It can be perfectly reasonable to remove people who are being completely inappropriate and/or egregiously insensitive. I think reducing it to simple politics is a distraction though. At the end of the day, people who are making everyone around them uncomfortable and causing everyone else to feel excluded/hated/marginalized probably deserve to learn that behavior is not tolerated, because that's often one of the only things that can get it to change.
Their opinions don't have to be political and your opinions don't have to be political. If someone is making the space worse for everyone, then maybe they're not good for the space. Maybe the space is not good for them. You would be doing good for both sides by stopping them from harming the space, and stopping the space from further enabling the problematic behavior.
I have personal experience with not changing until it became clear enough that certain behavior was driving away everyone and everything I care about. It didn't matter to me how much people told me it was bad, or tried to convince me to stop. What worked was seeing people leave over it, over and over, until I couldn't take it anymore. I had to change. You would be helping these kinds of people, and the community at large, by seeing to the consequences of their actions.
What if the space becomes a bit of an echo chamber when it comes to some topic and a person shows up with wildly different views, asks sharp questions and it becomes clear the community not used to having its beliefs argued doesn't have good answers? Negative valence arises through no fault of anybody. I've seen this happen multiple times. Utilitarian solution would be banning them, but it feels unjust.
I think the manner in which you ask the questions is important, but I also think that community response is important too. Some questions just could be phrased a lot better, and some communities just could be a lot friendlier to curiosity.
The right solution for that specific situation varies:
- if the questions are valid but they're just phrased in a very uncomfortable way, I'd like to see someone work with them on how to ask better. Note that by "better" I don't mean that there's an objectively better or worse way in general, but just that some communities are friendlier to different approaches, and for example, you can often get a lot more mileage out of trying to understand someone's current approach first, rather than immediately asking why they don't use yours, or immediately raising a bunch of issues you see with it. I may be misunderstanding what you mean by "sharp", but I've seen and helped with this before.
- if the discomfort just comes from generally questions existing or alternative views being expressed at all, then sometimes the community's just not a good fit for those views. Some communities are pretty closed to alternative approaches, and sometimes that's just the way it is. I mean, the way you describe an "echo chamber" can of course imply that it's pretty harmful to its participants (one example is polarization on social media), but you can't always just invade those spaces and expect to change the status quo. You can't help everyone, and a lot of people feel insulted when you even imply you might know better. Sometimes, outsiders just stop asking questions or expressing alternative views at all, just to avoid being ejected (one example is how cancel culture can be incredibly harmful to developing minds). I think that should be avoided if possible, of course... trying to fit into a group that doesn't accept you is usually a recipe for disaster, especially if you've already established things about yourself that they have problems with.
There are probably more variations on this, but those are the two biggest possibilities I see. Either the behavior of the individual is a problem, and should be addressed (there's usually no need to remove them immediately, if there's a way to address the behavior instead), or the behavior of the community is a problem, and the individual might be better off looking elsewhere.
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
Their opinions don't have to be political and your opinions don't have to be political. If someone is making the space worse for everyone, then maybe they're not good for the space. Maybe the space is not good for them. You would be doing good for both sides by stopping them from harming the space, and stopping the space from further enabling the problematic behavior.
I have personal experience with not changing until it became clear enough that certain behavior was driving away everyone and everything I care about. It didn't matter to me how much people told me it was bad, or tried to convince me to stop. What worked was seeing people leave over it, over and over, until I couldn't take it anymore. I had to change. You would be helping these kinds of people, and the community at large, by seeing to the consequences of their actions.
neuroticnews25 · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
The right solution for that specific situation varies:
- if the questions are valid but they're just phrased in a very uncomfortable way, I'd like to see someone work with them on how to ask better. Note that by "better" I don't mean that there's an objectively better or worse way in general, but just that some communities are friendlier to different approaches, and for example, you can often get a lot more mileage out of trying to understand someone's current approach first, rather than immediately asking why they don't use yours, or immediately raising a bunch of issues you see with it. I may be misunderstanding what you mean by "sharp", but I've seen and helped with this before.
- if the discomfort just comes from generally questions existing or alternative views being expressed at all, then sometimes the community's just not a good fit for those views. Some communities are pretty closed to alternative approaches, and sometimes that's just the way it is. I mean, the way you describe an "echo chamber" can of course imply that it's pretty harmful to its participants (one example is polarization on social media), but you can't always just invade those spaces and expect to change the status quo. You can't help everyone, and a lot of people feel insulted when you even imply you might know better. Sometimes, outsiders just stop asking questions or expressing alternative views at all, just to avoid being ejected (one example is how cancel culture can be incredibly harmful to developing minds). I think that should be avoided if possible, of course... trying to fit into a group that doesn't accept you is usually a recipe for disaster, especially if you've already established things about yourself that they have problems with.
There are probably more variations on this, but those are the two biggest possibilities I see. Either the behavior of the individual is a problem, and should be addressed (there's usually no need to remove them immediately, if there's a way to address the behavior instead), or the behavior of the community is a problem, and the individual might be better off looking elsewhere.