Introduction
These essays serve a twofold purpose. First, they paint the
larger picture behind RAOK's Guidelines for the membership. Second, they
show to the outside world that RAOK's principles and philosophy
are credible and workable. These essays are long and fairly convoluted, but
human nature and interaction are complicated too. What works well
on most days, doesn't work well in exceptional but predictable circumstances.
Kindness is the primary value at RAOK. RAOK's reason for being
is to make the internet a kinder place. For those who feel that
kindness is a squishy value, substitute the ten dollar word, compassion.
More cogently, there are those who say: "You can't be kind all the time
because people are mean or ill intentioned. They'll hurt you. They'll
defraud you. They'll grind you to a pulp! You have to do something about that!"
Guess what, those people are right.
Kindness is the primary value at RAOK, but for RAOK to survive
it can not be the only value. There are indeed times when other values take a
place ahead of kindness. These times are fairly rare, but they happen
often enough that their occurance is predictable and well above zero. In addition
, there are times when even kind people bring up
discussion topics that just plain make others uncomfortable. Both sorts of incidents repeat themselves
and fall in to a pattern. This makes exceptions to the
kindness rule and solutions to conversational problems fairly easy to identify and discuss.
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What About the Real World?
Let's start with the basics. Even RAOK's founder Candi did not believe that
kindness as practiced at RAOK entailed self sacrifice. The old slogan was: "Do you have
five minutes a day?" You are free to refrain from
doing kindness (though you can not act maliciously) if your schedule is
too busy. Likewise you do not have to do kindness:
- if it would cause a substantial financial loss or if it costs you any money at all for that matter;
- if doing kindness puts your web site, Facebook profile, or privacy at risk;
- if doing kindness endangers your life, limb, or reputation;
- if doing kindness interferes with family or work committments;
On the open web this means, you do not have to visit any web
pages that you suspect have forced downloads. If you fear spam bots, you
do not have to sign guestbooks. You certainly do not have to open e-cards
if you fear they come from a less than reputable source.
In Facebook means you are free to refuse third party
software by either ignoring the request or blocking the application should you
so choose. You do not have to join any groups where you feel
uncomfortable or where you are not interested either. You may
of course freely choose your "friends" and quietly "unfriend" any one you choose for any reason.
I am not sure what the implications for self preservation are with a wiki. Since wikis
are generally fully public, self preservation with a wiki is tied to issues of disclosure and privacy.
You don't have to disclose anything on the wiki that makes you feel uncomfortable.
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"Bite Your Tongue!"
There are times within RAOK where kindness clearly trumps honesty.
While RAOK does not require any one to lie to be kind, RAOK
is a no-crit enviroment. No-crit means NO CRITICISM. It is much the
same as either keeping your mouth shut or biting your metaphorical tongue in real life. If a
colleague walks into the office wearing a godawful suit you either
compliment her or say nothing. She has all ready bought the suit,
and telling her how you really feel when she did not ask or should not ask is only going to hurt her. It's not kind.
Most situations that make you uncomfortable at RAOK are akin to the woman in the godawful suit.
Be kind. Either lie or bite your tongue. There are of course three exceptions.
Excception One: Someone posts a hoax as defined by
http://www.truthorfiction.com or
http://www.snopes.com. In this case,
you are free to post the link to the appropriate debunking material. Do not criticize the
poster, who probably didn't know that this was a hoax. Don't even advise
her to check her posts more carefully. Just post the link and walk away. If you can't do this, do nothing.
Exception Two: A member has violated the guidelines against soliciting
funds or physical items either for themselves or others, or violated the guidelines for soliciting
web site competition/photo competition votes. Please point out the
guidelines to that person and then walk away. If you can't do this,
notify someone in the oligarchy who will educate the delinquent member.
Exception Three: Someone is going to unintentionally (or intentionally even)
hurt themselves or those around them. This is a judgement call but it happens.
Here are two examples. A member says that she is going to take
her new invention to a broker. Invention brokers are notorious scam artists.
This member is about to be ripped off. In this case, you are free to educate her with a link.
Telling the truth can prevent injury so please do the right thing.
A second example is a parent who states that she is not going
to vaccinate her baby. Vaccinations not only protect children from infectious
disease, they also provide herd immunity which prevents infection from spreading
through the population. A person who refuses to vaccinate her child
puts everyone around her at risk. In such a case, you can reply
truthfully but gently preferably with an educational link to explain
why this member making a bad decision.
It should almost go without saying that if a member threatens to take her
own life, you are free to try and track that member down in real life (Facebook profiles
contain enough real life information that this may be possible.) and contact
the authorities where that member lives.
Note: hurt must be to actual people. A hypothetical discussion
or talk of future plans involving people not yet born do not qualify for the honesty to prevent injury exception.
Likewise, harm that occured in the past is a done deal. The colleague with the godawful suit
has all ready bought it and probably won't return it. Bite your tongue.
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Kindness and Freedom of Speech
It is a well known fact that RAOK sets kindness ahead of freedom of speech.
This should not shock anybody. Most older discussion groups on the net, ask users to stay "on topic,"
and RAOK's topic is being kind.
Moreover, there are plenty of places outside RAOK where you can go to have
the kinds of conversation that RAOK does not support. If you crave Hell Fire
Christianity or fierce political debate, there are other groups.
RAOK should maintain a list of those groups for those who are interested.
Being able to go elsewhere in addition to RAOK enables RAOK to
enforce its rules and keep internal drama caused by unhappy members from building to a boil.
Also, RAOK has no jurisdiction over what you do or say beyond it's borders.
For example, you may discover that a fellow group member you have
friended adores sick humor and has joined a dead baby joke group.
You are free to quietly and privately unfriend that member if dead
baby jokes really bother you, but RAOK will take no action against the
member. The dead baby joke group is outside RAOK.
Likewise, members are free to argue with other members when they
meet in other groups both on Facebook and in other venues. And
members' Facebook profiles, blogs, and publicly viewable web
pages are their own property. RAOK does not control what members
do or say there.
The Yahoogroups email discussion list is entirely RAOK property. It is complete no-crit in ethos. Please respect that
The entire RAOK wiki is also RAOK property. Both members and
outside posters must adhere to a no-crit ethos within its borders. If
you want to write freely using a wiki, write on another wiki, or set up your own.
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