mods for example) and tell them to use their ‘common sense’ interpreting the rules with out having to exercise and oversight or worry if the rules are being interpreted fairly. It also means if there is a person the organisation views as a nuisance it’s pretty easy to fabricate a reason to get rid of them using a vague rule with out them having much comeback.
For an organisation It’s a very cost effective way to deal with disputes that has very little chance of returning results that will make the organisations life harder later. But applied to autistic people it’s hugely unfair. I mean I think it’s unfair in general but it’s more unfair towards autistic people for the reasons described.
There really are only 2 ways to fix it.
- You have to provide objective definitions of things. You can’t just use words like ‘nice,’ ‘offensive,’ etc. you have to provide definitions that are as objectively as possible.
- you have to bind yourself to be consistent and open in the way you interpret rules. Meaning you have to openly declare not only that some specific thing broke a rule but explain your reasoning as to why. It wouldn’t be enough to say ‘broke rule 5.’ It would have to be “you said A which implies B which given C is a breach of rule 5.”
Personally I’d be very surprised if the mods here had the time to go around exposing the reasoning for every moderation decision in a post. It would be far better to just change rule 5 to something a bit more objective like ‘no insulting language or malicious personal attacks’ (https://youtu.be/aaO4Q4t0aTs)
More generally I think this is a good opportunity to talk about how vague and subjective rules are unfair to autistic people.
