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By now, I have years of experience from the D forums. Like most forums, every now and then there are people who just don't seem to get along with others but refuse to stop writing either.
Of course, other people often feel to need to defend themselves / the language / the foundation / whatever. And let's be honest - many of us are a bit addicted to drama, regardless of how grumpy it might make us. I know I am - it's the same way we tend to get addicted to social media. I think a bit of that tendency is just natural and unavoidable.
Moreover, it's not always clear-cut who is the troll and who is just miscommunicating in mostly good faith. It's basic manners to give a benefit of doubt. Thus, the advice to not feed the trolls can work only to a limited extent, and the result is sometimes a spectacular flame war.
We have a tolerant moderation policy. It has it's problems, as many have written the forums tend to make them angry and it's just easier to keep off. Terminating certain kinds of arguments forcibly would probably help, as would banning some of the troublemakers sooner, as has been sometimes requested.
On the other hand, explicit enforcement of behaviour tends to feel slightly condescending, and there's always the danger of moderation going too far and shutting off legitimate criticism.
I think there is a particular kind of behaviour that is presently (mostly) allowed but that we could safely have less tolerance for. I call it "combative debating".
What is combative debating?
Any posting that knowingly angers or annoys co-debators a more than what it takes to get the point across.
In other words, you are still allowed to have as stupid opinions as you want, and you are allowed to bring them up. What you need to do though, is that if you suspect your post will be disliked, you need to take a bit of time to put it in a diplomatic form.
If people still get annoyed by what you post even when you try to bring it up respectfully, then fine - it was unavoidable. But if they get annoyed because you dramatised, exaggregated the pain points, resorted to ad homineum, made fun of those who disagreed etc, then your post was combative.
Note, there is no specific bad manner that is needed for a post to be combative. It might be combative even if if there is no name-calling, no foul language, no character attacks, et cetera. The only thing that matters is what feelings the post was designed to provoke, and whether that was understandable or necessary to get the posters opinion understood.
There seem to be people who think that getting the intellectual point across isn't enough, maybe because their co-debators "deserve" getting hurt a bit. In my opinion, we can and should require that people leave that attitude to the door when they come here. This forum is for intellectual debate, not for receiving your mandatory dose of chastising for whatever thought sins you're committing. Plus, who would draw the line what mental punishment is justified and what is not? The only line that works without making it a battleground is "none of it".
Examples
NOTE: I do not carry these opinions myself!
Okay:
>D is a great language if you're such an enthusiast you want to work with it in your free time. I have to say though, that rarely I would recommend it for professional usage. It's nice to use in itself, but in an actual commercial project there are generally just too much dependencies on all kinds of third-party tools and frameworks. With D, you'll spend too much time fighting your way around the ecosystem problems that are much more rarer in more mainstream languages, say Java or Go.
Too combative:
>No serious developer would ever use D for any serious project. Yes, the language is nice. So what? 98% of your time you'll be fighting your anger when Dub refuses to accept your dependency tree, in the rare case there even is a dub library for what you need. Not so nice, huh? What are you guys thinking? Why do you lie to people that D is ready for commercial use when it's not? WHY?
Maybe you just refuse to admit it to yourselves and engage in self-denial. Grow to adults. Please.
Okay:
>I understand the motivation behind the recent push to emphatise the GC is the default, and not the manual memory management. C# and Java, after all do show it's a fine safety mechanisms for your average application.
Nonetheless, I believe the direction is misguided. D is a rare breed - a systems programming language. The world is full of GC-dependand langauges. Those who are fine with the GC are unlikely to pick D since so many other languages have better garbage collectors. D can't catch up because it's garbage collector has to be compatible with raw C pointer and therefore can't be generational.
Therefore, let's focus on RAII and reference counting. That's a race where there is much less competition. We should keep the garbage collector around, as it is a good choice for scripts and CTFE, and one reason why D is easier to use than the other systems langauge - namely, Rust. But other memory management methods should be the focus.
Too combative:
>The programming world was better before C# and Java. Okay, okay, the GC brings safety benefits when you can afford it. But those languages turned most everybody to a GC zealot who think that nothing else is needed anymore.
It's as apparent here as anywhere. Never mind D brands itself as a systems language, on it's front page! Can't you please just accept that device drivers, game engines, real-time systems and whatever operating system you're using still need to be maintained. A sophiscated person might even think that humanity might new device drivers for new devices some day. Why am I bothering though? It's not 1990 anymore. Nobody will understand it no matter how clear it is.
Then there will be threads wodering why Rust takes over the world, when it has no GC. You will never know because don't understand when sane people tell it to you. So sad...
The proposal
Combative debating benefits no one. The discussions end up in fruitless spirals that frustate everyone, yet there are not necessarily any grounds for moderation to kick in under the current policy. It has no benefits for free speech either, as the definition explicitly says it's combative only if it is toxic without reason. Anything you can write combatively you can as well write respectfully.
The proposal, you quessed it: overly combative debating shall be forbidden and henceforth grounds for closing of threads, and in severe cases bans.
I do not propose a heavy-handed policy on this, quite the contrary in fact. There still should be plenty of space for normal self-expression, and no expectation to be perfect. In almost all cases, the moderator should first warn when someone crosses the limit, and employ sanctions only when those warnings go unheeded.
The difference to the present situation is there needs to be no particular (unwritten) rule broken, such as name calling or going off topic. It only needs to be shown that a debator is stirring up bad feelings with no constructive purpose, and it can be intervened.
What do you think?
