Inclusiveness vs. safety in online spaces #
Note: this content is very old (2015-07-13).
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A combination of events at Reddit and LGBTQ in Tech Slack spurred me into a tweet storm about online spaces:
The tragedy of all online community spaces is that the goals of “inclusive” and “safe” are, at the extreme, mutually exclusive goals.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015If you keep including people you will eventually end up with people in the same space who cannot stand each other and will not get along.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015At some point you have to exclude someone. You get to pick if it’s the people feeling unsafe, or the people making them feel unsafe.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015And *that’s not always an obvious choice*. Somebody’s “reasonable topic of discussion” is *always*, eventually, somebody’s threat trigger.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015I’ve run online communities for 20 years and I have learned that there is not even an approximation of a consensus of “reasonable”.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015This is why online communities fragment. Let them do it. It’s the only viable solution to the existence of mutually incompatible people.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015Define your space clearly. Let in anyone who shares your reality. Be honest that people who don’t share it will be excluded. Say why.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015Don’t wring your hands about free speech. You are under no obligation to let people say things you hate. They can go elsewhere, and will.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) July 13, 2015
from Seldo.Com Feed http://ift.tt/1RsODha